Monday, July 5, 2010

Internet.xxx

After about a thousand years of debate, the internet now has .xxx, a top-level domain just for porn.  It was approved this week by the people who approve such things.  The main point of this is so that parental filters and whatnot can more effectively and efficiently weed out the kinds of porny things little eyeballs shouldn't see.

Mr. Coffee failed in it's parental filter attempts in the 90s



When I first heard the news, I thought it was pretty great.  I'm all for net neutrality, but porn and children simply do not mix well, in any permutation, and it is really, really easy for any computer-savvy kid (which most kids are, at least here in the States) to stumble upon some pretty lewd stuff out there.  I've thought for years that porn should have a dedicated domain, and was delighted to hear that people were finally paying attention to my sage wisdom.

My wisdom also says the whole world should be sparkly like this floor

Well, they should have listened to my sage wisdom earlier.  NaughtyWorks, a commenter on Gizmodo that runs an online adult website business pointed out that only NEW porn sites will be looking to get .xxx domains:  all the established sites will just use the .xxx sites as redirects to their .com sites.  He argues that adult websites have put too much time and money into advertising their .com domains to just abandon them.  He also pointed out that:
"Creating a ghetto for adult content will not keep it out of the hands of kids. It will generate a lot of cash for the lawyers who will find reasons to litigate complaints from both sides. And it will create a boatload of cash for the company selling the new domain names. but thats about it."
An excellent point, that.  What do you guys think?  Is it about time, or too late for .xxx? 

2 comments:

  1. There is also certain self-interest when this person says that it will only be used for new sites. If all porn were required to move to .xxx; the .com names would be the redirect, and the parental controls would block the redirect. Their advertising dollars would still bring the same traffic.

    It is true that it will make money for the people who are selling domain name registration, but big deal, all progress costs money. And if we don't consider proper regulation to be progress, there are going to be companies who take a lot more than your $10 domain registration fee from you.

    The problem I see here, and it's a big one, is how to define "sexually explicit" or "porn" - and this is where the attorneys get rich. (If you have a problem with attorneys getting rich, your problem is with tort reform, not .xxx - fight the right battle for your cause) Where do we draw the line? Real people having sex? naked people at all? cartoons/drawings? the instructions for massengill? And what about medical pages?

    There are some issues with .xxx - but they are not as big or problematic as Gizmodo posters might like you to think.

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  2. Actually, simpler laws would reduce the need for so many expensive attorneys. Attorneys are only rich because people are willing to pay them.

    As for tort reform, it has more to do with insurance companies than with attorneys. Insurance companies are now litigation machines which commonly underpay legitimate claims and then intimidate lawyers and their clients. They have been pushing for tort reform so that they can underpay and litigate more claims without facing any financial risk.

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