ICANN Denies .xxx Domain Class

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has turned down the idea of creating an “.xxx” domain, thwarting the hopes that pornography could find its way to the Internet.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. And a good thing too. Using my super power of obviousness, I think that the Internet would be ripe for exploitation of pornography if the Internet corporation was not ever vigilant.

    Just as a thought exercise, imagine if the Internet corporation did impose a G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 rating system on the Internet. Add in the reason behind the rating. No censorship per se, but you could easily set your filter to what you would and wouldn’t allow. Like the current movie system it would have its flaws, but overall it could work pretty well.

  2. thomas says:

    “thwarting the hopes that pornography could find its way to the Internet.”

    Are you kidding? You have to be kidding. Seventy percent of the revenue generated on the internet is from online pornography. You can’t be that behind the times.

  3. TheHat says:

    Gee it seems to me that we dodged a bullet here. The decision clearly will keep porno off the Internet. On a more serious note, I’m glad that porn isn’t restricted to domain xxx. The quality ofDanish porn is way better than German pron and American porn. If we had gone with xxx then how could I know what to expect? Besides American porn sites are littered with malware and viruses. Not the Danish! Their sites are clean and green, so to speak.

  4. Steph says:

    What’s that saying –

    If there was no porn on the internet there’d be only 1 site and it would be a petition to allow porn back on the internet.

    Like everyone with an IQ above 5 I am not into porn but think as long as its kept from kids there’s no reason to ban it.

  5. Another Matt says:

    Like everyone with an IQ above 5 I am not into porn but think as long as its kept from kids there’s no reason to ban it.

    Dang, and I always thought I had a higher IQ…

  6. Steph,

    I think the idea is that porn sites would have .xxx as part of their address. Just like government sites have .gov, non-profits have .org, etc. I don’t think they were trying to put all the porn on one site (though that would pose some interesting web coding issues trying to keep the various fetishists happy).