by I’m really unsure about what I think about the xxx domain proposal. There are two groups of people that oppose it for different reasons.
One group opposes it because it hampers free speech and borderline content. On the free speech side, this argument is used by liberals all the time to justify porn, accept blasphemous publications against Christianity, and justify bad “art”. However, we know that free speech is not absolute. I have to register for a location to protest, I have to seek permission to be able to hand out Gospel literature in some places, the Ten Commandments can not be displayed on public property, I cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded building, etc. Second, as a Christian, I must stay away from borderline things. I’m to flee evil. I’m to remain innocent about things.
The other group opposes it because they believe it legitimizes porn. They believe that this will be like giving our approval to them. The problem I have here is that the country already does, and by granting them access to .com, .net, .org, whatever, they have been able to pick up urls that subject innocents to porn. I can just be plain surfing and end up in a place I don’t want to be. There’s no kind of warning, and no standard of filtering. I believe Microsoft thought at one time they could include content ratings in their html spec and people would follow, but they don’t and not all browsers can/do filter that stuff. As well, people do not comply, and you have to decide if you’ll still view those files.
If xxx was created, and sites policed themselves (or were policed by the state) and got rid of the .com, .org, .net traps, and were relegated to a virtual red light district, it could go a long way to easily filtering and checking on what your family is doing.
The other option is mandating some kind of content advisory on all web pages that let you filter them. Personally, the latter is probably more feasible and flexible. Now if we can only get a national body to put some standards in there, and then the browsers to comply… Now you see why XXX seems more plausible.
If XXX domain was a requirement for adult material websites, I would be all for it. It would make it much easier to filter contect etc, as needed. Now, why thats against free speach, I have no idea. No court has ever ruled that I don’t have the choice of determining what it is I watch. Granted ISP’s could decided on the ISP level to block adult content, however only Christian ISP’s, libraries, or other public locations would. There is simply too much money in the sin of porn for your average ISP to care. As a result, I don’t understand why this is an issue. By all means, limit it to its own domain. Then children can stop trying to go to whitehouse.com when they meant to got to whitehouse.gov.
The problem is in who makes the decisions on what is porn– the standards, who judges, and what happens to the monetary value of some of the .com domains that will now be up for sale. It would have been one thing if we started with the domain, it’s a whole other problem that we have now.