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Triple-X: a brief history of a dirty domain
This week, the Bush administration noticed that ICANN was perilously close to holding a final vote to approve use of .xxx as a top-level domain, which would be reserved for online adult content. The administration mobilized to oppose the effort. The Department of Commerce announced that it had received some 6,000 e-mails and letters opposing the creation of the domain, and the administration said it was concerned about kids stumbling into an online "red-light district" (a phrase that's been used hundreds of times since the .xxx idea was first floated, sometime around 2000).
In response, ICANN took the unprecedented step of delaying its vote on final approval of the domain for another month so that governments and the public could properly express their concerns. Surely, this hullabaloo is just ridiculous, knee-jerk posturing by an administration trying to score points with the conservative right by opposing a step that would obviously not create any more online porn (which is, by the way, hardly a subterranean element of the World Wide Web), and would really just make online porn easier to identify and possibly even filter. Right?
A different tune
Not quite. Well, actually, yes. But that's not the end of the story--not by a long shot. In fact, .xxx was proposed to ICANN as a possible top-level domain back in 2000, and politicians threw a morals-based hissy fit because the body decided not to adopt the domain. Back then, Representative Fred Upton, a Republican from Michigan, wanted to know the following:
"...as a parent of two young children, I want to explore ICANN's rationale for not approving two particular top-level domain names: 'dot-kids' and 'dot-xxx', as a means to protect kids from the awful smut which is so widespread on the Internet. We should strongly encourage the use of technology to protect our kids, and special top-level domain names may be just the ticket. This is what so many parents lie awake at night thinking about, and we need to respond."
So, this is just a normal case--albeit an hilarious one--of politicians who can't get their stories straight about their moral high ground, other than to seize it whenever possible to win support from their constituencies, regardless of what the porn industry wants, right?
Another different tune
Again, not quite. Interestingly, until 2003, those in the adult entertainment industry roundly rejected the idea of the .xxx domain. They argued that it would relegate them to an online porn ghetto of sorts, and worse, that it would increase the possibility of even further government interference into their business. Basically, they feared that once the government got them corralled into a little fenced yard, it might start thinking it would be a good idea to make the .xxx mandatory for adult content sites, and it might even start regulating their content (other than the usual legal considerations about kids and so forth). It wasn't until around 2003, when federal law started to crack down on the use of misleading domain names, that the industry started to take a closer look at self-regulation. So, now that .xxx is up for grabs again, the porn industry figures it's better than the alternative.
To muddy the waters, though, the ACLU, of all the groups out there, is raising concerns about regulation in this go-around with .xxx. For one thing, it's concerned that some countries might define nonpornographic content about sexuality, such as homosexuality, abortion, or birth control, onto .xxx domains that could be filtered (and that's a darned good and disturbing point).
So here, in a nutshell, is the brief history of .xxx:
In 2000, the porn industry opposed .xxx, and Republicans were in favor of it, because it would protect our children.
In 2005, the porn industry favors .xxx, and Republicans oppose it because it would harm our children.
Hitting the wrong notes
What do I think? I think we need to stop acting like we're in the War on Porn, and we especially need to stop acting like we think we're going to win. Adult content, as I've mentioned before, is big business, and it's business that's here to stay. If a .xxx domain would create a clear, unbiased delineation between nonpornographic content and pornographic content, and I could easily filter out every search result for a site that ended in .xxx, and there were absolutely no other moral, political, or international considerations, then I'd love to have it.
But that's a pipe dream, and I know it. ICANN should dump the .xxx domain proposal, and not because it's being leaned on by the administration. For one thing, history has shown that top-level domain names reserved for specific content are a bit of a joke. When's the last time you visited a .net that contained only network-related content, for example, or a .org that was purely not-for-profit? I can reserve molly.com, molly.net, and molly.org in one fell swoop, if they're available, and I sort of like the sound of molly.xxx. But even more importantly, the ACLU's point shows me that the .xxx domain tussle isn't about alleviating confusion or overcrowding on the Web. It's about sex. And no one has ever made a good, logical, clear-eyed decision with too much sex on the brain.
