Plans to create an Internet red-light district would be revived under a new US Senate proposal.
On Thursday, two Senate Democrats, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana, introduced a bill called the "Cyber Safety for Kids Act of 2006". The 11-page measure would require the US Department of Commerce to work with ICANN , the non-profit organisation that oversees domain names, to develop plans for a domain name system that would house material deemed "harmful to minors".
That material, according to the bill, includes any "communication," image, article, recording or other "obscene" matter, including actual or simulated sexual acts and "lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast".
"By corralling pornography in its own domain, our bill provides parents with the ability to create a 'do not enter zone' for their kids," Pryor said in a statement. He is also a sponsor of a legislative proposal to levy a 25 percent tax on Internet pornographers.
The bill suggests, but does not require, that .XXX serve as the domain name ending. Any commercial Internet site or online service that "has as its principal or primary business the making available of material that is harmful to minors" would be required to move its site to that domain. Failure to comply with those requirements would result in civil penalties as determined by the Commerce Department.
It's unclear whether the measure will go very far. First of all, it could be struck down as unconstitutional, said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Courts have determined that regulations restricting speech "must serve a compelling governmental interest, and be narrowly tailored and the least intrusive method of meeting the compelling need," Johnson wrote in an email to ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com. The Supreme Court has decided that protecting children is a compelling interest, but because there are a host of "less intrusive" means of accomplishing the same goal, such as filtering and blocking software, the law probably wouldn't stand, he said.
More to the point, creating a virtual red-light district could actually undermine the politicians' goals, he argued: "Establishing a domain like this in essence sets out a flashing neon sign to minors and others that they can find porn here."
Dogged by similar complaints from an unlikely coalition of conservative family groups and the pornography industry, recent proposals for the .XXX domain have not fared well.
The new legislative proposal has met with opposition from the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian advocacy group that has charged that .XXX domains would grant yet another opportunity to flood society with pornography. The Free Speech Coalition, which represents the adult entertainment industry, also voiced disapproval, saying the relocation project was unnecessary and would lead to the "ghettoisation of protected speech".
Last summer, ICANN approved the concept, marking a complete turnaround from its objections in 2000. But a firestorm of protests followed, including pleas by the Bush administration to put any action on hold. ICANN twice delayed its decision and ultimately decided last December to postpone a vote indefinitely, saying it needed more time to review the details.
Talkback
Instead of .xxx, why not use .dem.
Yes to the mandatory .XXX urls! Speaking as a quivering U.S. porn webmaster, it would be the best thing since glossy print! Please, please, pleaaaase, please Mr Baucus and Mr Pryor, make my sites diiiiiirty again! And if anyone is actually reading this, I am not being tongue in cheek, I am absolutely serious. This would be great!
Please make the forbidden hard to find. Make it seedy, make it dirty, and the seedier and dirtier the neighborhood the better. Lets go back to YOUR teenage years. Let's go to the bad side of town driven by a bothersome urge that can be temporarily silenced by force of will... most of the time.
Lets add a dash of danger of getting caught. Its all about reading (aah, not even reading, but intently absorbing) the forbidden magazine at 3 am in a dirty alleyway in the bad side of a german town by the light of a red lightbulb with cops and dangerous nightwalkers everywhere, all ready to invade your private business. A part of you hates it, but the part of you that loves it really LOVES it. Oh yea, baby! .XXX restrict me all the way!
As for these two mouthbreathers themselves.... After someone showed B&P how to use Google, they must have had a knee jerk reaction (often a delayed side effect), and then sought to legislate what they do not comprehend. But hey, lack of knowledge has never been a stopping point here in the U.S. for any other issue, why bother here?
So IMHO, here is a real-world idea that will work within the existing system, so therefore no one will adopt it.
Porn sites in non .XXX urls should not get immediately banned. The pornographers must either be required to switch over content to .XXX within the natural expiration period of the domain ("GatesOfHeaven.Com" becomes a site for a retirement community) or their renewal rights to that url cease and expire naturally. In other words, they cannot renew for porn content. This may take 10 years, but it will happen without fuss, and God will surely grineth down uponst them.
