Quote :

"NEW YORK - Acknowledging "unprecedented" opposition, the U.S. government has asked the Internet's key oversight agency to delay approval of a new ".xxx" domain name designed as a virtual red-light district. Better first dates. More second dates. Michael D. Gallagher, assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, stopped short of urging its rejection, but he called on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to "ensure the best interests of the Internet community as a whole are fully considered." The department received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails expressing concerns about the impact of pornography on families and children and objecting to setting aside a domain suffix for it, he said. "The volume of correspondence opposed to creation of a .xxx TLD (domain name) is unprecedented," Gallagher wrote to Vinton Cerf, ICANN's chairman. Gallagher said ICANN should take more time to evaluate those concerns. Approval of the domain name had been expected as early as Tuesday, five years after it was first proposed and two months after ICANN gave it a tentative OK. Gallagher's letter was sent last week and made public Monday. The chairman of ICANN's Government Advisory Committee, Mohd Sharil Tarmizi, also wrote ICANN officials last week urging delay and expressing "a strong sense of discomfort" among many countries, which he did not name. Gallagher's comments, however, carry greater weight because his agency has veto power over ICANN decisions given the U.S. government's role in funding early developing of the Internet and selecting ICANN in 1998 to oversee domain name administration. ICANN officials did not immediately return phone and e-mail messages. The matter remained on the published agenda for a private conference call among board members Tuesday, and ICANN typically does not disclose the outcome of such meetings for up to a week. Two in five Internet users visited an adult site in April, according to tracking by comScore Media Metrix. The company said 4 percent of all Web traffic and 2 percent of all surfing time involved an adult site. A Florida company, ICM Registry Inc., proposed ".xxx" as a mechanism for the $12 billion online porn industry to clean up its act. All sites using ".xxx" would be required to follow yet-to-be-written "best practices" guidelines, such as prohibitions against trickery through spamming and malicious scripts. Use of ".xxx" would be voluntary, however. Skeptics note that porn sites are likely to keep their existing ".com" storefronts, even as they set up shop in the new ".xxx" domain name, reducing the effectiveness of any software filters set up to simply block all ".xxx" names. Conservative groups such as the Family Research Council also expressed worries that creating a ".xxx" suffix would also legitimize pornographers. But ICM chairman Stuart Lawley, in a response to ICANN, pointed out that the agency already offered ample opportunity to raise objections. "This matter has been before ICANN for five years, and very actively and publicly debated for the past 18 months," he said. "We are, to say the very least, disappointed that concerns that should have been raised and addressed weeks and months ago are being raised in the final days." Nonetheless, he said he was open to a one-month delay so ICM can address the late objections. Also on the agenda Tuesday was approval of a less controversial domain name, ".cat" for sites devoted to Catalan language and culture. More than 260 domain name suffixes exist, mostly country codes such as ".fr" for France. Recent additions include ".eu" for the European Union and ".mobi" for mobile services."

haha, I didn't even know they were considering it. I still support .cum for porn domains.

8/16/2005 2:54:16 PM

it makes absolutely no sense for anti-porn people to be opposed to this. It will make it a hundred times easier to monitor these sites and regulate traffic to them. I can't think of a single valid reason why they'd be against it.

8/16/2005 4:04:22 PM

seriously, this is fucking stupid

8/16/2005 4:06:24 PM

I can't either actually.

8/16/2005 4:06:34 PM

once again they're uninformed douchebags that are completely ignorant of the very problem they're so upset about.

8/16/2005 4:06:49 PM

anti-porn people should like this, i'm confused

8/16/2005 4:18:34 PM

stupid concerned mothers who don't even know how to turn their computers on

8/16/2005 4:26:01 PM

i'm thinking that they know .xxx will let kids know exactly how to find porn.

the thing is, though, I don't think .xxx is compulsory. I think it's optional. If that's the case, it really won't help anything. I don't care anything about if there's porn on the internet, but I'm just saying, I think that it's a valid point that this will possibly make it EASIER to find porn.

8/16/2005 4:40:22 PM

Quote :

"anti-porn people should like this, i'm confused"

The anti-porn people don't like this because they want NO porn. Anywhere. For anyone.

8/16/2005 4:56:12 PM

Quote :

"i'm thinking that they know .xxx will let kids know exactly how to find porn."

its already easy enough to find
this would make it easier to block

8/16/2005 4:57:20 PM

Quote :

"it makes absolutely no sense for anti-porn people to be opposed to this."

Quote :

"this is fucking stupid"

8/16/2005 5:52:46 PM

would this proposal force porn sites to move their .com names over to .xxx, cause i don't think many sites would do that if they weren't required.

8/16/2005 5:57:04 PM

Quote :

"Use of ".xxx" would be voluntary, however."

8/16/2005 6:01:17 PM

i think it'd be a good thing, but only if porn sites HAD to switch over to .xxx.

8/16/2005 6:39:17 PM

^ agreed

8/16/2005 6:44:11 PM

Quote :

" It will make it a hundred times easier to monitor these sites and regulate traffic to them."

agreed, great idea

Quote :

"its already easy enough to find"

one reason why not to have a specific domain, that's not logical, just because it's easy to find, doesn't mean you need to make it blatantly obvious...

Quote :

"this would make it easier to block"

this would be great, but this be the same as if you just put a *xxx* filter?

8/16/2005 6:59:45 PM

I agree, this would only be useful if it were required for all porn sites.

8/16/2005 7:41:30 PM

lmao they want no porn at all.

'this step will legitimize pornmakers'

prostitution and sexual business is probably the oldest business known to man. when they were trading beaver pelts, they were trading pretty slaves too. when they were conquering empires, you know they had belly dancers and shit. when they were knighting people, you know they had damsels in distress. and now it's on the internet. it's always been around. it's always going to be around. if you think you taught your kids not to look at it, they'll still do it. just give up.

8/16/2005 9:05:29 PM

Quote :

"The anti-porn people don't like this because they want NO porn. Anywhere. For anyone."

My thoughts exactly. And I guess they're acting as if this is actually a possibility. aaaahahahaha

8/16/2005 11:45:04 PM

Quote :

"I still support .cum for porn domains."

hahaha, that's great.

8/16/2005 11:48:00 PM

if they made this compulsory then someone would have to decide what is "pornography" and that opens a whole new can of worms. this is more to legitamize porn sites. like the article said, there would be standards to sites that carry the .xxx suffix (like not being malicious or spamming). so then if someone wanted to visit a pornographic site, they would know that the .xxx ones probably wouldn't load spyware or viruses onto their comp. it won't make it any easier or harder to block it because there will still be non-.xxx sites out there and the current sort of filters would still have to be used.

8/17/2005 1:59:26 AM

^ exactly.

"i know it when i see it!!!11"

nobody can specifically define what's porn. Some will say it's anything involving a half naked woman. Others will say that you have to be fully nude. others will argue there needs to be penetration, while others will say that even if it's cinemax-style fake porn, it's still porn

no way you can define that.

also, I'd argue it goes against free speech to force someone to change their domains. Also, it would hurt their business. You'd have to redirect their old sites to the new .xxx domains, which would defeat the purpose, because that means you could still go to the old .com or .net or .org domains. ALSO, what if there are three sites with the same name but one is porn.net, one is porn.com, and one is porn.org? Then what do you do?

[Edited on August 17, 2005 at 7:07 AM. Reason : .]

8/17/2005 7:06:40 AM