Internet pornography to get its own red light district as .xxx name approved | Technology | The Guardian

Quote:

The internet could soon have its own red light district after the ".xxx" suffix was approved – though pornography companies are not keen to use it. Icann, the organisation which determines what "top-level domains" (TLDs) such as .com or .uk can be added to the internet announced today that it will begin the process of registering .xxx by making checks on ICM Registry, the company that wants to run the domain and sell registrations. It marks the closing stages of a 10-year battle by ICM Registry, now run by the British internet entrepreneur Stuart Lawley, to get the .xxx domain set up so that legal pornography sites can be found in a single grouping. Yet pornography is already plentiful online. One of the most valuable domains in the early days was sex.com, which was the object of a bitter battle in which rivals battled it out to own what was seen as a honeypot for surfers. In 2007 porn.com was sold for $12m. But many pornography companies are unhappy with the idea of a dedicated space online because they expect that as soon as .xxx is implemented, conservative members of the US Congress will lobby to make any sex-related website re-register there and remove itself from other domains such as .com or .org. That would mean that sex sites could be more easily filtered out from web searches, and lower their revenues. Free speech advocates also worry that sites about topics seen by US conservatives as controversial, such as homosexuality, might also be forced to use the .xxx suffix. Icann acknowledged it had made mistakes in reversing its decision to accept ICM Registry's proposal three years ago under pressure from the Bush administration. Icann also said the proposal had been rejected because it lacked the backing of the pornography industry. Lawley, who insists that child pornography will be banned in the domain space, thought the new address could easily attract at least 500,000 sites making it after ".mobi" the second biggest top-level domain name with a specific sponsor registrar. The .mobi TLD, set up in 2005, was sponsored by a range of companies, including Google and Nokia, to create sites for browsing with mobile phones. But where the .mobi TLD had commercial sponsors, the .xxx domain is notable for only having ICM Registry, which stands to benefit from every domain name it sells. Lawley says he expects to make $30m (£20m) a year in revenue by selling each .xxx site for $60, and pledges to donate $10 from each sale to child protection initiatives.

__________________
Standard disclaimer: the disgusting statements contained in this post are the views of the poster, and unless specified do not represent the views of the moderators or the site's owners.

Dumb. What are they thinking? Makes as much sense as requiring all Christian church and lobbying sites (and perhaps Jewish and Muslim as well) to register under the high level suffix .GOD

Originally Posted by roadkill

Dumb. What are they thinking? Makes as much sense as requiring all Christian church and lobbying sites (and perhaps Jewish and Muslim as well) to register under the high level suffix .GOD

I'm surprised you would object to that.....certainly would be easier for you to filter out inadvertent exposure to religious beliefs.....

I have always been confused as to how any one makes money off internet porn......it would seem to me there's enough free stuff out there to sate anyone's lusts.....

__________________
....attached to sanity by a bungee cord.....

Quote:

I'm surprised you would object to that.....certainly would be easier for you to filter out inadvertent exposure to religious beliefs.....

I don't object. People can have really dumb ideas if they want to so long as they do not inflict them on me. What makes you think that Abrahamic religious sites would want to sign up to a .GOD suffix if they though that people like me would use it as a blanket method of filtering them out? They want to persuade the ungodly to trade an eternity in Hell for heavenly reward.

Jewish sites might as they are not generally great proselytisers, but Muslim and evangelical Christians? Fugeddaboutit.

well it's obvious a Jewish site wouldn't sign up for a .God site.....maybe a .G_d one though.....as for evangelicals, we could always frequent message boards......

__________________
....attached to sanity by a bungee cord.....

But I thought that was what they already did. I don't need a .GOD domain to keep them out of my hair. Google finds 64,800 results and I have no need to consult any of them.

lol...I was referring to myself, here....

__________________
....attached to sanity by a bungee cord.....

Quote:

lol...I was referring to myself, here....

As Google confirms

So long as you stay there and I stay here, the .GOD domain suffix is as irrelevant as the .XXX one to either of us.

Originally Posted by roadkill

So long as you stay there and I stay here, the .GOD domain suffix is as irrelevant as the .XXX one to either of us.

you are so strangely inconsistent....you were the one that posted...

Quote:

if they though that people like me would use it as a blanket method of filtering them out

I was the one arguing against it being effective........why are you now trying to counter my argument by saying it's irrelevant.....

__________________
....attached to sanity by a bungee cord.....

Quote:

I was the one arguing against it being effective........why are you now trying to counter my argument by saying it's irrelevant.....

Because it is.

Quote:

I have always been confused as to how any one makes money off internet porn.

I don't make money off internet porn and have no desire to but the fact that you do not understand how it happens fails to disprove that it happens.

Tony Bradley at PC World has some helpful observations:

Dot-XXX Domain Won't Clean Up the Web

ICANN has approved XXX as a top-level domain. The adult entertainment industry will soon have its own glaringly obvious domain, but unfortunately that doesn't necessarily mean that dot-COM domains will suddenly be porn-free.

From a security (or parenting) perspective, it would be nice. While there are certainly legitimate Web sites offering adult entertainment sans malware, it doesn't take more than a click or two to enter the dark and shady side of the Web--where malware of all sorts lies in waiting to infiltrate and compromise unsuspecting seekers of porn.

It couldn't get much easier to block employee (or child) access to inappropriate adult material than simply banning all access to the XXX domain. As a matter of fact, once the XXX domain is up and running it seems fair to assume that IT administrators and parents (or consumer security vendors) will do just that. It's a no-brainer.

However, porn sites will be like dolphins. All dolphins are whales, but not all whales are dolphins. Dolphins are a subset of the larger whale family. Similarly, all XXX sites will be porn, but not all porn sites will be XXX. Many porn sites have a long and established presence as a dot-COM domain and will not simply abandon that.

As it is, many adult Web sites have multiple domains that redirect. Both Playboy and Penthouse own their respective dot-NET domains as well, but if you try to visit them you will be automatically redirected to the primary site at playboy.com or penthouse.com. Adult sites will simply purchase the XXX domain equivalent and redirect it accordingly.

What is more likely to happen than dot-COM getting cleaner, is that more respectable businesses will be forced to purchase the dot-XXX equivalent of their primary domain simply to ensure it isn't purchase by a purveyor of porn. For example, Disney certainly doesn't want customers to visit disney.xxx, but it also doesn't want disney.xxx to be purchased by a shady adult site. So, Disney will purchase the disney.xxx domain and redirect it to disney.com just as it has done with disney.net and disney.org and many other domains that are even remotely similar to the Disney name. Disney wants to ensure that you get to Disney.com no matter what you enter in your Web browser. [...]

So there you have the reality: it's a money-making scam for internet domain registrars.

Even christiansciencemonitor.com will be forced to purchase christiansciencemonitor.xxx and csmonitor.xxx to prevent pornographers from posting revolting imagery that they claim was inspired by wanking while lusting over the corpse of Mary Baker Eddy.