The idea is simple, but no US legislator will follow it. Not draconian enough, no flags to wave, results happen after their terms expire, and nobody dies horrible bloody deaths.
As for my porn .coms and .biz domains, I am going to sell them off to a country that is actually free like Germany, Sweden, South Africa or the UK. Have at it guys, there is even pre-existing traffic!
I am also looking forward to the .XXX urls to open up for financial reasons, they will be a hundred times more valuable in this industry than any .com. There is a HUGE profit motivation for me to move my smut to that neighborhood, and my boxes are already packed in their plain brown wrappers ready to go.
So how bout it B&P? Enact your dum-bass law, the existing market forces will make it happen anyway, and you both come away looking like the Sherriff in that old black and white western movie constantly running in your little heads.
BTW, Baucus and and Pryor fit EXACTLY the profile of the porn enthusiast, and I do NOT mean casual browers. Don't let either one of them convince you they are palms-togther eyes-every-upward altar boys. They go there, and they go there often.
They are both from a repressed demographic area, porn is constantly on their minds (for good or bad), high pressure workaholics, boring long-term monogamous commitments, middle aged males, computer literate, above average income level, at age of great personal life changes, the list goes on. You KNOW they are looking at this stuff on their off time and lovin' it.... then hating themselves for lovin' it. These ARE the guys that pay my rent.
I say, bring it on you hypocritical puritanical freaks, make my retirement!
I have the strongest opinion that all the porn items and sites must be completely stopped or the access to these sites must be restricted like saudi arabia
but that will only work if the server is registered in the US, otherwise they just have to move the server off shore and what can the US do about it then???
Ok so i know this article is a bit old however I feel that commenting on it now is as appropriate as ever. I don't know what people are thinking but it seems to me that the opossition of the conservitives and bible beaters to the formation of a dot xxx domain and the restriction of pornographic material to this domain would be something they should be all for. The sole argument i hear proposed against this by these groups is that it would provide a virtual sign post directing you to pornography. However, it is apsolutely foolish to believe that the net is not already litter with these sign posts and that a young man researching the work of one of his beloved female catholic saints might not suddenly stumble apon a nest of pornography keyworded to such a search and be inundated with porn pop ups. The fact is that if parents knew what they were doing they would be able to restrict their children to domains not ending in xxx and thus prevent any such activities from happening. And those parents who don't believe that their children are looking at porn on the internet because they see no immediate evidence of this should stop looking at their histories (since the children have probably outsmarted them their and deleted it) and start doing a little research. Anyone who believes they would be incapable of setting up security to prevent their children from entering an xxx domain is simply demonstrating either their inability to read or their unwillingness to learn and i for one would like to refrain from often stumbling accross erotic material when i don't go looking for it. I say lets strictly control porn. Lets make it so not only are porongraphic websites relegated to their own domain but every redirect or porn pop up ment to carry you off the the galaxy of porn already waiting for you on the dot coms and dot nets can no longer operate in these locations either. I say that freedom of speach isn't being impaired it's simply being moved. You wouldn't let protestors protest in your homes so why should you let porn invade your computer screens. Freedom of speech isone thing but how about the freedom to not have to listen or look at that which we may not care to see. Plus it does serve a governemental interest at this point in time. On one hand the creation of a dot xxx domain will give a small tid bit of stimulation to our current economic situation as individuals scramble to buy and sell the new dot xxx domains. On the other it would allow us to prevent our children from viewing material parents in their ever increasing prudense believe might damage them turning them into sexual deviants and in so doing might decrease things like teen pregnancy, the high occurence of STDs, and last but certainly not least it might keep our sexual offenders list from growing by leaps and bounds on an anual basis. I think that it is important to remember that the internet is a media center and we don't allow T and A on basic cable so why should we allow it on basic internet? I also find it hard to believe that those who apose this bill haven't already thought of these verythings and i think they have their own personal agendas and would like to hear the real reason they are trying to squash this bill. Could it be that money or are the religious right afraid that if we create a internet red light district they will no longer be able to point to our lax restrictions on porn as one of the cause of natural disasters. Or are they afraid that once the new domains go up their wives might do a little research and put a stop to their personal play time?