By Molly Wood, section editor, CNET.com
Thursday, August 18, 2005 This week, the Bush administration noticed that ICANN was perilously close to holding a final vote to approve use of .xxx as a top-level domain, which would be reserved for online adult content. The administration mobilized to oppose the effort. The Department of Commerce announced that it had received some 6,000 e-mails and letters opposing the creation of the domain, and the administration said it was concerned about kids stumbling into an online "red-light district" (a phrase that's been used hundreds of times since the .xxx idea was first floated, sometime around 2000). In response, ICANN took the unprecedented step of delaying its vote on final approval of the domain for another month so that governments and the public could properly express their concerns. Surely, this hullabaloo is just ridiculous, knee-jerk posturing by an administration trying to score points with the conservative right by opposing a step that would obviously not create any more online porn (which is, by the way, hardly a subterranean element of the World Wide Web), and would really just make online porn easier to identify and possibly even filter. Right?
Post your comment hereA different tune
Not quite. Well, actually, yes. But that's not the end of the story--not by a long shot. In fact, .xxx was proposed to ICANN as a possible top-level domain back in 2000, and politicians threw a morals-based hissy fit because the body decided not to adopt the domain. Back then, Representative Fred Upton, a Republican from Michigan, wanted to know the following:
"...as a parent of two young children, I want to explore ICANN's rationale for not approving two particular top-level domain names: 'dot-kids' and 'dot-xxx', as a means to protect kids from the awful smut which is so widespread on the Internet. We should strongly encourage the use of technology to protect our kids, and special top-level domain names may be just the ticket. This is what so many parents lie awake at night thinking about, and we need to respond."
So, this is just a normal case--albeit an hilarious one--of politicians who can't get their stories straight about their moral high ground, other than to seize it whenever possible to win support from their constituencies, regardless of what the porn industry wants, right?
Another different tune
Again, not quite. Interestingly, until 2003, those in the adult entertainment industry roundly rejected the idea of the .xxx domain. They argued that it would relegate them to an online porn ghetto of sorts, and worse, that it would increase the possibility of even further government interference into their business. Basically, they feared that once the government got them corralled into a little fenced yard, it might start thinking it would be a good idea to make the .xxx mandatory for adult content sites, and it might even start regulating their content (other than the usual legal considerations about kids and so forth). It wasn't until around 2003, when federal law started to crack down on the use of misleading domain names, that the industry started to take a closer look at self-regulation. So, now that .xxx is up for grabs again, the porn industry figures it's better than the alternative.
To muddy the waters, though, the ACLU, of all the groups out there, is raising concerns about regulation in this go-around with .xxx. For one thing, it's concerned that some countries might define nonpornographic content about sexuality, such as homosexuality, abortion, or birth control, onto .xxx domains that could be filtered (and that's a darned good and disturbing point).
So here, in a nutshell, is the brief history of .xxx:
Hitting the wrong notes
What do I think? I think we need to stop acting like we're in the War on Porn, and we especially need to stop acting like we think we're going to win. Adult content, as I've mentioned before, is big business, and it's business that's here to stay. If a .xxx domain would create a clear, unbiased delineation between nonpornographic content and pornographic content, and I could easily filter out every search result for a site that ended in .xxx, and there were absolutely no other moral, political, or international considerations, then I'd love to have it.
But that's a pipe dream, and I know it. ICANN should dump the .xxx domain proposal, and not because it's being leaned on by the administration. For one thing, history has shown that top-level domain names reserved for specific content are a bit of a joke. When's the last time you visited a .net that contained only network-related content, for example, or a .org that was purely not-for-profit? I can reserve molly.com, molly.net, and molly.org in one fell swoop, if they're available, and I sort of like the sound of molly.xxx. But even more importantly, the ACLU's point shows me that the .xxx domain tussle isn't about alleviating confusion or overcrowding on the Web. It's about sex. And no one has ever made a good, logical, clear-eyed decision with too much sex on the brain.
