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Username: keith246
Date/Time: Wed, October 18, 2000 at 4:38 AM GMT (Tue, October 17, 2000 at 10:38 PM CST)
Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer V5.5 using Windows 98
Score: 5
Subject: Some of these countries haven't even outlawed slavery yet

Message: 		 

 
        It sounds like you are asking ICANN to preserve the value of existing erotica and pornographic domain names in .COM at the expense of the personal freedom of others to avoid pornography. 
ICANN's responsibility to children is greater than its responsibility to existing erotic domain name holders.

Nilda says,
And that's why I ask you to consider not create domains yet the gTLDs .KIDS, .WOMEN, .XXX .SEX and similars, until the governments take measures on regulating content and even enforce all adult oriented websites with or without an own domain to surrender their domains and to move to the potencial .XXX and .SEX when such gTLDs be created.

We are supposed to conduct ourselves morally and ethically with or without being compelled to do so by law. 

Laws are generally created to force the immoral and unethical to obey a few basic morals and ethics.  (Of course, sometimes laws are created to force the moral and ethical to be immoral and unethical.)

If an internet registar wants to act in a moral and ethical way, protecting children from seeing pornography by limiting what appears under its particular gTLD, no court and no democratic government is going to stand in the way.  At least not unless all registrars act the same way.

If you are asking that ICANN wait for the world's national governments to restrict erotica and pornography to a gTLD that does not yet exist, what you are asking makes no sense.

Governments will not pass laws on so complex a technical topic -- certainly not before the gTLD even exists.

Furthermore, the internet is not under the jurisdiction of any one government, so you are asking ICANN to wait until a majority of 165 national governments in the world passed laws on this. 

To say that getting governments to prohibit erotica and pornography from .KIDS, or to restrict erotica and pornography to only .SEX and .XXX would take several decades would be an understatement. 

Some of these countries haven't even outlawed slavery yet! 

And in some countries, pornography is regulated at the province or state level -- in those countries each state and province would have to pass a separate law.

What you are asking would play into the hands of the owners of existing pornographic sites in the .COM domain.

All this said, I support the existance of freedom of speech on the internet. 

I feel that multiple gTLDs should be available for erotica.  I feel that existing erotica domain name owners should be given first crack at the same domain name in either .XXX or .SEX or whatever (whichever ONE they choose).

In my country, Canada, pornography is illegal.  Much of what seems to be commonly called pornography is properly called erotica here. 

I am not big on censorship, although it does have its place. 

I strongly feel that people should be warned of the level of erotica or pornography they will see before being exposed to the images or graphic writing -- like the way erotica shops in Germany have beads hanging over their entrances, so people know the nature of what they will see if they enter.

And I worry more about pornographic violence than sex.

Sex, language and violence specific gTLDs would go part way to achieving this.

ICANN's responsibility to children is greater than its responsibility to existing erotic domain name holders.

If an applicant wants a gTLD that specifically includes something, or that specifically excludes it, this is something I think ICANN should look favorably on.

More generic vanilla gTLDs with synonym domains are not going to solve our problems or help the public use the internet.

     
 

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