For several years, there has been an effort to establish a new .xxx domain for online pornography. It has been shot down several times, but it is back in the news again. The Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet’s nonprofit body with authority for development, has issued a revised proposed agreement for establishing a .xxx domain and has invited public comment until February 5, 2007.
The Florida company pushing for the .xxx domain thinks it’s a great idea to create a virtual red-light district on the Internet. And even those who oppose pornography might at first glance think it would be helpful to put all the porn in one .xxx area so it would be easy to block for those who want to block it. However, the creation of a .xxx domain would not require pornographers who are on the .com domain to move to the .xxx domain. Any efforts to coral pornography into a corner of the Internet has been fought voraciously by the ACLU under First Amendment rights.
The Family Research Council warned on its Web site that “pornographers will be given even more opportunities to flood our homes, libraries and society with pornography through the .xxx domain.”
Even the Bush administration intervened in the process in August 2005 by sending a letter to ICANN saying: “The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children.”
There is no easy answer to the pornography issue on the Internet. Tomorrow, I’ll blog about community efforts to clean up pornography or at least attempt to corral it on the Internet.
The Family Research Council warned on its Web site that “pornographers will be given even more opportunities to flood our homes, libraries and society with pornography through the .xxx domain.”
I’m a bit puzzled by this assertion. Is there any reason why an .xxx domain would give pornographers “even more opportunities to flood our homes” than is currently available to them? Being confined to using .com doesn’t seem to be a particular hindrance to them.
I would echo what Steve M. said.
I’m not sure what the big deal is. At least all the porn in the .xxx area would be easily blocked, since the assumption is that it is all inappropriate.
My thought is that the desire for the .xxx shows the growth and explosion and availability of pornography on the internet. The fact the .xxx domain could become available doesn’t worry me, it is the fact that it does make it easier for producers to market and impose it.
An early proposal indicates that the .xxx TLD was made by a trade association of pornographic website owners and operators. That association claimed 100,000 members with an average 20 websites each.
That’s around 2 million pornography websites out there just in that set of operators alone. Doesn’t count all the sites set up by spammers, and other operations. So that is a very conservative number. I’ve even heard 4 million websites exist at the present time.
I doubt it will do anything to have the .xxx domain extension, especially given the dishonest nature of that industry. And to top that off, many sites plagiarize and steal each others’ pornography from discussions I’ve seen about the industry on antipornography activist sites and bulletin boards.
A new TLD has no bearing whatsoever on the effectiveness of what parents teach their children about proper behavior. Did .tv make television more or less popular, more or less addictive? I didn’t think so.
Pornography will be in the internet whether or not we use .xxx My biggest concern is that by recognizing pornographers the same was we recognize other companies, organizations, networks, educational institutions, governments and the like it will give a level of legitimacy to evil.