.xxx to be a reality soon? | Hacker News Reader

.xxx to be a reality soon?

theregister.co.uk

15 pointsdatd00d30 comments

This may be a minority opinion, but I consider .xxx to be a reasonable new TLD. On the other hand, some already existing TLDs were just absurd. For example .aero, .coop, .biz, .info, .jobs, .mobi, .name, .pro, and .travel are difficult to justify; .xxx seems reasonable from a categorical perspective.

(Although, I agree -- it's a legislative nightmare.)

But why .xxx instead of .porn or .sex? If you want a TLD jsut for porn, then you might as well call it that.

Just history, I think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-rated#United_States

.xxx conforms nicely to most users expectations of a three letter TLD.

Well other "extreme" things like violence or gore could conceivably be expected under .xxx but not .porn

Agree though that the ever increasing number of TLD suffixes is a bit of a joke. (I think it's a scam to get more money from people, mostly, at this point.)

> Well other "extreme" things like violence or gore could conceivably be expected under .xxx but not .porn

I see that as an argument in favour of .porn.

"some already existing TLDs were just absurd"

My favorite is .um, for U.S. minor outlying islands, population 300. It was, um, discontinued.

Objections to a "xxx" TLD seem to fall into one of two categories: That there is no way to decide which sites should be given a "xxx" domain, and that there is no way to enforce a "xxx" domain. As far as I know, there is no current plan to legislate the "xxx" domain so it would seem that it wouldn't matter. Even as an opt-in for self categorization, it can only help to make the purpose of a site more clear. Even if not universally used, it makes it a little easier to both find and avoid pornography. Chances are that what gets put under the "xxx" domain will eventually be decided organically. Personally, I think that it's likely that businesses who's explicit purpose is selling sexual content will begin to use it and websites which contain pornography only incidentally will likely avoid it.

I'm sure the lawmakers will love this. How soon will we see bills introduced to make it illegal to host adult sites outside of the .xxx tld?

Moving all adult sites to the .xxx tld might help cut down on the false positives from content filters. But it sure could turn into a legislative nightmare.

It would certainly help parents regulate their children's access to adult material (simply block .xxx through your router for whatever machines your kids have access too). However, this is in principle and will never work in practice.

Sure US legislators can make it mandatory for porn sites to have .xxx, however there are roughly 265 countries in the world. You'll never get every one of them to agree on regulations.

Also consider the enormous financial incentive to not force porn to .xxx. The US moves everything to .xxx? The Canadians rake in the money.

Hey it puts all the bad stuff in one place right...

What exactly is 'bad' about xxx?

#1 You can't really regulate it #2 Whose definition of porn is going to be used? #3 How are you going to enforce anything?

Those add up to it being stupid idea.

In practice that could go wrong in a number of way, but I don't see a problem with it in principle.

Of course the question is what sites get the definition of 'adult'. There are nude photos on Flickr after all...

And even if in the US porn isn't forced into the .xxx tld by law, for other countries they may jump on it much faster.

Then of course there is the issue of a slippery slope. What other content could be forced onto certain tlds by law?

Exactly! Whose definition? How do they enforce it country to country? They are idiots.

They?

Do you realize there is no actual such law? And you are already calling "them" names for something that doesn't exist?

"I know it when I see it."

It would certainly make the job of censors and puritans everywhere much easier.

Puritans?

What about parents?

Yes, it would make the jobs of parents easier. But I think the downside for everybody else isn't worth it. There are a lot of restrictions that we could put on society that would make the job of parents easier but that aren't good ideas if you look at the whole impact.

Yah, I don't think restricting access to self-described porn has all that many downsides. Governments that would do that, already restrict it, this just makes it easier for them, but the benefits to parents far outweigh that.

This is not the same as general purpose censorship, which I do not think should be made easier to censor.

Do remember that someone in a different (more permissive) country voluntarily described his stuff as porn. So you don't really have an issue of it being applied incorrectly.

I think the technical aspect isn't the only one. There's also a psychological dimension that makes is different to just block a whole domain vs. making a list of thousands of sites.

Wouldn't make a difference in some places, but I bet that in some borderline cases, it could push them over.

It's better actually - the censor does not have to decide, the publisher of the material decides.

You think that'd stop them from also having a list? It would just make it easier to get started.

Are you aware that you are arguing in a circle?

No, I'm not. It's two different things.

1) Lists of blocked sites are harder to implement and make people swallow.

but

2) they aren't mutually exclusive with blocking whole domains.

I'm not sure I see why so many people are against having a .xxx domain name. If it's opt in (like all other TLDs that aren't restricted are), then only sites that want to identify themselves as explicit pornography will be branded with it. If it's mandatory, then there will likely be both false positives and false negatives in the assessment process, and users will eventually learn that .xxx doesn't necessarily mean that a website is or isn't pornography but that it is evidence (not proof) of it. Either way, the result is more accurate information about a site right there in the site's domain name.

.xxx will be here soon - but only after we spend several more years speculating about how soon the .xxx tld will be created.

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