I oppose .xxx
I am a legitimate adult webmaster and I do my best to operate in an ethical manner. This includes making sure that my sites are labelled with a PICS label so good parents can filter out my content while consenting adults can still access it. An .xxx domain will not solve the issue of children accessing porn for the following reasons: * Children are curious about sex. Yes, it's the elephant in the living room, but there it is. They WILL go looking for forbidden fruit unless their parents make sure they can't get to inappropriate content. The only way to do that is to supervise children's online activities and to install good filtering software. It's also vital to have open and honest discussions with children about adult material and where it fits in with the parent's moral compass. Government intervention is never a good replacement for clear rules and good parenting. * Adult content will still be available on .com domains. Why would a legitimate adult business voluntarily give up valuable .com domains when they have spent years working in that business space and it is worth a considerable amount of money to them? So the idea that you can just herd all adult content onto .xxx, block it off and feel "safe" is a misconception. * It would be unconstitutional of the US government to try and force US adult businesses onto the .xxx domain, and, despite what George W. thinks, the US is not the whole world. Adult material from the rest of the world would still be available on .com domains. The proposal for an .xxx domain also feels a little like a money grab. Most adult webmasters own a stable of domain names, some of which are very valuable. We don't relish having to fork out significant amounts of money to secure the .xxx real estate just in case a cyber-squatter buys our equivalent domain or business name. First-come, first served does not take into account the fact that domain names are vital to the operation of online businesses, and that many are trademarked or relate to copyrighted material. This proposal does not offer a fair method of distributing any domains. There is also the issue of non-adult businesses feeling obliged to buy their .xxx domain names in an effort to prevent their businesses from being associated with adult. I draw your attention to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/xxx-tag-ignores-porno-problems/2006/03/20/1142703275024.html The author points out that efficient search engines mean that domain suffixes are essentially pointless anyway. One needs only to search on keywords and Google or Yahoo will bring up any relevant site, no matter what the suffix. On top of that, the increasing use of image and video searches (and embedding) means that adult content can easily be found away from the page where it originated. To sum up, I oppose the .xxx domain as it will not prevent children from gaining access to adult material, it is a blatant money grab and it is generally unnecessary. Yours Sincerely Karen aka Grandma |