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ICANN Rejects .XXX Domains

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has rejected a proposal to place porn websites on a new .xxx domain. Opponents of the new domain are a motley mix of odd bedfellows whose points are a little hard to understand.

Conservative groups didn't want the domain because it could legitimize internet porn make it easy to find. Yes, seriously.

A slightly more thought-out legal argument was made elsewhere:

“Selling hard core pornography on the Internet is a violation of federal obscenity law, so the Bush Administration is right to oppose the .xxx domain,” said Patrick Trueman, Senior Legal Counsel for the Family Research Council and former Chief of the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. “The Bush Administration should not, in any way, be seen to facilitate the porn industry which has been a plague on our society since the establishment of the Internet. The .xxx domain proposal is an effort to pander to the porn industry and offers nothing but false hope to an American public which wants illegal pornographers prosecuted, not rewarded.”

Yet pornographers were also opposed to the new domain, fearing that it would marginalize an industry that is looking to move in the opposite direction - mainstream.

In their opinion, the attempt to gather the the virtual pornography in some sort of a Red Light District will only open a way to easier censorship means.

(Never mind the fact that the .xxx domains would have been voluntary.)

Libertarians usually find it distasteful to agree with religious conservatives, but were correct to do so on this matter. The attempt to segregate pornography would be a mistake, and fairly difficult - probably requiring a big fat bureaucracy of porn-searching federal employees. Which might just be a legitimization of what is already going on in some offices, I don't know. [shrug] Can you picture that cubicle farm? [shudder] It's sketchy enough that News.com refers to one fellow in their article as an "adult-industry observer".

When it is worded like that, it sounds pretty respectable, doesn't it?

In fact, the logistics of policing seems to be the reason ICANN rejected the .xxx domains (story here):

ICANN CEO Paul Twomey said the decision largely came down to whether the creation of "xxx" might put ICANN in a difficult position of having to enforce all of the world's laws governing pornography, including ones that might require porn sites to use the domain. Speech-related laws, he noted, often conflict with one another.