American Warmonger

New Proposal For .XXX Domain Fails To Register

If you've been on the Internet for longer than say ten seconds you have encountered something called pornography. It's rampant. It's close to impossible to avoid unless you use some serious filters, and even they aren't 100%. Normally, the best way to go is to keep an eye on your kids and make sure they don't go anywhere they're not supposed to. It's a real pain to watch them like a hawk, but that's the price you pay for having a computer around children.

Understanding a bit about the Internet's pornography problem the Internet's primary oversight body, ICANN, unveiled a plan to create a top level domain specifically for pornography, .XXX. The idea would allow the porn people to move from easily mistaken sites to more appropriate digs where you know what you're getting. It would also allow people and companies to better block web traffic to and from these domains. This should be a good thing for the future.

As the title of this article implies there is a snag in this plan. Even though the pornography industry soaks up $12 billion a year off the Internet the projected cost for an XXX domain name will be upwards of $60. This price is approximately ten times higher than the standard Internet name. I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Why should we care if they have to pay a bigger price for porn? They're the ones making $12 billion. They should be able to afford it, right?"

Which domain would you buy? The one that will put you in the mainstream and capable of generating more revenue that costs only six bucks? Or would you do the "kind and gentle" thing and fork over $60 for a label that will get easily filtered out of many of the revenue streams throughout the world? I wouldn't be surprised if whole countries would filter a XXX domain.

So, what are our alternatives? We could make it cheaper for a XXX site. It could be a free domain registration. It might make up for costs, however, anyone that wanted a free domain and didn't mind the stigma would be putting their non-porn site on the new XXX domain. That would be a dud solution.

The only effective solution I can see is to make the cost identical to any other domain name. You wouldn't be able to cure the stigma problem, but you would no longer be adding insult to injury. Countries could individually write legislation to require pornographic sites to be on the XXX domain as well. If the costs were identical to a regular domain there would be no legal problems with lifestyle discrimination for such legislation as well. Charging more for one lifestyle than for another would be problematic at best and downright unconstitutional at worst.

Overall, this is a great idea and a good step forward but the cost issues need to be worked on in order for this to actually function. I want to be able to filter out questionable material just as much as the next person, but I don't want it if we have to turn XXX into the pornographic concentration camp of the Internet.

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Posted by aakaakaak at June 2, 2005 09:02 PM