Opposition to .XXX TLD

[socal kev <socalkev67@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,
   
      There have been so many excellent letters written in ooposition to this 
idea that I am not totally sure what else to add to the debate. But this is a 
very important issue, so I will add a few thoughts on the matter.
   
      ICAAN is an organiztion controlled through the US Department of Commerce. 
Whether some people approve of it or not, the adult entertainment industry 
produces billions of dollars in revenue for the Federal Goverment and the state 
of California, in particular. It should go without saying that any attempts to 
prevent access by minors or those not wishing to see such content should not 
cause severe financial damage to the industry, and thus to the US itself.
   
      Regardless of the motives or intentions of ICM in this matter, the fact 
is that within days of .XXX being created, Congress will attempt to make it 
mandatory for all US based web sites. This, in turn, will lead to a number of 
lawsuits, as .com, .net, and other TLD owners fight over the .XXX versions of 
their domain names and file suits over lost traffic and sales. In short, the 
inevitable consequences of .XXX coming into being are lawsuits and the 
offshoring of company after company to avoid this - all resulting in large 
losses of revenue to the US government.
   
      And what, exactly, will this accomplish? European webmasters, who face 
much looser content restrictions through their billing companies and do not 
have to obey US law, will flood the market with a swarm of sites, seeking to 
capitalize on the void created by putting so many US companies out of business 
or behind the .XXX wall. For example, not a single US based site can sell 
scatalogical content through a credit card - but German ones can freely.  
   
       And if you think for one minute that people, including children, can't 
find such sites, you are seriously kidding yourselves. The biggest porn sites 
in the world are Google, Yahoo, and MSN - that is probably how 90% of Internet 
surfers find a porn site. And how, exactly, does .XXX stop anyone from finding 
sites that refuse to go along with this scheme through search engines? You 
could shut down every US based site tomorrow and their would still be thousands 
upon thousands of sites - not that anyone on the other side of this debate 
seems to notice this fact.
   
       Simply put, the best possible thing that could happen is a serious 
attempt to create filtering software and technologies that allow age 
appropriate Internet surfing. Just as their should be labels for adult content, 
their should be labeling for kid safe content as well. Without labeling and 
filters, there will never be an answer for overseas sites, file sharing sites, 
etc., no matter what the US Department of Justice might think. 
   
      In short, this proposal will enrich ICM and a number of lawyers, while 
inflicting serious damage to not only the adult webmaster community, but also 
to the revenue of the US Government and to the safety of the US family. However 
bad the situation is now, in anyone's eyes, the US adult entertainment industry 
is pretty strictly controlled by the rules of USA's Visa and Mastercard. Take 
away access to US based sites, and what, exactly, is going to replace them? The 
irony here is that people complain that minors can access pornography too 
easily; since they do not have credit cards, they are usually doing it through 
file sharing sites - while the Justice Department does not seem to target p2p 
sites sharing adult files. If they would enforce the US Copyright laws and shut 
such sites down, there would be even less of a need for .XXX. It just seems 
that too few people making the decisions in Washington know anything about the 
realities of the situations they are dealing
 with. I hope this letter causes some thoughts along those lines in regards to 
the adult website industry in the US and elsewhere, as I am not even discussing 
trying to deal with all the different legal views, from country to country, 
about what should be behind the .XXX wall, and how many countries will try to 
pass mandatory laws on the subject. 

 
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