A Concerned Parent That Understands Internet Technology
What is .xxx really about? Is it about protecting children or is it about building another big money porn empire? As a concerned parent and an Internet specialist that has been involved with Internet technology for over a decade I know that .xxx only offers a very false sense of security for parents. It does nothing to fight child pornography, sexual predators, violence, hate, information about drugs, suicide or any of the most harmful dangers that could affect my young daughter in a terrible way. Parents, no matter what happens with .xxx or labeling, please don't allow your children to have Internet access behind closed doors. All the filtering in the world will not protect them from chatting with predators and they are far more dangerous then any static content. A LABELING SYSTEM ALREADY EXISTS Right now most responsible websites label their content using a method known as PICS. Granted PICS is overly burdensome and a simple meta tag would be much easier to use and filter but it is in use today. All major browsers support PICS and in under 2 minutes anyone can configure a computer to block not only sexual related material but all harmful material that uses these labels. The labeling system can also be used on a page per page basis so that responsible news agencies, TV networks, information sources and all major businesses can start labeling web pages that are not appropriate for minors. While we may seem focused on sexually related material, we all know that is plenty of non-sexually related materials that are very harmful to minors. Maybe a simple meta tag of "Adult" is a better system then PICS since it is very difficult to verify if pages are labeled correctly with PICS but this system exists and people can start using it today in less time then it takes them to send emails here.
The greatest danger to children surfing the web unsupervised are child predators that want to molest children. Children and predators will still be communicating on the Internet and they won't be on .xxx domain so how does this help to protect our children? The answer is that it obviously doesn't do anything to keep children safe. The other issue that's commonly brought up is child pornography. This nasty stuff will not move to .xxx domains and it will just stay where it is today. This type of material does NOT appear on any law abiding website today so why do we think that .xxx will help curb this issue? Again the answer is that it obviously doesn't do anything to keep children safe. Is nudity the only dangerous thing that children can find on the Internet? Will .xxx do anything to keep our children safe from stories about rape, hate, violence, advertisements for alcohol, tobacco or drugs? Again the answer is that it obviously doesn't do anything to keep children safe.
The most common misconception seems to be that some law will exist that all sexual related material needs to be on a .xxx domain. While the USA may attempt to pass a law that is totally unconstitutional the law would have no effect on the rest of the world. The other misconception is that it will protect children from being exploited but .xxx has nothing to do with that issue. The predators and child pornographers will not move to .xxx and will stay right where they are today in the .com world. BUILDING A NEW PORN EMPIRE There are no provisions that will allow .com owners to get the .xxx version of a domain. The people that will get the .xxx domains are those with big money and close ties to ICM Registry. Every company that has spent years building a brand name for a .com domain can easily loose out to someone grabbing .xxx version of that name. Of course the .xxx domains come at a much higher price then all other domains so it certainly appears to be about big money. Do we need another porn empire? Why allow ICM Registry to build another empire on pornography through .xxx when we can simply use what's available today and help protect our children from all harmful material on the Internet? THE BOTTOM LINE As a concerned parent I would like a method to filter all adult related material and not just sexually oriented material. I would like to see the use of labels to protect my daughter from information about violence, rape, suicide, hate, drugs, guns, etc. Unfortunately this requires news agencies, TV networks and basically everyone producing information on the web to take part and start labeling their content. .xxx does nothing to protect our children from chatting with predators. .xxx does nothing to fight child pornography since it will stay in the .com world. .xxx does nothing to protect our children from harmful material about suicide, drugs, rape, violence or any of things that a concerned parent like me worries about. The technology is already in place for the search engines, the parents, the schools, the libraries, the churches and everyone to filter out not only sexual related material, but all types of adult related material. Perhaps it's just a matter of educating anyone that produces this type of material and educating parents on how to use these controls that are sitting right on their child's computer today. I'm not trying to put the total responsibility on to the parents, as I believe some labeling needs to exist but I also know that harmful material comes in many forms and that .xxx does nothing to protect our children from the most harmful dangers on the Internet. ~Steve aka SirMoby |