Senators Propose .XXX domain names

[VoldtaEngler]

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2006 (AFP) - Two US senators proposed legislation that would establish a new ".XXX" domain for racy or sexually explicit websites.

The bill proposed by senators Mark Pryor and Max Baucus, both Democrats, calls upon the US Department of Commerce to exclude sexually charged content from established website domain names such as .gov, .com, .org, .net, and .edu.

Baucus said at a press conference that the .XXX domain would help parents use filtering software to keep children from accessing pornographic sites, and would help prevent hapless Internet users from inadvertently stumbling onto sexually-explicit websites that they would prefer not to see.

"While the Internet is an exceptional learning tool, it allows children the same easy access to websites about space shuttles as it does for pornography," said Baucus, adding that violators would be subject to a hefty fine.

"This bill will section off a piece of the Internet neighborhood and confine adult sites to one location," the Montana senator said.

"It will give parents more tools to protect our kids. Parents should not have to worry about their children surfing into websites for adults -- either on purpose or by accident."

Curious on what BB's take on this would be and how it would effect everything with them.

[Agent Vicious Vivaldi]

I think it's a good idea but one that would probably be poorly executed. It's fine and good in theory but that's it. It's already hard for people to define porn so I imagine it wouldn't really be an effective way to cordon off porn sites from the general internet population. The whole porn and not porn would be too much of a grey area.

[Bondage Clown]

I think that i am torn on the issue. On the one hand, it is good for the consumer, but on the hand (i.e. the professional side of my life) it is a load of horse manure.
I am all for protecting kids against this, please don't think I am not. But if it goes through,
Who is going to pay for the new web-adresses? Are they going to just be added. Or are web-masters going to have to pay for the new domain's. That will be extensively a pain in the Ass. I know some companies that have 50+ websites.

Why not go the other route.. label site for kids with the extension .kid, but wait they can't do that. because then it would be against their agenda of PORN-Bashing.
I am done... I am pissed... I am going away now.

BC

[Morning Glory]

Why shouldn't kids be able to see sex? If it wasn't for people having sex then kids wouldn't be here, sounds a little hypocritical to me. So let me see who are the people that are opposed to sex? oh right, those people that follow a little thing called religion which nevermind condones prostitution, slavery and murder, is expressly prohibited from having an influence on politics by the very first law of our nation.

And all that bullshit aside, even more absurd is the fact that the united states does not own the Internet, so how can they make a law that tells people in other countries what to do?

[ForrestBlack]

To me, XXX just means something different from what you might find in an erotic coffee table art book. XXX means something different than even the most provocative images you or I might see on an art gallery wall. This isn't an official BB stance, just kinda my thoughts.

If I had a magazine stand, I would probably carry a wide range of periodicals from all over the world, and I would oppose any zoning regulations that would force me into some dangerous seedy porno ghetto just because I had some magazines on the top shelf that kids should potentially be kept away from. Nor would I want to have to call my store Forrest's XXX Magazine Stand.

Not everything that qualifies as adult content is the same and I'm not comfortable with that sort of classification and isolation. It just discourages actual creative expression, not to mention the mile long list of logistical problems.

[One Eyed Cat]

I'd be opposed to an exclusive .xxx classification. To begin with, it would be unjust to those who have legal adult content on existing domain extensions. It would disaffect anyone who had mixed content on their pages. It could not feasibly be enforced. I guess an .xxx extension in addition to the current ones would work, but there is simply no way to limit the grey area of adult content to a domain extension.

OEC

[bohoki]

i think its a good start

just allow people to keep their dot.whatever names to link to a .xxx domain the filter will stop the foward and all is well

the problem is that its impossible to define you could make ansi or ascii art with just txt

i purpose another idea start a new internet for kids that is completly incompatable with the regular net

i've never seen a filter thats perfect **** is not allowed to be typed on this board but you can mess it up with comas and its still readable

trix is for kids the internet is not, there is no cleaning it up its what freedom is

[Jessica]

I think parents need to monitor their children on the net themselves if they're so concerned about it. If we lived in a village where everyone was raising everyone else's kids, sure, I'd say, lets do it. But we don't live in that kind of society anymore. Parents are pushing the responsibility of monitoring their children onto others.

I think it's "interesting" that parents want society to parent their children when it comes to TV, radio, internet, etc and take responsibility for what their children see when they step out into the world. However, if I backhanded the neighbor's kid for mouthing off in the super market, it wouldn't go over so well.

Plus, this brings up the issue of WHO gets to decide whats appropriate and whats innapropriate. Some people feel that simple sex education or literature works are innapropriate.

So parents should individually decide what they do and don't want their children having access to.

[ForrestBlack]

I think parents need to monitor their children on the net themselves if they're so concerned about it...

I certainly agree with you there. In order to preserve the freedom parents have when it comes to teaching their children or guiding them away from the things they feel are detrimental to their children's potential development, the responsibility must remain in the individual parent's realm.

I hate flipping channels and catching some horrible screaming bloody assault scene by accident, so I'd like to potentially block ultra violent shows from my TV (at least unless I choose to unblock something I'm actually intending to watch), but I'm not that stressed about basic cable levels of sexuality, so I wouldn't bother blocking that. Someone else might feel the exact opposite way about what they are comfortable with in their household. Media producers should not be forced to the lowest common denominator, or parents lose their ability to make their own choices.

However, I also feel that the 'concerned parent' thing is really just kind of an excuse. It's the candy coating applied to what really boils down to the 'morality' activist agenda's. The root of these sorts of political pushes hardly ever really traces back to genuinely concerned individual parents.

[Mr Karl]

people should realize that if kids want porn it's real easy to get and it has been for a long time , I still remember before the internet and I had all the smut my perverted little adolescent brain could handle.

people should stop coddling thier children so much in fact I'm starting to wonder when did this all start , wasn't there a time when parents were proud that thier children could handle the crap the world has to throw thier way. I know I'm proud of my kid, dont have much of a clue what she's up to (well actually I'm not an idiot so I do know) and she's never got any special protection from anything, and she's never asked

on the other hand labeling it XXX will make it even easier to find

[Mr Karl]

Oh and I forgot my main point, porn should never be used as an excuse for committing a crime