Almost anything can be found on the Internet. This has long been the Internet’s greatest strength, but is also its greatest weakness. Since anything can be found online, it is often difficult to find specific content.
This has never been a problem with pornography. Finding pornography on the Internet is like finding clouds in the sky; despite your best efforts, you will see some.
One company wants to make the easy task of finding pornography online a little easier. ICM Registry has submitted an application to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to register the domain name “.xxx.” Websites registered under this domain would end in .xxx, as opposed to .com, .ca or other common suffixes. ICM’s goal is to provide an easy way for websites to indicate the pornographic content that they provide.
After initially approving the .xxx domain in 2005, ICANN came under fire from religious and special interest groups opposing the application. ICANN subsequently denied ICM permission in 2007. It took ICM three years to get the decision overturned.
Fighting the creation of a adult-specific domain is counterintuitive even if one opposes this content. Providing a direct means of indicating explicit material hardly makes a substantial change in the simplicity of locating pornography, as the Internet is already saturated with adult-only content.
By providing a domain which could be blocked entirely by child protection software, ICM’s plan would make the Internet slightly safer for young users—though websites are not obliged to register, less accessible adult content must be considered as an advantage. ICM has shown a laudable commitment to protecting young Internet users, pledging to donate $10 from each website’s annual registration fees to various initiatives that report and combat child pornography.
If ICM’s plan is successful, registering as an .xxx could become a standard move for pornographic websites, allowing them to be accessed more easily by adult content-seekers and quickly categorized by parental controls. Ideally, this registration would become mandatory, effectively addressing the concerns of both parents and religious groups alike. However, this would mean creating a universal definition of what constitutes pornographic content, something that is far from established. While the .xxx domain may not revolutionize Internet pornography, it is certainly a step in the right direction.
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