Suck it up ICANN

LISBON (Reuters) – The U.S.-based Internet governing body rejected a
proposal on Friday to create an adults-only zone on the internet, or a
.XXX domain.

   

Supporters of an .XXX domain argued it would make it easier to
confine sex sites and filter them out. Opponents argued it would make
pornography on the Internet easier to find.

   

The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), which manages the Internet’s domain-name address system,
decided to reject the application for .XXX sites at a meeting in
Portugal. Story

Shame on ICANN. They had a simple way to keep pornography out of most people’s home and they decided not to.

Why this was a great idea:

• ICANN could easily mandate that domain registrars monitor the content of their registrants. There really aren’t that many domain registrars on the planet. And just forcing the top 3-4 would control 95% of the problem. Registrars who failed to comply could simply lose their status the way RegisterFly recently did.
• Forcing all porn sites onto .xxx domain names would enable Internet Service Providers to allow customers the choice whether to allow porn into their homes or not. Literally, you could block .xxx domains completely from your house in the same way you can with cable TV. Even the most clever kid couldn’t disable a firewall and see something because it would be blocked at a level so far up the line that it would be virtually impossible.
• This is the right thing to do. ICANN may have said no this time, but they will admit to it being an active debate. This simply means that people need to keep talking about it and it will change. Clearly, the European Union wants this to happen. Certainly in some parts of the globe pornography is big business to local economies… likewise it is funding the underworld in many areas like Russia and Southeast Asia.
• Pornography should not be accessed accidentally. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten porn laden email, pop-ups, comment spam, and other snares that accidentally lead to me seeing something I shouldn’t. And I consider myself fairly web savvy. The fact that my kid can try to find Disney’s website and get to porn accidentally, or that she can find porn at all in my home is an outrage. ICANN is completely culpable and must act.

What can I do? I think the only thing I can do is not let the story die. It’s a very simple solution to a growing epidemic. As JR Mahon said on YMX a few weeks ago, "We are literally growing a porn generation; a generation that think it’s cool to have porn stars inside of their brains." I don’t know about you… but I don’t want my kids growing up thinking it’s cool to have porn stars inside their brains.