ICANN votes down .XXX again

Author: Brett Thomas
Published: 3rd April 2007
Comments (8) Stumble
ICANN votes down .XXX again

"1, 2, 3, 4....Red light!" - It's all fun and games til someone loses a domain.

We've heard arguments for and against the .XXX domain on the internet for over two years now. Much like conversation on the industry itself, the debate has quickly boiled outside of whether or not the domain would be of any benefit and into one of national freedoms, religious beliefs, and personal morality. Well, ICANN has put the debate to rest again - it has voted down the domain for a second time.

For anyone who's been hiding under a rock, the suggestion was to move "adult-oriented" sites onto their own domain (dubbed .xxx), rather than more common .com and .net domains. The basic idea was to twofold -- to help make porn easier to identify, and to help block it more easily. This meant that people who wanted to see it could find it more easily, and those who wanted to avoid it would have a much easier time doing so.

Of course, the basic idea was fraught with unknowns. For instance, there was nothing to keep porn off of the other domains, it would just make real-estate that was for nothing else but. To many people, this issue made .xxx seem more like an increase in porn, rather than any form of control.

ICANN rejected the domain over this exact debate - who would control the content? The body felt that by adopting the domain, it could be looked to for definitions of what should fill it - and potentially what would happen to those who chose to remain on other domains. Vint Cerf, Chairman of ICANN, denied that the organisation bowed to governmental pressure, as it has been accused of in the past. "Their decisions were made in accordance with their own consideration," he said.

The accusation that ICANN could be seen as bending to pressure of governments like that of the United States hasn't been lost on the organisation. It commissioned an independent study of the body to determine its true transparency and independence in decision-making, the results of which were also discussed in the meeting. The study found that ICANN was a very well run organisation, and had little issues in the way of transparency. Those issues that it did find were more 'pointers' for better methods in the future, and the body will be adopting several of them.

Do you have a thought on the demise of the .XXX domain? How about ICANN as a whole? Tell us your thoughts in our forums.
Quote samkiller42 3rd April 2007, 09:06
Well, they could impose on such adult site that if they dont move to the new domain, then they will get a penelty fine, and if they dont, then theres no fine.
It would help people who want to block such sites, as you could block all sites with the domain .xxx meaning all other sites would be viewable except .xxx sites.

Sam
Quote gpw111 3rd April 2007, 09:31
you still need to decide on what classes as porn tho. some sites arnt really porn sites even tho there mayb some nudity. if any nudity was classed as porn then you'd get some outraged "artists", who specialise in pictures of the human body, being classed as porn. i think its probably best not to have a dedicated domain imo
Quote JADS 3rd April 2007, 10:39
Quote:
Originally Posted by gpw111
you still need to decide on what classes as porn tho.

For some of the more devout religions 99.9999999% of the internet would have to be moved over to .xxx domains ;) www.cottontraders.xxx anyone?
Quote Woodstock 3rd April 2007, 11:13
Quote:
Originally Posted by JADS
For some of the more devout religions 99.9999999% of the internet would have to be moved over to .xxx domains ;) www.cottontraders.xxx anyone?

lol sounds kinky
i think this should go through its just to easy for little kids to find porn and theres some damm nasty stuff out there, enough for me to stick to magazines
Quote Aankhen 3rd April 2007, 23:13
I'm glad they stuck to their guns. A .xxx TLD would simply increase porn rather than contain it.
Quote NaThRo 4th April 2007, 02:58
I think it would work, as long as there was some kind of incentive for the sites to move over. Like, same running costs as a .com or .net is now, but increase the price these sites would have to pay for a .com or .net (by a couple of hundred times :p hehe).

Though what people are saying about clasification of sites is right... it would be hard to do.
Quote Javerh 4th April 2007, 05:29
I can't understand how a shift to .xxx would increase porn. Will it sprout new porn-businesses? In real life a similar thing would be if all porn shops would paint their signs in pink. Would that increase the number of the places or just make it seem like so because you can now notice them?
Quote Aankhen 4th April 2007, 10:59
Quote:
Originally Posted by Javerh
I can't understand how a shift to .xxx would increase porn.
It's fairly simple. They just register a .xxx domain in addition to their existing .com, .net, etc. domains.
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