Supporters said a .xxx domain would have made it easier to confine
> sex sites or filter them out, but critics such as the Family Research
> Council, a conservative U.S.-based religious group, complained it
> would only legitimize the p*rn industry, and ICANN agreed with that.
I have to agree 100% with the EU on this one. The p*rn industry *IS* legitimate -- it is a legal business, with thousands of properly registered, tax-paying, law-abiding companies involved. If you don't like pornography, then don't surf the p*rn sites -- but that's exactly what the ".xxx" TLD was designed to facilitate.
Let's suppose that you're a parent and you don't want your kids to see p*rn sites. You're never going to get the sex sites off the Internet completely; that's beyond dreaming. Where there is demand, there will be supply. As things stand now, you have to fiddle with web ratings and content-blocking services, but they have difficulty distinguishing a site about cervical cancer from a hardcore version of Girls Gone Wild. With a .xxx TLD, at least those sites that choose to locate there could be blocked by a single checkbox in your computer's preferences.
We should create .xxx (or .sex or .p*rn, or whatever you want to call it), and provide legal incentives for sites to move there. For example, it should be much more difficult to prosecute a ".xxx" site for peddling p*rn to minors, since it would be so trivially easy for the responsible adults to block the kids' access.
Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * snipped-for-privacy@suespammers.org * primary e-mail: Telecom at LincMad dot com Read my political blog, "The Third Path" DO NOT SEND UNSOLICITED E-MAIL TO THIS ADDRESS. You have been warned.