.xxx

The ICANN is looking, once again, at reviving the proposed .XXX domain for adult websites - pornographic websites, specifically. The idea was first introduced in 2001, accepted in 2005, then derailed by dipshit conservative groups who never make any sense, whatsoever, anyway. These are the very people who should be backing such an idea but, as with everything, are far too stupid to know why. So let me explain:

It is incredibly easy to set Parental Controls to exclude an entire range of domains - far easier than it is to restrict access to hundreds, even thousands, of them individually. By forcing pornographic sites to adopt the .xxx domain, parents and public access points could literally exclude all porn sites simply by restricting access to all sites hosted on .xxx domains. But this is just one aspect.

As a 35-year old bachelor without children, I'm not concerned with restricting access to porn sites on my workstations, but I would like a more effective way of excluding porn-related sites from my web searches and spam filters. Through the clever, yet extremely simple, use of restrictions in my browser and e-mail software, I could eliminate at least some of the spam I - and everyone else - encounter regularly. Again, just one more practical aspect of this issue.

This is not "censorship;" this is literally nothing more than categorization - an improvement to the underlying navigational system of the Web, which is already corroded. People no longer comply with the domain system as it is, and we've no reason to assume pornographers would comply with the .xxx domain registration guidelines, but it is a step in the right direction. Of course people looking to subvert it will find ways around it, but that's what people like that do; to say it's futile because "anyone who really wants to find a way around it will" is exactly like saying, "rape might as well be legal, because rapists still exist," or "there's no sense outlawing murder." Granted, the stakes are nowhere near as high, but the comparison remains valid.

I fully support the .xxx domain regulation, as well as tightening regulations on the existing domain structure, and have since the idea first started being discussed in the late 1990s.

© C Harris Lynn, 2010