I disagree with Dwi and Schombe here. The reason that the ALAC statement 
stressed that settled international law (UN resolutions and treaties with 
broad though not necessarily universal accession) should form the only basis 
on which objections could be made is precisely because of the vast 
differences in national law and culture which the Internet spans. Should 
.jihad be banned because the term Jihad has been misinterpreted to mean the 
armed struggle by Muslims against non-Muslims? Should .ira be banned from 
introduction as a financial services TLD because of the terrorist association 
with that name (and various modifiers) still in operation in Northern 
Ireland? Should .poppy be banned from being adopted by peace campaigners and 
war dead remembrance sites because the poppy is the source of opiates?

So far, yes, NCSG has supported the creation of .xxx because there has been 
no solid argument put forward that its existence would have any significant 
net (sorry for the pun) effect on the amount of erotic material (or porn, or 
obscenity, YMMV) available online.

The world is too complex for most short strings to be objectionable in 
anythign but a highly localised and subjective way. As far as I can tell 
about the only things which might reasonably be banned from creation as 
generics are things that can cause confusion (such as recognised country 
names) and a very small set which most would agree are too troubling for 
almost everyone (the only one of these that comes to my mind is .paedophile).

Artificial scarcity is one of the things holding back the Internet from 
achieving its full transformative potential. Let's not collude in another 
attempt to re-inforce this scarcity.



-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      [log in to unmask]
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/