The decision on whether or not we will see sites with a .xxx suffix on their domain has been delayed…again.

ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) deferred the decision until June, citing the need for a proposal outlining various options. The proposal is slated to be submitted March 26 and will then have a 45-day review period before being considered in June.

Perhaps the options proposed between now and June will make this proposal a bit more worth covering. As it stands now, it won’t please proponents or opponents.

Religious groups oppose the .xxx domain because they feel it will legitimize pornography. Others are in favor of the domain designation because they say it will make it easier for parents to block out pornography and will help clean up the rather sleazy red-light district currently piped in to any home with an Internet connection.

As the current proposal stands, registering a .xxx domain would be a wholly voluntary action. Therefore, pornography sites would have very little to gain from switching from a .com to a .xxx domain other than some mildly positive PR. And if they are looking to score points with their biggest opponents and detractors, they would have to do a lot more clean-up and safety than simply switching to a .xxx domain. Without some sort of mandate that sites that feature adult content abandon their .com domains in favor of the more explicit .xxx domain, the proposal does absolutely nothing as far as making the web safer for anyone.

Worries that this domain designation will further legitimize pornography in our culture get into “drop in the bucket” territory. As the porn pastor Craig Gross tells the St. Louis paper, “Our culture has embraced pornography. Girls wear T-shirts that say ‘porn star’.” Gross runs XXXchurch.com, a web-based ministry which helps hundreds of thousands of people end their addiction to pornography, so he’s well versed on the subject.

We’ll see what comes from the June decision if indeed there is one. The way the debate is shaping up it seems as if either decision won’t go very far in making the web a safer place.

Filed under: Internet Safety News