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Comment by andrewvc | Hacker News Reader

Regardless of your opinion of adult content, this stuff makes far less practical sense than things like RTA labeling http://www.rtalabel.org/. All that RTA requires is a simple meta tag, and it's free.

Content filters abide by it, and it doesn't disrupt existing business.

.xxx is just an effort to make money with another new TLD. It doesn't make the web safer and it doesn't make content-filters simpler or more accurate.

Since no one is proposing forcing sites to use .xxx, those concerned with truly making the web safer should really be looking for the most effective way to get wide penetration of a labeling solution, and a meta tag is about as simple as simple gets.

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Since no one is proposing forcing sites to use .xxx,

No one has to propose it openly since the threat is implicit. Regardless of what is said at the moment of creation of the domain, all that a would-be censor has to do is wait [Internet-memory-erasure-period] and say "hey, we created XXX because all the porn is supposed to only be here" and viola.

Just quietly: voilà. A viola is an instrument.

most people don't know how to quickly type: à

You could at least put the 'o' in front of the 'i'.

Mac OS: Option-`, a = à.

Windows: Alt-0-2-2-4 = à. Go Microsoft!

Mac OS X Lion: Hold a.

My http://bepo.fr/ Dvorak-like keyboard for French: direct access (left pinky, lower row).

For me it is simply: `, a = à. Using Windows. Go keyboard layouts! (United Kingdom Extended, in this case.)

Or the verb raped in French. I honestly care less about the lack of à in an english context but the i-o swap makes quite an grammatically incorrect yet offensive typo, especially about the xxx TLD.

Viola is a common misspelling (of voila¹) that gets parodied by the more intelligent.

ZOMG !!!!111oneone!!!

1 - voila is the English language word equivalent to voilà. Voilà is French and so should be italicised to indicate it's a foreign word. There's no need to use voilà as one can use voila. Viola!!!!!oneone11!

Yes, if it was a mandate then elementary schools could use basic DNS servers to block then entire .xxx domain rather than having to try and use complex and expensive http content proxy filters that only partially work.

We used to evade the filter at school by entering IP addresses instead of normal URLs. (This also seems to work to evade the IWF.) Is there an easy way to block IP addresses based on a reverse-lookup match against .xxx?

Regardless, I could see this being used as an excuse to shunt porn sites to .xxx, even if doing so wouldn't actually solve anything.

OpenDNS? http://www.opendns.com/

As part of a filter I imagine $domain.$tld would get a highscore if $domain.xxx exists.

"No one has to propose it openly since the threat is implicit."

What threat? There is no threat at all. It is not implicit or explicit. It is just another TLD for them to move into and make $$$.

I disagree. Setting aside the problem of global top level domains, which I think are a bad idea, tagging adult sites via domain names greatly facilitates filtering as compared to meta tags.

Meta tags are an application level concept and so they have to be implemented at that level via browsers or HTTP proxies, or deep packet inspection.

DNS based filtering can be done more simply via network layer devices without having to look at the application level content. So DNS filters would work even if the website content was encrypted, for example.

From an administrative point of view it is much easier to control and manage network infrastructure than it is to control individual browsers or application level gateways.

Not really, since nothing is guaranteed to be on .xxx. If there was a requirement that people be forced onto .xxx you'd be correct, but people are going to be doing deep inspection anyway if they actually care about blocking content.

The question of enforcement is an entirely different one. I was talking about the mechanism, not the legalism.

This is one reason why global top level domains are a bad idea, there is no clear legal jurisdiction for them unlike country code domains. A legal framework can be built around xxx.us, for example, because it would map to an existing legal jurisdiction. The same can't be said for .xxx or meta-tags in documents served from arbitrary domains/locations.

this stuff makes far less practical sense than things like RTA labeling

The XXX in the URL makes the content filtering human readable. That is hugely important, and a service that can only be provided by a TLD.

That said, I agree that this is nothing but a new way to heckle money.

+1 for the use of "wide penetration" in a post about .xxx domains :-)

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