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Web Nuggets: The .xxx Domain: does the Internet need a red light district?

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  1.  (8506.1)
    The title of this thread is partially taken from this interesting article, which initially discusses Steve Jobs' anti-porn stance and moves on to the recently-approved idea of creating a .xxx domain for porn websites and the effect the availability of porn on the web will cause on this and future generations, something which can't yet be measured.

    The .xxx idea, a red light district for the web, seems to me like a gold mine for Stuart Lawley (the entrepreneur who owns the rights to it) and useful for little else. He believes the "superior service" of .xxx will result in most porn websites migrating to the domain, but obviously porn will not disappear everywhere else. This kind of defeats the point of all this, which allegedly is "let's protect the children".

    The idea of filtering porn completely from children is impossible, and also useless. Before a certain age they have no interest in sex, and after that it's only natural, and to prevent issues such as teen pregnancy is primarily the parents' responsibility. With the rapidly growing quantity of information available in our society as time passes and technology advances, exposure to certain things are becoming inevitable.

    "Filtering" never seems to be a good way of dealing with that, it's like trying to stop a leaking dam by sticking your thumb in a hole the size of a car. It reminds me of the failed attempt by the music industry to stop illegal downloaders, and how it was a far better idea to adapt to the new digital status quo. All this .xxx domain seems to be is a premium service who will get some people very fucking rich, not the answer to child exposure to pornography.

    So I pose the questions: do you think we should be doing our best to keep our children unaware of pornography until a certain age (despite the internet, their friends, TV and pretty much everything else ensuring our failure) or should we adapt and talk to them about it earlier, now that the Internet has made it a thousand times easier for children to come across pornography? Is this .xxx idea anything but a goldmine for Lawley? What effects do you think this earlier exposure to porn could cause on children?

    (also: considering my previous thread shared a similar theme, I'm starting to think I'm a bit of a pervert)
    •  
      CommentAuthorjohnjones
    • CommentTimeJul 2nd 2010
     (8506.2)
    I think you have to adapt to the world in which you and your children live. When my parents were children, nobody told them about "Stranger Danger" and the like. When I was a kid (circa 1975-1985) I recall counselors, teachers and police officers lecturing me and my classmates about taking candy from strangers, getting in cars, etc. There weren't any serial killers operating in the areas that I lived in, but it was part of the world I lived in so I was taught about it.

    People drink alcohol. People smoke cigarettes. Those things are also not for children. Treat porn the same way.

    Or just give the kid a 24 hour marathon of Goatse and Two Girls, One Cup. He'll never want to have sex. With anyone. Ever.
  3.  (8506.3)
    The DARPA scientists that developed the internet traded porn. That's how ingrained porn is on the net, since it's inception, people have been using it to watch other people fuck. With that in mind, I'm pretty surprised we didn't have a .xxx domain before this and to think that people like Steve Jobs are trying to limit it isn't just funny, it's kind of tragic. Exposing children to hardcore sex and explaining the difference between that and real life isn't exactly my idea of great parenting either but I'm not entirely sure that there's really another option right now?

    @andre navarro, saying that you might be a "Bit" of a pervert is really making a "Bit" of and understatement.
  4.  (8506.4)
    Or just give the kid a 24 hour marathon of Goatse and Two Girls, One Cup. He'll never want to have sex. With anyone. Ever.


    Hahahahaha

    With that in mind, I'm pretty surprised we didn't have a .xxx domain before this and to think that people like Steve Jobs are trying to limit it isn't just funny, it's kind of tragic.


    I know Jobs is a bit of a control freak, but this seems incredibly bull-headed of him. No adult apps (except, of course, Playboy's), but there's a perfectly good browser on the iPhone. Might as well have the goddamn porn apps anyway.

    @andre navarro, saying that you might be a "Bit" of a pervert is really making a "Bit" of and understatement.


    Which coming from you is a "bit" rich.
    • CommentAuthorZJVavrek
    • CommentTimeJul 3rd 2010
     (8506.5)
    I've always liked the idea of an .xxx TLD. It gives me the feeling, unsure if it's accurate, that it'll make finding porn on the internet easier. Want porn? Go to http://www.[fetishname].xxx. Bam, porn. This concept appeals to me.
  6.  (8506.6)
    I know Jobs is a bit of a control freak, but this seems incredibly bull-headed of him. No adult apps (except, of course, Playboy's), but there's a perfectly good browser on the iPhone.

    It’s not a Jobs thing, it’s a Disney thing. Disney does everything it can to avoid even tenuous connections to porn. One reason Blu-Ray porn took years was because Disney would not allow its films to be pressed to disc at a factory that also presses porn discs. If Jobs allows real porn apps (and really, Playboy hardly counts as porn in this era) on the app store he’s liable to lose Disney movies on the iTunes store.
    • CommentAuthorgzapata
    • CommentTimeJul 3rd 2010
     (8506.7)
    I think parent's have to face the fact that kids simply can't be shielded from things anymore. I don't know about other first world nations but in the US, I've always thought it stupid to make sex out to be such a heinous disgusting thing. Something not to be spoken of and when it is, only think of it as something barbaric. I don't think I ever really didn't know what sex was. It was always spoken of to me as something human and natural that should be done responsibly with someone I care about. My family is pretty liberal though on top of the fact that Colombia(where my family is from) seems to be pretty sexually open country. Or maybe that just every country other than the US is a more sexually open country(not counting the religious ones).

    Whatever filters they come up with, be sure to know that your kids will crack it. The next generation seems to now be one step ahead of the previous in terms of technology and once a certain age is hit, be sure to believe that knowledge will be used to quench their sex drives.
  8.  (8506.8)
    Disney does everything it can to avoid even tenuous connections to porn.


    Excepting Hannah Montana...
  9.  (8506.9)
    .xxx won't really do anything, other than give easier access and direction towards porn. Kids will know from an early age that it's the "red light district" and inevitably be drawn to it as puberty nears (or have friends earlier on who are in the know about the best free porn sites... I was actually that guy in my group of friends, oops).

    Internet porn is unavoidable as far as adolescence is concerned. If a kid wants to view porn, it's there. Viewing internet porn nowadays is the next step up from sneaking a peek at a parent's spank mags with your mates gathered around like so many did before the advent of the internet.
  10.  (8506.10)
    .xxx won't really do anything, other than give easier access and direction towards porn.

    That’s not entirely true. It’s going to be a boon for right-wing extremist politicians. As soon as .XXX goes live we’ll see right-wing extremist politicians around the world starting fights to force all porn sites (with no legal definition of porn, naturally) to .XXX and/or ban access to .XXX entirely.

    Here in the states this will lead to the same little victories the GOP had under Clinton when they got the Democrats to cave to their social agenda, and Obama is opportunistic enough to sign off on these laws just like Clinton did. Then the whole thing gets tossed to the courts, who will probably just side with the Supreme Court’s precedent on these issues, and it goes all the way up so that the Roberts Court can take it and vote it down 5-4 on ideological lines. Then we’ll have another round of anti-judicial extremism from the right. So for American Republicans .XXX is probably going to be worth tens of millions of dollars in fund-raising over three to five years.
  11.  (8506.11)
    i'm not sure it'll do much. I don't see some of the bigger sites willing to hurt their bottom-line by losing viewers who can't find the right URL. If there is a change, I don't imagine we'll see it for several years at least.
  12.  (8506.12)
    When was the last time you visited a .coop domain? How about .jobs? .aero? Hell, even .name is a wasteland. There's just no market for top-level-domains that aren't the Big Three of .com/.org/.net, because the average internet user only thinks in those three domains. Nothing else "looks like" an internet address.
  13.  (8506.13)
    In addressing this topic, we must remember that according to @Andre Navarro, Everyone Has A Penis. Everyone.
  14.  (8506.14)
    @David-- Oh, they'd warm up to .XXX pretty quickly.

    IIRC, the first time the .XXX suffix was defeated, it was by the anti-porn crusaders who were rabbling about kids having access. The triple-X domain was proposed as a solution to their concerns, and a good one, an easy way to instantly block most sites that would feature content kids shouldn't see. Of course, this wasn't acceptable to them, because their problem was the existence of the porn itself, and "Protect the children!" was just a stalking horse.
    •  
      CommentAuthorJohn Skylar
    • CommentTimeJul 3rd 2010 edited
     (8506.15)
    Isn't it just yet another URL for porn sites to sit on in addition to .coms and .nets? When the US outlaws that, they'll spin their non-.xxx divisions off to foreign countries. Big deal.

    I mean, what percentage of .coms are actually commercial operations rather than just captainnarcissism.com? [Someone please make captainnarcissism a comic, please] Better yet, how many .orgs are actually legitimate nonprofits

    What level of enforcement is there? Like, can Mr. Ellis go an register FreakAngels.xxx and mirror it to the .com and have it not be porn at all? How about humourousphotosofcatsandbunnies.xxx?

    I think this "porn ghetto" exists to help the "protect our children" PACs point to something that justifies their attempts to censor the uncensorable network.

    Reading up above, can someone maybe register disney.xxx and stevejobs.xxx? All right, I'm way too giddy about this. I'll stop now.
    • CommentAuthorFan
    • CommentTimeJul 4th 2010
     (8506.16)
    > There's just no market for top-level-domains that aren't the Big Three of .com/.org/.net, because the average internet user only thinks in those three domains

    The national domains are used: .ca, .co.uk, .fr, etc.
    •  
      CommentAuthorCharlene
    • CommentTimeJul 4th 2010
     (8506.17)
    @John Skylar - why would someone want to register non-porn sites as .xxx? that seems like a pretty weak argument against having them.
  18.  (8506.18)
    @Charlene To have more potential avenues for traffic to your actual site, or to prevent people from using your brand as a pornographic web site, or any number of reasons. Maybe you just want to poach domain names, or it's funny.

    The main problem is that it goes both ways; you can register a .com porn site or a .xxx travel site and there's zero enforcement. What's the point in a thing that doesn't work because it's not enforced? I was pointing out how absurd it is to make this announcement when the Internet's already built itself around a totally different system. People misuse every single top-level extension that exists (.tv is the best; how many .tv sites are actually services in the Tuvalu islands?), and I feel that .xxx won't be any different.
  19.  (8506.19)
    Is it just a sneaky way to make people pay money for porn again? I cry sometimes thinking about the amount of money I spent on porn before there was The Internet!
    • CommentAuthorSBarrett
    • CommentTimeJul 4th 2010
     (8506.20)
    People used to have to spend money on porn!?

    My gods! What bleak and desolate times they must have been! ;)

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