It seemed inevitable, ICANN has finally voted no on the proposed .xxx domain. Political pressure by uninformed knee jerk reactionaries, have killed what would have been a elegant solution to one of the age old problems facing the net. This is bad news for families all around the world.
I’m wasting my breath now, but let me give you two real world examples:
ONE: I’m eight years old. I’m wandering through the video store alone. I don’t accidently stumble across any pornographic material, because it’s all contained in seperate area where I am not allowed. The data, considered offensive to some, is segregrated, voluntarily, by a cardboard partition. Now if I find that data an affront to all I believe in, I attack that. I don’t attack the partition that keeps my kids from accessing it!
TWO: It’s the nineties. A nice old lady is on the phone with her local ISP, she wants to know how to find information on the Internet. The friendly helpdesk guy points her to www.hotbot.com. Unfortunately she is hard of hearing and types in www.hotbox.com. “Why did you send me here?” this poor woman asks. There is no partition! Even if the owner of hotbox would prefer hotbox.xxx, he can’t have it. He doesn’t have that opportunity to mark his material as sexually explicit. Now the owner of HOT BOX® trademarked insulated enclosures might want www.hotbox.com, but he can’t have it.
The reality is that there are over 260 million porn sites out there, bringing in over 2.5 billion dollars. Ninety percent of all kids have viewed online porn, most while doing homework. Now I’m not saying that the .xxx domain is a perfect solution, but it is better than where we are now.
In example number 2, it is assumed the owner of Hotbox is a man. In fact, Danni Ashe owns Hotbox, and let me tell you … she is all woman. Chalk another one up for the male-centric chauvinist IT admin crowd.