MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain

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From owner-nanog@merit.edu Thu May 11 12:41:20 2006
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 13:40:22 -0400
From: Alain Hebert <ahebert@pubnix.net>
To: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain

> Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 08:46:40 -0400
> From: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
> To: ip@v2.listbox.com
> Subject: [IP] ICANN rejects .xxx domain
>
>
> As reported in:
>
> http://abcnews.go.com/Business/print?id=1947950
>
> ICANN has reversed their earlier preliminary approval, and has now
> rejected the "dot-xxx" adult materials top-level domain. I applaud
> this wise decision by ICANN, which should simultaneously please both
> anti-porn and free speech proponents, where opposition to the TLD
> has been intense, though for totally disparate reasons.
>
> Nick's AP piece referenced above notes that there are still
> Congressional efforts to mandate such a TLD. It is important
> to work toward ensuring that these do not gain traction.

    Why?

    If we can coral them in it and legislate to have no porn anywhere
else than on .xxx ... should fix the issue for the prudes out there.

And _that_ is *precisely* "why not". <grin>

When you figure out _how_ to accomplish the 'and' part of your statement,
*world-wide*, and _how_long_ it would take to do so, *AND*CAN*GET*UNIVERSAL*
*AGREEMENT* about what has to be inside the coral(sic), well, then, and -only-
then can one consider 'what _useful_ purpose' such a TLD would serve.

Note also: attempting to impose additional restrictions on _existant_,
registered domains would likely constitute breach of contract. With
big liabilities attached -- look at what the hijacking of 'sex.com' ended
up costing the registrar that let it happen.

Restricting future domain registrations _in_an_exsiting_TLD_ raises a
separate can of worms, regarding existing registry operator and registrar
contracts.

2

So for those of us who tuned in late, when did it happen, when was the
registrar assessed the costs of letting it happen, and what were those
costs? And what effect did it have on other registrars to make them
tighten up their procedures so they wouldn't be complicit in domain
hijackings?

3

There have been at least three generations of proposals for .xxx
1 - In the early days, before ICANN's coup, while there was still
active discussion about how to manage the DNS, there were proposals to
create .sex and/or .xxx to sell to porn sites, and some of the
alt-root types succeeded in making some money doing so.
2 - A few years ago, some US prudes proposed creating a .xxx to exile
all the porn sites too, and at some point proposals were made to ICANN
to create it.
3 - Shortly thereafter, other US prudes who weren't in the loop heard
that there was a proposal to have *pornography* on the *internet*, and
got upset and tried to ban .xxx.

Tree-structured hierarchies are so much fun - there's inherently the
potential for a power struggle for ownership of the root, and it's
quite easy for the tree to absorb competitors or be absorbed by
competitors (e.g. foo.altrootgang1.altroots.net. or
microsoft.com.icannroot. both work, though the former annoys fewer
people.)

And Peter says he's working with Joe Baptista, so he doesn't need Jim
Fleming to make his net.troll quota for the month :slight_smile: (Joe may be a
troll, but he's done some *really* impressive trolling, particularly
involving fax machines and the Canadian government.)