YES TO .XXX
To the Icann Board, I am amazed at the spam like quality of the emails coming to this list. There appears to be a rabid fear that .XXX will work, why else would there be such opposition? Nearly all of the emails try to associate .xxx and censorship. If the Governments had the ability to legally shut down all of the porn sites wouldn't they just search for them in the popular search engines? Pornographers depend upon people finding their sites to generate revenue, just like any other business. If customers can find them, so can the law. I also believe that pornographers have an agenda of trying to recruit new customers. To do this pornographers do want to hide. They don't want to be associated with a label such as .XXX. Instead they choose to hide behind innocent looking domains. Searching on google I found these URL'S. (I don't suggest pulling them up. Some of these sites offer malicious viruses to infect your computer.) www.families-project.com/pornography.htm www.fire-flies.net/butts.htm www.christmasinapril.org/redhead.html www.brigham-city.org/stories.html www.hyperwheels.com/rape.html If these domains are desirable to hide behind could you imagine the attraction to a .KIDS?
The adult webmasters claim that .KIDS is the way to solve "THEIR" problem. They continue to skirt the issue. They are the ones who are creating content objectionable to many. They are the ones that should bear the costs of labeling. I feel unsympathetic to their financial risk while they are TOTALLY unsympathetic to my desire in protecting those who would choose not to view their pornographic content. Let's say that .KIDS is created. A single negative incident where pornography or other objectionable material is found would taint the entire domain space of .KIDS. Looking at .XXX very few people would find anything other than what it represents, they would never assume it free of pornography. Any single incident in .KIDS would create a string of lawsuits that would never end. The operators of .KIDS would take a huge risk if they ever claimed perfect safety. .KIDS is NOT the answer.
Every where in life we see businesses take responsibility for their products. In the cases where it's tried, it typically works. For some reason pornographers believe that they are the exception. They say that .XXX will not work, I disagree. I think they know it will allow people a choice. I believe that is why they want to avoid the creation of .XXX. It's not about freedom of speech; it's about the potential it has to limit the number of eyeballs viewing their content. Content which THEY make billions of dollars selling. Content that many do NOT want to view. By labeling sites with the .XXX extension consumers could make the choice to visit the site, or not. .XXX is about choice, not censorship. It is silly and naive to assume that all ISP's would wholesale filter .XXX. Just like they, many ISP's welcome the traffic and money created by those accessing pornography. As long as pornographers are able to find facilities to locate their servers, consumers will also be afforded the same luxury to access the pornographer's content. Many of the letters to this list are correct in that not every Webmaster will move or offer content in .XXX. Pornography will be available in other TLD's. Is that alone reason enough not to try and see what affect .XXX will have? I think not. The Internet has always been, and will continue to be an experiment. Many ideas have been tried, some of those fail and some succeed. It's hard to determine the success of something with out giving it a try. I think it's worth the effort if .XXX is only 25% effective. After this we can look for the solution to the other 75%. I believe trigger locks for guns are 100% effective when used. It's unfortunate that their use is not universal. .XXX will work somewhat in the same manner. When sites are properly labeled the content will be known. Consumers can choose. Labeling is fair and the right thing to do. Cheers, Rick Stevens Boston, MA ________________________________________________________________________ Check Out the new free AIM(R) Mail -- 2 GB of storage and industry-leading spam and email virus protection. |