Bush administration objects .XXX domain

16 Aug, 2005 at 11:43am ET Article published in Tech

Assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, Michael Gallagher, wants the contract to be put on hold until further scrutiny. The new .xxx domain was planned for final approval today.

“For those that are still wondering what triple-X means, let’s be specific, Mr. Chairman. They are talking about pornography. These are things that go very deep in our values in many of our countries. In my country, Brazil, we are very worried about this kind of decision-making process where they simply decide upon creating such new top-level generic domain names.”

Source: News.com

Comments

16 Aug 2005 ~ 11:49am primesuspect Yeah, it's much better to have pornography at .com where it belongs

wtf..... :shakehead
16 Aug 2005 ~ 1:18pm Linc But maybe if they stop .xxx then pr0n will go away... :celebrate
16 Aug 2005 ~ 1:36pm profdlp A few thoughts:

1) Porn isn't going to voluntarily leave .com merely because .xxx is created, they'll just have a presence in both.

2) If you want to force porn out of .com, who writes the laws? Who does the censoring? Who enforces it?

3) Did anyone read the article?

Other governments also have been applying pressure to ICANN in a last-minute bid to head off .xxx. A letter from ICANN's government advisory group sent Friday asks for a halt to "allow time for additional governmental and public policy concerns to be expressed before reaching a final decision."

Funny how "(several) governments" asking for "time for additional governmental and public policy concerns to be expressed" becomes "Bush administration objects to .XXX domains".

And who knew that Assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, Michael Gallagher, was from Brazil?
16 Aug 2005 ~ 3:52pm Rewired Ah, he's not from Brazil. I don't think a .XXX domain will have much of an impact either way. Adult content websites won't let go of their .COM domains. Maybe one of the requirements to be approved for a .XXX domain is that you can't also have a .COM domain. Also if Microsoft added a system level .XXX domain block option that might help.
16 Aug 2005 ~ 4:47pm entropy

profdlp wrote:

Funny how "(several) governments" asking for "time for additional governmental and public policy concerns to be expressed" becomes "Bush administration objects to .XXX domains".

My thoughts exactly.

I couldn't care one way or the other, though. Like has been said, porn won't move. It'll take both. If you could force them over, then I'd see the point. But as of now it'd just be another silly domain name.

I'm waiting for .lol, .wtf and .zomg domains.
16 Aug 2005 ~ 5:07pm profdlp

entropy wrote:

...I'm waiting for .lol, .wtf and .zomg domains.

Now that is a horrifying thought...
16 Aug 2005 ~ 5:40pm Leonardo The linked site is very shallow on the facts - it only quotes a few speakers. It provides basis for very little discussion. Frankly, I don't know enough about this to lean either way, .xxx versus .com.

Marc, I'm not criticizing your choice of a news article. I'm just saying that the all the article says in substance is that there is international contention as to whether .xxx should be adopted.
16 Aug 2005 ~ 6:57pm mmonnin I didn't make the title. I never thought that adding a new .xxx domain would somehow make all the 'porn' or what is considered porn sites transfer over to the new domain. Most likely they will just add get the .xxx version of their current .com URL.

There is always the submit button if you would like to see something else on the front page. I cant get to it but dont let the newsposters totally control what content goes up here.
16 Aug 2005 ~ 7:05pm primesuspect ArsTechnica has a little bit more on this:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050816-5212.html
16 Aug 2005 ~ 7:13pm profdlp

Leonardo wrote:

...Marc, I'm not criticizing your choice of a news article...

I want to make it clear that I am not doing that, either.

The flaws I mentioned were taken from the article itself.

This is one of those subjects on which I frequently find myself changing my mind. If it were possible to restrict porn to .xxx solely I would be for it. If nothing else it would create an easy way for parents to restrict the sites their children could view. (For that matter, there are plenty of adults who would rather not inadvertently stumble across sites like that.)

But even if it were possible to do this, who decides which sites get shunted off to the .xxx ghetto? If XXX is segregated, how long would it be before there was a call for a .rrr, .pg13, etc rating system similar to the movies to be enacted? Back when the Babe Thread was still in existence would Short-Media have been relegated to .rrr? Would that truly describe what this site is all about?

Throw in the fact that if the movie rating model was adopted these decisions would be in the hands of a very small ratings board (the movie rating board varies between eight and thirteen members) and I'm not sure we even want to start down that road.

It's a nice idea in concept, but I see more problems being caused by the execution of the standard than will be solved.
16 Aug 2005 ~ 8:39pm mmonnin As far as I can see, I dont see a real point in this either. We cannot force sites to go to a .xxx domain from a .com or other domain so they will just copy the URL. All this would basicaly do is for the end user to know that they are at a porn site. There will be no guessing whether whitehouse dot xxx is a porn site or not unlike the .com site.