An Alternative to .XXX: IANA Adult Port Assignments

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

An Alternative to .XXX: IANA Adult Port Assignments
---------------------------------------------------

As an alternative to the creation of the .XXX TLD, ICANN/IANA can
assign special port numbers that can be used to label adult content.

Preliminaries
-------------

IANA assigns port numbers as part of its duties. For example, port 80
is reserved for the HTTP protocol (i.e. the World Wide Web). Port 443
is reserved for the HTTPS protocol (SSL-secure version of HTTP). Port
23 is for Telnet, port 25 is for SMTP, and so on. One can see the full
list at

http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

One can theoretically run protocols over any port (e.g. you can have a
web server on port 25 or port 18666 -- http://localhost:18666/ could
access a webserver running locally on port 18666). In a real sense, the
IANA port assignments are just suggestions to the world as to what to
expect on certain ports, whether it be a mail server, WHOIS, FTP, POP
email or any other service/protocol.

.XXX Proposal
-------------
Ultimately, the .XXX proposal comes down to the use of a
top-level-domain (TLD) string as a label mechanism. It creates an
expectation that if one goes to the domain example.xxx, it will
probably have adult content.

The .XXX proposal has been very controversial, as one can see from the
public comments at:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-icm-agreement/ .

One of the major criticisms is the name allocation mechanism. There can
only be one sex.xxx or porn.xxx, for example. Should that domain be
allocated to the current registrant of sex.com? What about the
registrant of sex.ca or sex.co.uk or sex.net or sex.de or other
existing TLDs? Allocation mechanisms such as auctions or RFPs or
"priority to oldest existing registered domain" and other systems have
been discussed, but none that will make everyone happy.

In addition, there has been a great concern that trademark holders or
existing registrants will need to make defensive registrations, in
order to prevent their comparable domains to be registered in the .XXX
space. For example, IBM might never want to get into the adult content
business, but will likely be compelled to register IBM.XXX.
Mercedes-Benz owns Mercedes.com, and likely will not want to see adult
content at Mercedes.XXX via a webcam girl whose first name happens to
be "Mercedes." A non-trademark holder (e.g. an individual John Smith)
might feel compelled to register JohnSmith.XXX to ensure that someone
else doesn't register it and use it inappropriately. Some have argued
that new TLDs are almost guaranteed a profit because of the vast number
of defensive registrations that are made in sunrise periods, usually at
premium prices relative to general registrations, in order to prevent
cybersquatting.

There are also concerns that registrants will need to pay $60/year or
more to a new registry, which is considerably higher than their
existing domains, and that this represents a "tax" on their business,
increasing their costs for the benefit of a for-profit registry
operator.

Suppose .XXX was rejected. Does an alternative mechanism exist to label
content? There already exist mechanisms such as ICRA labels, for
instance. They can be used with any TLD, and don't require a new TLD.
Indeed, the use of .XXX is really a very simple form of a label, in
that a domain using it is allowing a "binary choice" form of filtering,
either something is in .XXX, or not in .XXX (i.e. "on/off"). Others
have counterproposed .KIDS, as a white-listed TLD, instead.

Use of Port Numbers As a Label
------------------------------
Another alternative would be for ICANN/IANA to assign, reserve and
register port numbers specifically for adult-related content. As an
example, port 18666 is currently unreserved/unassigned, and can thus be
used as a label to the world to expect adult content to be on that
port. Ports 18001 through 18180 are also unreserved/unassigned at
present. [Age 18 is typically the age at which one is considered an
"adult", thus motivating those particular numeric choices; the "666" is
there for those who recall the April Fool's Joke about the "Evil Bit", 
i.e. RFC 3514, see 

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/04/01/133217.shtml

so, one can in a way consider this the "Evil Port", if one has a sense
of humour, although there is no technical reason why any random port
can handle the job of being the label] Ideally, two ports would be
reserved, to be able to have counterparts to secure (HTTPS) and
non-secure (HTTP) protocols.

Adult companies that wish to label their content could thus do so by
serving their content on the chosen port (I'll use 18666 in the
following examples, but it can be anything that ICANN/IANA decides
upon).

Instead of having a nude image at http://www.example.com/nude.jpg the
webmaster could instead "label" it by having the nude image come
instead from http://www.example.com:18666/nude.jpg . Browsers like
Internet Explorer, FireFox and Opera could eventually even shorten the
above using "adult" as a replacement for the combination of "http" and
"18666", so that one could use "adult://www.example.com/nude.jpg" as a
URL.

On a technical level, this is very easy to implement, as Apache and
other webservers can be configured to serve up content on any port. At
a first approximation, the cost is $0. It is obviously much cheaper and
less disruptive to implement for adult webmasters than registering .XXX
domains.

Also, the contention over the allocation mechanisms of a .XXX domain
would disappear under this alternative. Sex.com, sex.ca, sex.net,
sex.de, sex.co.uk, and all other TLDs can co-exist, all serving up
their adult content on ports 18666 instead of port 80, if they wanted
to use a port-based label mechanism. Companies like Playboy, Penthouse,
etc. need not register any new domains, they just would change a
webserver setting instead if they wished to use this alternative form
of a content label.

There would be no need for defensive registrations, as folks could
continue along with their existing domains. Mercedes-Benz, Gucci,
Yahoo, Chanel or other brandholders would not need to worry that
cybersquatters have another playground in which to infringe upon their
trademarks.

Some supporters of .XXX only support it if governments make it
mandatory. Their theory is that it would be a lot easier to filter
adult content if it was all located in the .XXX space. However, if the
government instead made it mandatory that all adult content was served
from port 18666, it could be filtered just as easily (it's a very
trivial firewall rule to permit/deny access to a single port). ISPs or
parental filtering software could filter a single port just as easily
as they can filter a single TLD. 

Some supporters of .XXX want to make a lot of money (i.e. through
operation of the registry, being a registrar, or speculating in domain
names)! The use of port 18666 would not make these people happy,
though, as there'd be no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, to
implement use of a port label such as port 18666 to identify content.
However, if it is the goal of ICANN to find efficient and low-cost
solutions to "problems", the use of ports as a label mechanism is
offered as an alternative to solve the same problems that .XXX
purportedly solves.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.kirikos.com/