Re: Not so Fast! 'xxx' Startup Put on Hold

In message TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to John Levine :

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But they do that now, with filtering > programs. Filtering, never a perfect solution, now can filter out > the sexual topic of women's breasts, but the problem is it cannot > seem to understand why 'breast cancer' is not the same thing as 'I > love to look at and fantasize on those breasts'. But to the filter > writers, what is there that you cannot understand about '.xxx'? If > I write a filter and I say that a dot followed by three x's goes no > further into my computer, then other things like the context in which > 'breasts' or 'sex' or whatever is to be taken becomes a moot point > doesn't it? If the real problem that '.xxx' makes writing and main- > taining filtering programs too easy? If local communities or govern- > ments decide what is to go into '.xxx' it would seem to me that all > the fuss over effective and ineffective filtering would go away. PAT]

Sure *IF* the whole world decided what goes into .xxx, everybody agreed AND everybody played nice.

BUT ... Even ignoring the fact that defining what belongs in .xxx is impossible (what's obscene? What's pornographic? In the middle east, a women without a head covering is probably pornographic. In the US, Janet Jackson's nipple was obviously a problem. In Europe, a photo of a topless 17 year old isn't obscene) there is another issue:

You can't even get Russian web hosts to terminate child porn which is illegal virtually everywhere, so what do you think the odds are they'll give a damn about a nipple?

At the end of the day the only workable solution is to create an restrictive/exclusive .kids or .family (or whatever gTLD would be appropriate) and set restrictions on that TLD which are enforced by the registry/registrars responsible and don't require cooperation of

*everybody* [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So tell me what makes .kids or .family any different than .sex except for the direction it goes? And what do you propose to do with the people who say 'what right have you got to tell me what is appropriate for my family/kids? You would not want to settle for enforcement standards on that (family/kids) any more than you would want to try and enforce it for .sex so what is the difference? We also presently have 'K12' or 'K-12' do we not? I wonder how they ever got _that one_ through, given the guys on the net always dragging their red-herrings out? PAT]