I agree that those who wish to impose their values on
others through censorship will find their jobs made much easier by the addition of
an .xxx gTLD. That is precisely why I oppose it.Once the .xxx domain exists, I
fear that authorities of various kinds will claim the right to order certain sites
to exist only within that domain. They will claim that the First Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution and similar provisions in other nations' constitutions and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not violated--but the ghettoization of
messages distasteful to authority, combined with the imposition of censorware at
the national, institutional and even familial level, will add up to silencing those
messages.
Proponents of censorware argue that they are out only to block things
that are truly repugnant, or only to stop young people from seeing them. But purely
political sites have been blocked by censorware based on centralized lists designed
by human beings--that is, by conscious decisions, not bugs--and I find it difficult
to believe that giving censors more power will make them more respectful of free
speech.
Information wants to be free, and information should be free. The technical
architecture of the Internet should not be mutilated to protect prudes. No matter
how disgusting some material on the Web is, it is not so disgusting as censorship.
And it is definitely not as dangerous.