
ICANN Approves Dot-XXX Domain for Porn - sound
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/199851/icann_board_approves_dotxxx_toplevel_domain_for_porn.html
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po
I wish the ICANN would knock it off. TLD's are not an effective way to group
websites. They are making the namespace more complex for little or no benefit.
Now that the horses are effectively out of the barn, they should just make the
TLD registry replace the concept of a domain. Cannon already bought .cannon
right?

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unexpected
Can someone explain to me how this helps the Internet ecosystem?

If I were a porn site, why would I want this address? Filters, parental
controls, etc. are most likely going to block the entire .xxx domain - this
would limit page views.

History has shown that .com is the most popular TLD - how is .xxx going to
help? It seems like an attempt to drum up registrar dollars.

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cookiecaper
.xxx helps because it allows easier segmentation. xxx sites will be considered
"good citizens" for moving over. Filters will block all of them, which is fine
because people who'd be filtered significantly (kids) don't have money to
spend on this stuff anyway. Others may be filtered only at work but frankly
that's a job-saving idea so it keeps money coming in.

If you want porn, you know just how to get it; go to any xxx domain out there.
If you don't want it, you know how to avoid a larger part of it; don't go to
any xxx domain out there. Sounds like it works well to me!

No mandatory compliance would ever work, and there will always be porn
littered all over these many internets, but .xxx domain will make at least
part of it easier to access/avoid, according to the desires of the user and/or
its guardians.

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user24
"how to avoid a larger part of it"

not true though; most of the existing porn will remain where it currently is.
New sites might choose to start up with .xxx, existing big sites might buy the
.xxx counterpart and keep their .com.

The end result is no reduction in non-.xxx porn, and some extra porn on .xxx.
Totally pointless.

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jasonlotito
The other thing is, most responsible adult companies already work to make sure
their sites are labeled clearly as adult-only sites. Parents have options to
prevent their children from going to these sites. In fact, these sites are
safer for children than Facebook when you get right down to it.

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cookiecaper
It's pretty hard to block these sites because you have to know the domain
name/information on each one. Assuming large-scale voluntary compliance, and I
think the chances are good that all the "big" producers will move over, it's
much easier to just filter the xxx domain and be done with it.

Usually the idea is to keep it away from children because children will
willfully look at it without understanding. That page that says "Absolutely DO
NOT look at this if you're under 18" has no relevance to an under-18 year old.

It's the same reason we put all other restraints on teenagers; if they were
capable of detecting trouble and reliably refusing to participate therein,
then they wouldn't need all of the things that are in place to protect them
from themselves, foremost among these being parents.

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jasonlotito
> It's pretty hard to block these sites because you have to know the domain
> name/information on each one.

No, you do not. There are services out there that assist in this.

<http://www.cybersitter.com/> <http://www.netnanny.com/>
<http://www.cyberpatrol.com/> <http://www.asacp.org/>

Couple this with parental controls in Windows and Mac (I'm sure it has it),
and you don't have to know each domain.

> Assuming large-scale voluntary compliance, and I think the chances are good
> that all the "big" producers will move over, it's much easier to just filter
> the xxx domain and be done with it.

There already is voluntary compliance amongst the the big producers, as well
as the smaller ones. There is no incentive to attract children.

These sites have already a vested interest in their current domains. Do you
realize the cost involved with moving domains at the scale you are discussing?
For what? To do what's already possible and being done?

I'd be more worried about sites that you wouldn't think to place in .xxx and
yet are in many ways worse (looking at you, reddit!)

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Groxx
And how about any of the infinite mirrors which _aren't_ the big producers?
And do they block RapidShare? Torrents?

It's _impossible_ to filter it all (maybe with strong A.I., but show me a porn
filter that has that and I'll denounce this claim).

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jasonlotito
What nonsense are you talking about? What does Rapidshare or Torrents have to
do with filtering out porn sites that would use the .xxx TLD?

> It's impossible to filter it all

And?

.xxx won't change that. At all.

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Groxx
Rapidshare hosts a _lot_ of porn. If you're looking to filter the internet for
the purity of person X, a random link could lead them through that and to
porn. Q.E.D. Similarly, torrents are not always what they're advertised to be.

And I wasn't implying it will change the filtering problem. Merely pointing
out that it _isn't_ easy, which you implied quite strongly. Schools have been
struggling with it since they started (magazines behind books), and paying
companies like those large amounts of money for woefully incomplete solutions.

