Say YES to .xxx and help protect minors from inappropriate content
I am writing to urge the ICANN Board to abide by the declaration of the Independent Review Panel and to enter into a registry agreement with ICM without further delay. Regardless of the nature of the sTLD, ICANN must respect the procedures it has established to ensure accountability to the wider Internet community. Failing to fully abide by the decision of the IRP will demonstrate that ICANN has no meaningful commitment to accountability, and will seriously damage ICANN’s legitimacy and authority. Therefore, ICANN has only one option if it wishes to preserve the integrity of its procedures and its long-term credibility as the manager of the DNS: immediately execute a registry agreement with ICM and allow ICM to proceed with the launch of the sTLD. Tim Berners-Lee invent the Web for various reasons. He didn’t invent it to have it policed by extremists who are unable to accept opposing views and opinions to their own. Furthermore, I don’t believe in anonymity in comments when it comes to such important topics (as supported by your Web site), as it enables the same people to leave more than one comment - it also enables people from the same organizations/circles to support each other without having to put their name to it. The debate about the .xxx domain is completely skewed by religion and politics in my opinion - that is wrong. I have not seen one piece of evidence to support ICANN’s right to refused the .xxx application. Every technology enables bad people to do bad things, just like it allows good people to do good things - the Web is a perfect platform that demonstrates this point. What we must do, is use technology that empowers people to find what they want, whilst protecting them from what they deem to be inappropriate. This however, must not come at the expense of hampering freedom of speech. The W3C is the global standards consortium responsible for the creation of standards such as HTML and Accessibility development guidelines to help developers build websites that are accessible to disabled people - founded and managed today, by Tim Berners-Lee. It is also responsible for the creation of a standard called PICS. PICS is the old and outdated method used by Microsoft Internet Explorer’s filter - used to help protect minors from inappropriate content on the Web today. To address comments on your site regarding the use of .xxx to increase the number of adult orientated websites... pornographic websites make up for the vast majority of sites that use PICS, to help protect minors from adult orientated content. So, whether people like it or not, IE is reading labels from porn sites TODAY. As I stated earlier, IE uses a method that is based on an old and outdated W3C standard called PICS - it’s not flexible and it doesn’t do what today’s technology can support - hence why most people don’t use the filter. The Family Online Safety Institute, an international, non-profit organization of internet leaders working to develop a safer internet, continues to support the outdated method of labelling content - BUT, it no longer actively encourages developers to use it - its strategy is now focused on lobbing governments and big orginazations around the world. That means, very few, if any, new websites are being labelled so that IE can filter our inappropriate content. There is good news, in December 2009, PICS was replaced by a new method called POWDER (AKA Content Labels) that is much easier to use and it’s much more advanced technology wise. Every person who registers a .xxx domain will be forced to use the new standard to label their content as adult oriented - this will enable IE and other browsers to filter out .xxx domains for people who find them inappropriate. This demonstrates their commitment to protecting people from inappropriate content. This is the opposite to what most unqualified opinions believe - as they haven’t properly understood this fact. Warmest regards, Paul ---- Paul Walsh CEO, Segala http://segala.com |