Jorge Amodio <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Like many from the technical community, I also believe that .xxx or
> .sex is a bad idea, (see RFC3675:
> https://www3.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3675.txt), well to be totally frank I
> also believe the entire gTLD circus is a bad idea but that is not the
> point.

Jorge,

Thanks for an interesting and detailed post. I disagree with you on elements 
of this. Not the ICANN structural/procedural issues (on which you appear to 
agree with Milton but which I haven't followed well enough to have a solid 
opinion). But on the philosophical argument regarding whether .xxx or .sex 
should be allowed.

> Just for a moment lets forget about .xxx and make it an abstract
> string, not associated with what kind of websites, services, hosts,
> servers, you name it will be created under such TLD. From this point
> of view there was a established process several years ago for the
> introduction of a limited proof-of-concept sponsored (and this is the
> key word in this particular case) new TLDs.
> 
> I'm not quite sure or convinced that ICM really qualified to be one of
> the few sponsored new TLDs, but as the IRP found the Board screwed up
> by not following the process or rejecting the application on a solid
> base of facts and arguments.
> 
> Given that the IRP is not binding, I find very difficult for ICM to
> obtain what they want without going to court, something that will
> probably represent a legal fight for a large numbers of years and then
> porn would be already distributed in holographic nano-memories that
> you will swallow and the TLD will have no value anymore.
> 
> On the other hand, I'm 100% against any categorization, tagging,
> labeling, name it, of TLDs, strictly based on the content associated
> with the services provided by the names created under it.
> 
> For free speech and other issues it is a double edged sword.
> 
> Again lets abstract from whatever content is associated with .xxx, but
> is pretty clear that the string is closely associated with a
> particular content, then by creating such TLD we will be enabling
> filtering, logging, etc, for a particular type of content, again no
> matter what the string/content is, the issue at hand is the precedent
> we set.
> 
> If we create .xxx, soon with the new gTLD program, as we've heard from
> interested parties, other similar strings associated with content will
> follow.

The link you provided above starts in the Background section by stating that 
.xxx, .sex or .adult are assumed to be silos where all "adult" content should 
be forced to be. This is not the proposal on the table here. What is on the 
table is a label which online information providers can choose to use as 
their top-level domain. Now, while this is a particularly controversial 
domain name, and while some places might attempt to impose filtering using 
the DNS system, without the attempt to force all adult material into the new 
domain (and it is this freedom of choice that the opening up of gTLDs is 
about) all we have is a label that some users and some providers would find 
useful. Some users would find it useful to themselves block out the .xxx 
domains (in the same way as some net users set Google's "safe search" filter 
to on, though whether Google should be defaulting to on is a different 
discussion for a different forum as it's not ICANN-related). Some users might 
wish to search with ":site xxx" as an option at times.

Some providers will wish to adopt the label for these reasons (targetting 
only those users who are interested in what one is purveying is, to my mind 
an ethical business practice). Yes, some countries with harsh cenorship laws 
would block a .xxx TLD as standard, but how is that different from the 
current UK's IWF list of blocked sites, or the proposed (in the Digital 
Economy Bill) blocking of sites hosting allegedly copy-right-infringing 
material?

The worries about countries requiring "adult" material to be hosted only on 
.xxx are, in my opinion, overstated. It is highly unlikely to be possible in 
the US to enforce such a restriction, given the Supreme Court's decisions 
already on free speech and the difficulty of clearly marking what is adult 
material and what is not. Without that, companies will continue to be free to 
use sex.com, sex.eu, youporn.com and other TLDs to host their material. If 
reverse-DNS lookups from .xxx to IP addresses are used to create a filtering 
block, it is relatively easy to have the same server with two (or more) 
different IP addresses (blocks), one (or more) serving the .xxx DNS entry and 
one (or more) serving the .com (or whatever) DNS entry.

I must admit that I fail to see a substantive difference between .xxx and 
.name, .info, .museum, .auto. except for the controversy surrounding sex and 
the net, and that controversy will remain with us for quite some time whether 
or not .xxx and/or .sex are created.



-- 
Dr Andrew A Adams, School of Systems Engineering
The University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AY, UK
Tel:44-118-378-6997 E-mail:[log in to unmask]
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~sis00aaa/

From 1st April 2010:
Professor, Graduate School of Business Administration, and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo