opposition to .xxx

[<sarah@xxxxxxxxxx>]

It feels a bit odd that I am having to essentially write this twice.  I
wrote in opposition to .xxx last year and my feelings have not changed.

I am a fairly successful adult webmaster that runs a clean ship and
never promotes anything in a way to attract underage surfers (as is the
case of the vast majority of adult webmaters).  I own somewhere around
40 .com domains and the majority have adult content on them.  I feeel
that .xxx is clearly being pushed for monetary gain of a few individuals
rather than for the actual protection of children.

Anybody that wanted to protect kids would look at creating a kids
friendly area such as .kid rather than trying to create a red light
district that does nothing to prevent kids from seeing adult material.
For starters, making it so that all anyone has to do is type in a word
followed .xxx will make porn EASIER to find than it is at the moment.
Secondly, what material is going to classify as "adult enough" to have
to be on .xxx ?  If somebody is running a sex education site that talks
in frank detail and perhaps uses photos will they be required to have a
.xxx ? If they have to .xxx you have just denied anybody whose isp
decides to block .xxx domains from obtaining that information.  If such
information isn't required to be on a .xxx domain then you have just
destroyed the whole 'purpose' of .xxx by keeping adult material out
there to be found by a child.

However, if .kid was accepted instead it would allow parents to use
their own filtering system to only allow .kid sites and it would be much
easier to police as it would be clear what didn't belong on a .kid.

I also foresee the debate of what needs to be on a .xxx becoming highly
political  and lets imagine that it comes down to local law in the not
too distant future.  It isn't that difficult to imagine more
conservative local local governments requiring any site addressing any
homosexual issues to be on a .xxx - even if not porn.  Then you create
an online environment rife with censorship based on prejudice. Not only
that but prejudice that requires the victims to pay an extreme premium
on the price of the domain they need to purchase to be in the .xxx
ghetto.

The issue of the huge financial loss for those who have bought hundreds
of domains having to move to .xxx is also worth noting.  This may be the
adult industry but it is a LEGAL industry.  There are many businesses
and individuals that have spent a decade building brand names through
their domains.  Suddenly we all have to take part in a domain rush?  Is
it really fair for those people to lose their domain names and hard
work?  That isn't even to mention the nightmare if somebody owned the
.com and another person owned the .net.

The introduction of .xxx will launch thousands of lawsuits, the loss of
many people's hard and LEGALLY earned livelihoods, make porn actually
easier to find, create doorways for discrimination and to top it all off
not protect kids at all by trying to put a genie back into a very open
bottle.  If anything is to be done adopt .kid.


Thank you,
Sarah Jayne Anderson