Southern Bread

ICANN(the group that manages the top level internet domains) has once
again scrapped plans for a separate domain just for pornography web
sites. It would be something like .xxx instead of them using the .com
namespace. This is actually a deceptive issue. If you look at it from
one direction it looks like a very good idea. You create a separate
top-level domain called .xxx so that all the pornography websites would be
easily identifiable and easy to filter out. As a system administrator
that would be great because I could just put one filter in the firewall to
block any website with a .xxx domain and my job would be done.

But as usual the reality is not so simple. For one, there is no way to
require adult websites to take a certain domain. I could go right now and
register sector62.org even though I am not a non-profit organization.
Nobody is going to stop me and nobody really cares. Most people try to
adhere to the .org(non-profit), .com(commercial), .net(ISP) style but
there is no actual way to require people to do this. What would almost
certainly happen is that current adult site owners would just double-register
their current site on both top-level domains. So the owner of
pornsite.com would just go and register his site as pornsite.xxx also so
that both names point to his site and that gets us no where.

The “religious right” is getting all kinds of bad press, as usual, for
putting pressure on ICANN to scrap the .xxx idea but their position is
never spelled out in any of the articles I read on this subject. Their
position is that to create an entire top-level domain for one industry
does more to legitamize that industry than anything else, no matter what
industry it is. When you say that .gov(government) and .mil(military) are
on the same level with .xxx(porn) that is just crazy. Pornography on the
internet is a big enough problem already without giving it defacto
legitimacy within the internet structure.

You are seeing this cached out everywhere as a nail in the coffin of
ICANN and a victory for the religious right. That is just a bunch of
garbage. I applaude ICANN for not getting involved in such a fiasco when
they themselves know that the desired outcome will be the exact opposite
of what these senators that are pushing for it think it will be. Don’t be
fooled by the media. A separate .xxx domain is a very bad idea.