- Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
- Written By Luke Gilkerson
- Categories: Porn Industry Back to Blog Home
Red-Light District Online: What do you think about the .XXX Domain?
The .XXX domain is one step closer to approval by ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Once approved, .XXX will join the top level of domains, next to .COM and .ORG.
After much heated debate ICANN has voted to begin contract negotiations. Miguel Helft of the New York Times reports,
The company sponsoring the dot-xxx domain, the ICM Registry, said it had a vision of a red-light district in cyberspace that was a clean, well-lighted place, free of spam, viruses and credit card thieves. Content would be clearly labeled as adult and the whole neighborhood would be easy to block. Anyone offended by pornography could simply stay out.
The adult industry is split over the issue. On one hand, many in the industry see the opportunity for greater profits, expecting half-a-million porn domains to register in the next year. On the other hand, other porn providers fear this is just one more step toward censorship and increased regulation. There is concern that soon governments will begin telling porn sites to pack up and leave the .COM world to move to the online “porn ghetto.” Religious groups have also voiced their concerns, believing .XXX is another step towards the legitimization of a pornified culture.
Good Morning,
I tried taking the survey regarding the .XXX domain and it is faulty. I could not put my opinion into the first 7 questions, it only allowed me to use 1 of the choices for all 7 questions…there are only 6 options so I wasn’t allowed to finish the survey. (Does that make sense?) I imagine if there are no responses to the survey, that would be the reason. Let me know if it gets fixed and I will resubmit.
Thanks for all you do! I pray ALL pornography is abolished!
@Cynthia – Just fixed it. Thanks for the heads-up!
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Actually, I am sort of glad that they are doing this, in a way, it will be easier to filter them all out. Just filter everything out that has the .xxx domain name.
@Ryan – Yes, it will very easy to filter the .XXX domain. Of course, not all porn sites will be on the .XXX domain. They aren’t required to be, and the industry anticipates about 90% of them not being on the domain. The task of filtering will still be a challenge.
I’m glad they’re creating a .XXX domain name. But unfortunately porn sites will just register the .XXX in addition to their .com one. Only forcing porn sites to move over to .XXX by a certain date will be the way forwards, but I don’t know if that would work in practice. Who would enforce this, and how would one define what constitutes porn? Would a topless woman be described as porn? What if it was a photo of a topless woman who belonged to a tribe in central Africa?
Just done the survey. Question 3 is a hard one, and I wished there was a “not sure” option. I’d dearly love porn to be illegal and not accessible on the net. But that would just drive it underground- and how on earth would you enforce it?
@Ian – This is a great question. It is not unlike other forms of commercial sex. When parts of the world make prostitution legal, the thought behind it is the preservation of freedoms with greater regulation: you can require licensing, require brothels to give health tests, hopefully protect against abuses, and tax them. And yet wherever prostitution is legalized, illegal prostitution still thrives, physical violence to prostitutes is not prevented, young women are still trafficked. There seem to be many undesirable consequences if it is legal or illegal.
This is a serious legal question. Should the government target and try to remove all “obscenity”? The Supreme court addressed this in Miller v. California. The court defined “obscenity” as: “works which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and which, taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” The problem with this is one of enforcement, especially with the Internet. Using this definition, obscene material is everywhere online and has an almost unlimited number of suppliers.
@ CE – I took the survey. What happens with the results? Will you post them for us to see at some point?
Concerning the article…
I’m kind of in a “whoopdeedoo” mode concerning the .xxx domain. As it’s already been pointed out, this basically means nothing. At least that’s how it feels. Porn is still readily available at every domain you can think of. This is basically a profit grab for the company that is going to sell the domain names. Nothing more. I’d like to know if the company that wants this service has any direct, financial links to pornography producing entities.
Now, the day that porn is kicked out of every domain and placed in .xxx “or else,” that is when we’ll see a difference. Of course, someone has to enforce that level of action. Who does that? You’ve got me, but whoever it is, I say throw every tool and dollar they need to keep the non-.xxx domains clean of porn. Then the question, which has already been posed, of what is porn, has to be answered. The previous post made out like discerning between a topless tribal woman versus a full blow scene of sexual intercourse is really that hard. I don’t think it is.
I can make it really simple, anything (pictures, videos, stories etc) that has to do with singles or couples of any sex engaging in any kind of sexual situation is porn, thus it moves over to the .xxx domain.
So what’s left? Next we have to figure out what to do with sights that sell adult “aids” for sex and all the smut that is on those sites. I say without a better solution, we ship those out to the .xxx domain as well. The only caveat there is if they can run their site without the pornographic advertisements which show women in various stages of undress etc.
What else is left? Next we have sexually stimulating advertising for sites like Victoria’s Secret and sites like amazon.com and others that sell bikinis, lingerie, etc. Can I argue a case to put those in the .xxx domain? Not based on the previous two examples. That said, VS doesn’t have to employ models and the types of pictures they use on their site to sell their products. Simple pictures of the products less the models would work. If they insist on continuing their form of advertisement, I suggest we have a .xxx commerce domain (maybe without the .xxx – but that which can we funnel all these VS and other sites into so that they can be blocked out.)
