Why not make a .porn for all porn

[gerald_weigel]

I too think it wouldn't be a bad idea to have all sites which contain nudity to have a .adult domain name. After all, it's not saying that it's porn, or that it's evil/wrong to look at, it just helps people decide if they want to look at it. I think it's only responsible for websites to try stick to a moral line, so to speak, and I'm sure that the mainstream adult industry would be more than willing to comply with any government mandate telling them to change to a .adult domain name. After all, it would lend credibility to their argument that the adult industry isn't the enemy. And why not have the government throw some money at this, they p*$$ away most of the tax money anyway on things like welfare anyway.

I'm not saying that a government solution is best, or even that it would work. What would be nice, is if the majority of the "porn" sites out there would step up to the plate and show us how responsible they can be. I would love it if the porn community could show us how mature they can be by self imposing such measures to keep kids out, or to at least give parents a hand in limiting their kids' exposure to adult sites.

Why are people against giving adult sites a .adult name? So far, none of the arguments I've seen are any more credible than saying "It's the MAN trying to keep us down." You have ratings on TV shows, you have ratings on movies, even on video games. Why should websites be any different?

I'm not saying that I plan to solely rely on a rating system to keep my kids(yes I have two of my own) off porn sites. To say that, smacks of stupidity born of ignorance. And yes I plan on using software to limit what they do see on the internet. But to say that the parents need to watch what their children do, every minute of the day is stupid. Anyone who has kids will agree with me that it is impossible to watch them 24/7 (there's nothing in this world faster than a toddler on a mission ) And until you have kids, you shouldn't give parenting advice. More along those experience lines, i guess.

[Jüš† ä gü¥]

I think that is an excellent idea.

[RayH]

They already got it. It's call .com

[VHockey86]

Originally posted by gerald_weigel
You have ratings on TV shows, you have ratings on movies, even on video games. Why should websites be any different?

Ya.. but those arent exactly enforced by law. They are more of a recommendation. If a 12 year old watches something rated M on TV, is anyone going to sue the parents? Of course not, that would be silly. Can any kid that looks 14 or older get into an R Rated movie, in most cases yes.

So how would moving something to another domain be any more effective? The sites would still register their .com/.net domains, and those that were on the new domain would make even more advertising efforts in the non-adult domains

I guess I can see the logic behind it for little kids so they dont accidentally enter it.. But cmon.... thats an enormous amount of effort to prevent such a thing, not to mention a waste of money. There are other much more reasonable solutions to keeping little kids away from it. Parental supervision, filtering programs, etc

It would be nice if all that stuff was kept away from children that should not see it, so in theory I'll say its not a bad idea. However actualy carrying it out and enforcing it is absurd.

[tom0360]

I personally don't think more parental supervision would solve anything. How many of the younger people here under 18 want more parental supervision? If parents sat and looked over their childs shoulders all the time I am sure they could stop the child from going to a questionable site on purpose, but would not stop the crap you get to by accident. Also monitoring everything a child does is not only impossible, it would make life for the parent and especially the child real annoying. Most of the filtering software is garbage. Many are easily shutdown or way to sensitive and seem to block a lot more then needs to be blocked or even constantly ask for passwords. I think the internet is way to packed with so many websites that searching for anything is a pain in the butt. 3 years ago if I searched for something boom I found it, now I find sites that have absolutley no relation to what I search for. To many tricks and questionable tactics to fool someone in going to there site. I think the internet is a great asset that could be even better if it had some real guidelines. Why not have .adult .kids .cars etc.. why not start organizing it in some mannor now instead of waiting until it is impossible to find anything online. If I used the same tatics many of these sites use and went and bought up domains and but John 3:16 on it with a picture of Jesus on a cross telling people to repent and then made doorway pages to submit it to thousands of search engines under different pages thousands of times people would go nuts yet no one seems to mind the porn, hmm I wonder why John P. thinks our world is in a decline.

