.XXX Domain Approved, Program to be Voluntary
After years of debate, ICANN, the not-for-profit regulatory agency that issues domain suffixes, decided to go ahead with domains ending in .xxx for adult sites.
ICANN says the measure is intended to “provide a place online for adult entertainment providers and their service providers who want to be part of our voluntary self regulatory community.” They also claim that it will make “simple and effective filtering” of adult content easier for those who don’t want to encounter porn online.
Well, I spoke with our CTO who probably knows more about filtering Internet content than, well, anyone, and he seemed quite dubious about this new domain designation doing anything to help filter out adult content or keep it away from kids.
“The way in which ICANN has chosen to implement the .XXX domain will actually have no effect whatsoever in terms of filtering adult content on the Internet,� says Aaron Kenny, CTO and co-founder of InternetSafety.com. “What it will do is require legitimate companies to purchase .xxx extensions of company domains in order to protect their brand. Without the .xxx being mandatory and requiring adult sites to give up their .com domains, this measure will ultimately do nothing to help filter adult content online.�
People have been all across the board on this issue, with some attacking it from the right saying it further legitimizes the pornography industry, and some on the left fearing it will open the door for censorship. What do you think about the .xxx domain decision? Will it do anything to help parents shield kids from pornography? Will it legitimize the industry even more?
Filed under: Internet Safety News
Those on the right oppose .xxx, on the grounds that it’ll mean more space for porn. Though personally i think this isn’t true, as the production of porn is determined by the law of supply and demand.
Those on the left oppose it on grounds of potential future expansion to limit freedom of speech.
But there is one very powerful faction that does support .xxx, and that is entirely responsible for it’s advancement: ICM Registry. The company not only pushed for .xxx in formal requests, but has threatened legal action if ICANN denies it. There is a huge amount of money to be had in .xxx, and ICM wants it’s slice of that pie.
That’s the reason .xxx is going ahead: Money, pure and simple.
In terms of it’s impact on porn, I don’t imagine .xxx will do anything at all. Plenty of responsible sites will move there, but that just means less competition for the large number of irresponsible sites that benefit from getting as many users in as possible to view the adverts – and you can’t simply regulate them into .xxx, because they can easily move jurisdiction to avoid any laws, and even set up in country-specific TLDs, completly outside of ICANN’s control. Any attempt would likely face legal challenges, in addition to being ineffective.
So this doesn’t change anything, really.
I don’t want it to be voluntary but mandatory. If this is the first step then I am for it.
Wouldn’t work, Opey. In princible porn could be banned from .com, .org and .net, yes. But that wouldn’t force it into .xxx. It’d just force it out i nto the country codes – so you’d see porn.cn, porn.tw, porn.fr, and so on. The internet is an international network now, and although the US does retain more control than any other country over it’s management, their power is not total. ICANN doesn’t manage country codes – it merely allocates them to their respective countries, and has no authority over what happens after that.
While having an xxx domain will not render filters obselete because of its voluntary nature, it could improve the safety of legitimate sites that host user generated content, such as youtube or flickr. By storing their adult content behind a separate ip address on the xxx domain, they can make this content easy to filter, without sacrificing site function. And being commercial entities already sensitive to content preferences, they could enforce categorization compliance at risk of expulsion. This would free up the legitimate resources on these services for those whose vulnerability would otherwise deny them safe use. It is my hope that such a thing could happen so that the sybarites can have their fun while the rest of us can be protected.
So no, this doesn’t solve the problem, but it does make useful strategies possible.
Yes I suspect the .xxx implementation will be largely ineffective – even if it was, it is not just hard core porn that is the “problem” per se. There are plenty more titilating images out there such as bikinis, lingerie fine art” nude modlelling etc etc etc that will not move to xxx even if mandatory. The bottom line is to have an effective programmable filter. Regulation while helpful with the hard core stuff just wont go far enough and regulation is always a slippery slope – it begets more control often that isnt welcome.