« Lenten Calculation & Misconceptions | Home | Louisiana Governor’s Race »
The .xxx domain
Posted April 4, 2007 , By Joshua LeBlanc
Recently ICANN, the organization that manages all the different domain extensions such as .com, .info, .net, etc., has decided to nix the idea of having a .xxx domain. The idea proposed would have required pornographic websites to move from conventional domains such as .com and .org to .xxx. ICANN resfused the request to create .xxx because they said it would have forced them to police the internet and decide what was considered pornographic.
Some have supported and some have opposed the .xxx domain and I happen to fall into the latter group. At first the idea of a .xxx domain seems great. Move all the pornographic sites to their own section of the internet and I have to admit it would make my life much easier as a sys admin because then I could just block sites to an entire domain and not have to individually block sites, but I think we have to look at the larger picture than practicality.
First, I don’t believe that regulating pornography to its own domain is enforceable. Since the pornography industry has opposed this change, we’d be in litigation forever and the .xxx would never become a reality.
Secondly, I think that giving porn its own domain is tacit approval of porn. Instead of giving it its own domain, we should continue to fight it. Here in the US not only have we said "OK" to porn now we’re going to give it its own separate section of the internet? Why don’t we establish a section of each city for porn stores? I think this sort of thing invites pornography rather than does what we want to do — get it out of our society.
Topics: Commentary |
April 5th, 2007 at 1:28 am
I’d never thought about the tacit approval of porn by granting the domain. Good thinking there, and nice point. My cynical side, however, just wants to say, “Porn is here to stay,” though.
You’re also exactly right about the fact that site operators wouldn’t want to move to the .xxx domain anyway. It’d sure be easy to block anything from *!*.xxx though.