.xx tld

["lars" <lars@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I believe the .xxx TLD will do little to help protect minors form adult
material, and is a financially and politically motivated  move to squash
free speech.

Please do not allow the .xxx TLD  to become reality!

 

 

As a college of mine previously wrote, I share his comments and thoughts as
well.

 

Those in favor of .xxx like to use words and phrases such as "voluntary" and
"protect the children" in an attempt to fool people into supporting this
notion. The problem being that as long as it is voluntary there is no way
that it can protect anyone, and secondly, setting up a tld that labels a
site as being adult does nothing to protect children. It only helps the
curious to find it should they desire.

The only way that a tld can even attempt to protect anyone is to make it
mandatory, except you then have the problem of enforceability along with
freedom of speech issues. If .xxx becomes mandatory it would only be
enforceable in the USA, and that only insures that the sites that we must
truly be concerned with are located off-shore. The cliche' that "if guns are
made illegal, only criminals will have guns" can not help but come to mind
in this situation.

The issue of protecting children from porn is a serious one, but it is one
that must be dealt with by parents. As a parent I would much rather see a
.kids tld created so that I know there is a tld that my children can visit
with no concerns about what they might view. Creating a voluntary or
mandatory .xxx tld does nothing to ease my concerns as a father, however, as
a businessman and American citizen it does cause concerns about First
Amendment rights.

I can foresee ISP's blocking tlds by default. I can foresee drawn out and
expensive litigation over domain ownership rights. 

ICM Registry did not come up with .xxx as a way to protect children, but as
a way to make money. They admit this is a for profit venture. I have no
problem with someone trying to make a dollar, but when it steps on my rights
to conduct business I do.

 

 

Lars