[kopfjaeger]

Of course those from the younger set would balk at increased parental controls on the internet. Adolescence is nothing without the assertion of independence and adulthood. The natural tendancy is to want to stay up as late as you like, eat all the ice cream you want, etc..

But parents have the right and affirmitive duty to raise their children to become stable, moral and productive adults. It's not just a duty to the children themselves, but also to the rest of society. The other side of the coin is their duty to protect the health, safety, welfare and morals of those same children.

These rights and duties, in the world of Rockwell's America and Leave it to Beaver, went without saying. All this changed in the Timothy Leary 'Tune in, Turn On, Drop Out, If-It-Feels-Good-Do-It' 1970's. Now you have a Hollywood and powerful popular media controlled by the same generation who were fighting the morals of the 1950's during the 1970's. The media have great appeal and that appeal is aimed directly at the pocketbooks, wallets and impressionable hearts and minds of young Americans.

The internet is yet another extension of the popular media, squared and cubed by its international reach. Because the modern economy now demands two working incomes instead of one, it also facilitates unsupervised access to movies, music, and images, to include the Net. This makes it that much harder to fulfull the duties of a parent and to keep young and impressionable minds from piped-in pornography and predatory chat room pederasts.

The balance of power has been skewed in favor of those who do not have the best interests -- be they financial or moral -- of kids in mind. The introduction of .xxx, .sex, .kid and similar domains, which would facilitate the effectiveness of screening software, makes sense and moves toward leveling the playing field between parents and the smut merchants / Spammers.

How could one practically effect such a change in domain structure? Courts have held that domain names are not property per se, but more in the form of home address or Post Office Boxes. Those who have trademarked or copyrighted intellectual property have a heightened level of protection. But this property is not of the same kind as homestead real estate. Legislation which is sweeping can and does affect the property rights of current holders, which may have some claim to grandfathered protection for perhaps a phase-out period.

Porn sites come and go all the time, so already domain names are already constantly shifting, so the phase-out period need not be all that long. Phasing in of the new regime-- i.e. any new porn sites must have an adult style domain extension, spammers must use something like ".adv" -- can take place in steps. [I think three-digit domains are the most practical, since not all machines can use long file names.]

Violators can be subject to fines and imprisonment, just like conduct in the real world. How do you find them? Ping, traceroute, Intel CPU ID's, Hashes, (it's interesting to see how RIAA is taking advantage of all the spyware built into the Net to locate who they deem to be violators of IP rights). ISP's can and should be held to account for enforcing acceptable use policies, whether it be related to porn or SPAM. Overseas originators can be leaned on by several different ways: international accords (such as how Transparency International is dealing with governmental graft and corruption), treaties and banning of ISPs and domains who repeatedly are the source of spam or spammed porn.

Constitutional? Absolutely. The First Amendment was drafted and coexisted with non-conflicting law related to obscenity, slander, libel, and in the modern day, false advertising.

It can and should be done.

Delenda Carthgo est!

[tom0360]

Well Said kopfjaeger.

[gerald_weigel]

Here, here.

[kopfjaeger]

Thanks fellas.

By the way, I worked in telecom and internet law for about 5 years (AOL / TCI / GTE / Earthlink / NetCom / ComSat / UUNet / WorldCom / MCI, etc...), at least until the Dot.com bubble burst .

There are ways of rounding up the bad guys and leaving the rights to free expression nearly untouched. The key phrase is "narrowly tailored," e.g. using the law as a scalpel and not a sledgehammer.

[demonxxx]

"There are ways of rounding up the bad guys"

I find it funny how someone can label another group as the "bad guy", taken it from another stand point an atheist should label Christians as the "bad guy" but then of course all hell would break loose.

The world going to be great when all the old ones die off, and we no longer have to hear about the "good old days"

Not to be brutal but it gets old hearing about how thing have changed blah blah, do you expect the world to stand still for you? Humans definately fear change though