So , the ICANN Board has decided to move along with the giving porn sites their own top tier domain. While its created quite a stir in the adult community with concerns about censorship and price gouging the people that are really going to be screwed is everyone else.
You see the .xxx domain isn’t going to do much, its not going to magically clean up the internet and its not going to make porn harder for children to find. If your kid has access to any search engine with an image search they can find all the porn they want. So what will the .xxx domain do? It’s going to make everyone with a commercial business , organization or well known site have to now purchase a .xxx domain.
Why?
Whitehouse.xxx , Disney.xxx , Yahoo.xxx , PETA.xxx , Google.xxx, Girlscouts.xxx, Do you really think that these companies or groups want those sites to be chock full of porn? Hell no! so they’re going to have to buy those domains and redirect them to their main sites. Now if the prices for .xxx is jacked up that means they’ll be paying more to keep porn from being associated with their name than running their main sites. As for cleaning up the web, it will be pretty long road to fight for ALL pornographic sites to have to switch to a .xxx domain.
The internet while not the wild west it was before its still somewhat international waters. I can choose any country in the world to host my site. If the US tells porn sites they have to go .xxx there’s over 200 countries adult sites can choose to host their sites as .com. Prostitution is illegal in the US yet there are thousands of escort malls online that won’t be getting shut down anytime soon. How do they get away with it? They’re hosted in countries where it’s legal to be an escort.
There’s few laws enforcing proper usage of domains, An American can own and operate fuck.me , hundreds of organizations host their sites on .com. Networks for non profit sites are using the .org but also .net. How many American run sites to you see using .us? Not many.
.XXX will not make a magical internet red light district as I’m sure many .xxx sites won’t be adult and many adult sites that have been long established as .com won’t be in a rush to redesign just for a change in name. So in light of all this it seems that the .xxx domain won’t really serve any purpose except to take people’s money.
That's not to mention the fact that, oh, teenagers hitting puberty have always been using the nudes in National Geographic, lingerie catalogs, classical paintings, graphic graffiti in bathroom stalls, drawings made from their own goddamned imaginations, and every copy of Kate Winslet's gorgeous body from the PG-13-rated Titanic for their own, shall we say, “exploration”. This .xxx thing is just a band-aid to make squeamish parents feel better in the delusion that their kids are innocent little angels and will stay that way.
Well said, N'jaila.