After years of debate, ICANN, the not-for-profit regulatory agency that issues domain suffixes, decided to go ahead with domains ending in .xxx for adult sites.
ICANN says the measure is intended to “provide a place online for adult entertainment providers and their service providers who want to be part of our voluntary self regulatory community.” They also claim that it will make “simple and effective filtering” of adult content easier for those who don’t want to encounter porn online.
Well, I spoke with our CTO who probably knows more about filtering Internet content than, well, anyone, and he seemed quite dubious about this new domain designation doing anything to help filter out adult content or keep it away from kids.
“The way in which ICANN has chosen to implement the .XXX domain will actually have no effect whatsoever in terms of filtering adult content on the Internet,” says Aaron Kenny, CTO and co-founder of InternetSafety.com. “What it will do is require legitimate companies to purchase .xxx extensions of company domains in order to protect their brand. Without the .xxx being mandatory and requiring adult sites to give up their .com domains, this measure will ultimately do nothing to help filter adult content online.”
People have been all across the board on this issue, with some attacking it from the right saying it further legitimizes the pornography industry, and some on the left fearing it will open the door for censorship. What do you think about the .xxx domain decision? Will it do anything to help parents shield kids from pornography? Will it legitimize the industry even more?