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jasonlotito
> And I wasn't implying it will change the filtering problem. Merely pointing
> out that it isn't easy, which you implied quite strongly

You're taking things out of context, and putting words in my mouth.

This is a discussion of the .xxx TLD. My contention is that .xxx won't improve
porn blocking precisely because of the reasons you mentioned. There are
already tools that do a lot of work to block it, and .xxx isn't going to
change anything. The sites that would use .xxx are already blocked.

So, a porn sites are already blocked, and will use .xxx just to have it. It
won't improve blocking. At the same time, .xxx won't block sites that don't
play by the rules, and sites like RapidShare or Reddit, where you can find
porn.

That's what I've been saying.

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SoftwareMaven
Regardless of the arguments for or against, this is what I thought was sad:

    
    
      That claim of independence gave ICANN board member Rita  
      Rodin Johnston pause for thought. "I still question 
      whether, in fact, there is a real sponsored community 
      here," she said in the board-meeting debate before the 
      vote.
    
      However, she went on to vote in favor of the new domain,   
      saying that despite her personal reservations about the 
      proposal, she felt obliged to by ICANN's decision-making 
      process. "It really doesn't matter what I think. What's 
      important is that ICANN has a process that it set up and 
      the process came back and said that sponsorship criterion 
      was met, and that this board has the courage to follow 
      that criterion," she said.
    

"It really doesn't matter what I think"?? If you are on the board of any
organization, I would argue that it very much matters what you think,
otherwise, what is the point?

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civild
I can only imagine the kind of domain name land-grab this will invoke.
Squatters will be prepping their naughty keywords database in preparation, I
suspect.

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pjscott
I think the cheapest way to get a desirable .xxx domain would be to register a
nonsensical domain like "dumptrucking.xxx" and then make it a new term for
some sex act. What is "dump trucking"? I don't know, and neither does anybody
else -- _yet._ It's brand-building writ sleazy.

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Groxx
Honestly, I see this as a good thing.

"consumers" will see it as a shortcut to what they're looking for. Thus
"hosts" will benefit by owning .xxx domains. Sites _without_ .xxx won't
succeed as well as those with. Scale up, and you've got a basic means of
organizing sites that didn't exist before.

It of course won't mean that black-listing .xxx domains will mean a porn-free
surfing environment. Expecting that is like expecting Wikipedia to always be
correct, and I highly doubt it'll even approach Wikipedia-consistency. But
admitting porn is out there and providing a way to organize it and keep it a
little more separate from non-porn simply cannot be a bad thing.

edit: why does everyone seem to think sites won't own _both_ a .com and a .xxx
domain, for at least a respectable period of time? If intarwebIs4porn.com
doesn't buy intarwebIs4porn.xxx they'll be _slaughtered_ if a mass migration
occurs, because the owner of the domain can camp it for as much as they want.
_They will buy them_. They only stand to lose if they don't.

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dantheman
Complete waste of time and a boondoggle.

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adolph
In other news, domain registrars issued updated guidance on improved
earnings...

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code_duck
No doubt, this is a huge money giveaway to whomever will be selling these.

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jgrahamc
It wouldn't surprise me if the pornography industry didn't completely ignore
this TLD. The nature of pornography means that it's possible to be very
creative in naming your site.

If you look at Alexa's list of the top adult web sites you'd see the following
names: livejasmin.com, pornhub.com, xvideos.com, youporn.com, xhamster.com,
tube8.com, ...

It doesn't look to me like the .com namespace is running out of room for
pornography.

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MichaelGG
I would be surprised if every site doesn't immediately get their .xxx out of
nervousness. How long until someone puts laws saying porn _must_ be hosted on
.xxx "for the children"? Sites using .com could be accused of trying to hide
instead of clearly marking their dangerous content.

Idiotic, yes. So how probable?

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sethg
Someone could avoid such a law simply by hosing their .xxx site in another
country. And even if every national government agrees that segregating porn on
the Net would be a good thing, you’ll never get them all to agree on a
standard. In some countries topless women are no big deal, and in others an
exposed elbow is obscene.

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drallison
Seems to me that this decision just transfers $$$ into the hands of the TLD
operator. Porn website operators will now want to buy example.xxx as well as
example.com and example.net and so forth. Non-porn operators may want to buy
anotherexample.xxx to protect their anotherexample.com name.

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jawngee
Where can I register at?

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Kilimanjaro
sex.xxx

the most expensive domain evar

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aniketh
more likely free.xxx

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rikthevik
se.xxx?

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gaius
Swedish is a guarantee of quality ;-)

