On Friday in San Francisco, the California nonprofit that oversees Internet addresses gave the green light to the virtual red-light district. The vote comes after several years of clashes and deliberations by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Adult-entertainment sites will still populate the .com space and every other corner of the Internet. But now, many pornographic sites can also join a specialized domain that instantly telegraphs its content with the infamous suffix. ICM Registry, a Florida-based company that will run .xxx, said the domain’s Web sites will be the Internet’s most trusted place for adult entertainment: ICM will monitor the sites to ensure that they prohibit spam, viruses and any other illegal behavior. And it says it will use some of the registration fees for an affiliated foundation to promote free speech and combat child pornography.
“At the moment, the consumer has no way of knowing who is operating to good standards or has viruses,” Stuart Lawley, ICM Registry’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview. “This new domain allows webmasters to associate with best business practices.”
But the dirty domain has a slew of critics. The Obama administration and some foreign nations say the domain’s offensive material will only encourage oppressive regimes to block .xxx entirely. A Commerce Department spokeswoman said the administration neither supports nor objects to the domain’s actual content or merit.
“We are disappointed that ICANN ignored the clear advice of governments worldwide, including the U.S.,” said Lawrence Strickling, assistant Commerce secretary. “This decision goes against the global public interest, and it will open the door to more Internet blocking by governments and undermine the stability and security of the Internet.”
Another set of foes, oddly enough: major pornography industry players, who fear that .xxx will be easily vulnerable to governments’ censorship. They also are concerned about aggressive policing by ICM and worry that porn Web sites will be forced to pay thousands of dollars in registration fees to buy multiple .xxx addresses simply to protect their brands from cybersquatters.
“This is putting a red target on us,” said Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association representing multiple adult-entertainment organizations including Hustler. “People who are pedophiles and child pornographers are not part of the adult-entertainment system. We have a code of ethics.
via Coming soon online: Dot-XXX – The Washington Post.
Right. Anyway, pro-family groups also tend to oppose this, I suppose because it seems to legitimize pornography. It seems that if porn will continue to operate from it current .com sites, this will do little one way or the other. And if pornographers oppose it, they have no reason to put their material on .xxx sites. If porn could be all moved to the .xxx sites, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?
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