Horror stories seem to share a common premise: An unholy monster terrorizes some ordinary folks and they try to kill it. Of course, the monster never dies by conventional means. Instead, one needs some special magic -- a wooden stake through the heart or a silver bullet -- to completely and finally put an end to the foul beast.
It appears that the idea of a XXX top-level domain has this same unholy ability to survive. Having already been killed several times over, ICM Registry, Inc., and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have resurrected plans to add a dot-XXX domain alongside dot-com, dot-edu and all the others.
In this latest proposal, ICM claims it has addressed the problems of the earlier agreement. In fact, what changed was the amount of oversight required by ICANN to ensure ICM actually complies with the stipulations of its proposal. I wonder how many other top-level domains need such stringent supervision.
The concerns of pro-family groups continue to be completely ignored in the revised proposal. Briefly, those concerns are:
Dot-XXX will create an entirely new pornographic realm on the Internet. Proliferating pornography will not protect children from pornography. It will only increase the risk of exposure. Even if some families use filters to block XXX sites, children in families who don't will be at greater risk of exposure than before. A key point to remember is that pornographers will not be required to abandon their dot-com Web sites.
Creating a dot-XXX domain would confer legitimacy to an industry that regularly scoffs at the law. It’s like creating a free-market zone for drug dealers or prostitutes to operate more effectively.
There are state and federal laws already in place prohibiting the sale or distribution of hardcore pornography, but many Internet sites currently violate those laws. Are we to believe they will adhere to the regulations of a dot-XXX domain, especially since these regulations will not have the force of law behind them?
Moving pornographic content to a dot-XXX domain might hamper enforcement efforts. The problem will be seen as settled, and we could see a further reduction in federal and local enforcement efforts.
ICM President Stuart Lawley told Computer Business Review that his company hopes to register half a million sites, generating about $30 million annually.
You've heard the saying about herding cats? Try ensuring 500,000 porn sites aren't breaking your rules. Lawley told Family News in Focus that he plans to hire third-party contractors to make sure all sites correctly employ adult content ratings (in the form of meta tags) but will rely on the complaint process to identify sites peddling child pornography.
In other words, the porn viewers themselves will police the new domain.
To be fair, some of the regulations proposed by ICM could protect children. If all pornographic sites accurately rated their material, filters would perform significantly better. If online pornographers stopped uploading viruses and other malicious programs, all Internet users would benefit. Putting an end to fraudulent billing and e-mail spamming would save the business community hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
Apart from the content ratings, most of the items on that list already violate U.S. law. So, what does the dot-XXX domain provide that we don't already have?
According to Lawley, there will be "a nonprofit foundation that will include all stakeholders including child-protection advocates, free-speech advocates and members of the adult-entertainment community that will receive $10 per domain per year."
With half a million Web sites in the pool, the foundation would receive $5 million per year. One needn't wonder what pornographers and the ACLU will do with this money. Lawley told Family News in Focus that "a lot of that money will be spent on parental awareness … [and] child education in the classroom on a national basis to make sure the people know what triple X is and, if they choose to, how to deploy filters and how to make those filters more successful."
Let me get this straight: We're going to protect children by "making sure they know what triple X is"?
Lawley also assures us that a dot-XXX domain "allows the responsible members of the adult-entertainment community to identify themselves as such and …go about their business without fear of persecution."
That persecution, presumably, is the pressure from pro-family groups to enforce federal obscenity laws. Fear that the porn industry would finally be free from prosecution is precisely why the common folks from this nation and around the world have fought so tirelessly to kill the dot-XXX beast.
TAKE ACTION:
The silver bullet in this case may well be you expressing your opinion. ICANN has requested and is posting public comments concerning the creation of a dot-XXX top-level domain. Your input can influence whether ICANN moves forward with the idea.
Send your e-mail to xxx-icm-agreement@icann.org