In regard to this statement:
“Religious groups have also voiced their concerns, believing .XXX is another step towards the legitimization of a pornified culture.”
I’m not sure I get this at all. They can call it legitimizing it if they want. I have news for them. Our culture is pornified and it’s growing more pornified at an exponential rate.
I think they’re missing the whole stinking point. To say that if the .xxx domain is created would make porn legitimate is confusing at best. California made it legitimate when they created a state that is a haven to the porn industry. It’s legal there. So it’s already been legitimized. Thought that doesn’t make it “right.” .XXX won’t add anything to it. Do we all really believe that California is the ONLY state that has pornography being filmed/photographed in it? It’s being filmed everywhere regardless whether its by companies and non-incorporated individuals.
The real issue here is that there is a demand. As long as we have a demand, there will be a supply provided in some form or another.
Lastly, you open a whole new can of worms with the paper forms of porn. How in the world do you police every grocery store and gas station on the planet so porn mags and sports illustrated aren’t left out in the open as they are now?
@J – I agree that the real issue is the demand for porn, not the legal issues or the top-level domains. The supply exists because the demand is there.
You bring up a great list of questions. If the .XXX domain ever became “mandatory” there would be an endless list of practical questions, and I’m not sure anyone has ventured to answer them.
Concerning the folks behind the .XXX domain idea, the ICM Registry, they say they are sponsored by the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR), an organization with a board of directors representing child safety representatives and adult entertainment industry leaders. The IFFOR will be funded by the .XXX domains registered. So yes, IFFOR directly states that they will profit from porn.
In my opinion IFFOR is one more attempt from the adult entertainment industry to show some sort of due diligence to those concerned about illegal forms of pornography (i.e. child porn) and those who desire to filter adult content. The belief is that when the .XXX domain exists, social pressure will entice porn producers to move their domains to this online space and thus show themselves to be concerned citizens.
As for the religious groups opposing it, these include the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Women for Decency, Utah Coalition Against Pornography, and PornHarms.com. Most of these groups believe that the whole venture is a step in the wrong direction, that what we need is the removal of pornography, not another safe online place for it to thrive. If .XXX is created, this can become powerful leverage in the courts in the adult industry’s favor.
I think that the .xxx domain is a great idea. In fact, I think that all porn sites and sites with pornographic nudity should be forced to use such a domain. I think it would make it much easier to filter and monitor. I also think that it would be much less likely for children to accidentally stumble upon it.
It’s a fine line to walk. As a Christian and a former porn addict, I think that porn is deplorable and sinful. I also think that it’s harmful to people and that they shouldn’t use it. However, as a strict constitutionalist, I don’t think it should be illegal. The first amendment gives people the right to free speech and free expression. As long as your expression doesn’t violate someone else physically and falls within the boundaries of the law, I don’t think it should be outlawed. God gave us free will to choose for ourselves. I am outraged by Fred Phelps and those Westboro Baptist Church clowns who protest the deaths of American soldiers and everything else they do. I think it’s disgusting. But, I agree that they have every right to do what they do.
That being said, we need to do everything we can to protect ourselves and our children from the grips of porn.
@Luke,
Well, that sure would be nice to completely have porn wiped off the face of the earth. Have these groups proposed some plan as to how they will make this happen? I’m all for it. I think realistically they know that porn being completely eliminated from the web or elsewhere has about a snow balls chance. It’s simply not going to happen. I guess I’ll end it with, its a nice idea, but I won’t hold my breath.
@J – I’m with you. They probably wouldn’t target all pornography, just some forms of it would be more cut-and-dry cases of obscenity. The lines are so blurred today. One person’s obscenity is another person’s preference.
Stewart Lawley is nothing but a parasite. He doesn’t care about the children or protecting them from porn. He doesn’t care if this leads to censorship, because he has nothing to do with the adult industry. The only think he cares about is MONEY. He is driven by nothing but pure, selfish greed.
OK , so yea the .xxx domain is great and as all of you have stated, not all pornography sites will move to the .xxx domain. I am really good at noticing trends and here is what I conclude will happen…. as sites move to the .xxx domain, the original pornography sites on the .com domain will increase in value due its historical and rarity of having a pornography website on a .com domain. infact, it will be easier to trick someone into going into a .com domain for porngraphy than it is for .xxx domain. Prices will be cheap for a .xxx domain but because of the overwelming availability of the .xxx domain , i can see pornography producers heading back to the .com domain… Its the principle of supply and demand… the fewer the domains, the more people want…. if u have too much of the .xxx domains then its of little or no value…
Since I no longer look at pornography anymore it really, is not going to affect me, but like u said it will effect our future generation!