Once again, I stole this clever blog post title from another site - found here: http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/18/icann-has-xxx-domain-names-yes/. Being an avid Icanhazcheeseburger follower, I thought it was perfect. It also happens to relate to my paper for this class.
Last Month, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved a new Internet domain name for the world's adult websites. These websites will have to be registered through the ICM registry with a .xxx domain name at $60/piece.
One of the most interesting things about the debate is that a lot of the opposition to the .xxx suffix has come from anti porn and Christian groups, because they think that a .xxx suffix will draw more attention to the porn industry and become an endorsement. On the other hand, supporters of the suffix say that it will make it easier for the government to track adult sites and enable parents to block them from their children.
It seems strange that Christian groups would be against this, seems like they should realize they are not going to have the information removed from the internet by now and that the best alternative would be to make it easily identifiable. Also, I don’t know much about how filtering devices (parental controls) work but it seems to me uniform domain names would make the software easier to develop and more reliable as well. Anti-porn groups should be on board with this.
ReplyDeleteI actually wrote my paper on this topic and it is quite interesting. In my paper, I wrote that legislation requiring prospective adult content provides to register in the dot-xxx domain would be a good idea to create a distinct zone of adult content.
ReplyDeleteThe main concern here is whether or not the first amendment rights of content providers, and thsoe seeking adult content, will be infringed upon. India has already blocked the domain, with many other countries to follow. Regulating adult content would likely be easier if all sites were segmented into one part of the internet.