Dot XXX Could be Good

Why are conservatives groups and the Bush administration opposing the proposal for a new top-level domain (.xxx)? It makes no sense! An Internet red-light district could help keep indecent material segregated and away from children. The L.A. Times reports:

Five years after a separate space was first proposed to deal with the huge amount of traffic to pornography websites, the rollout of the proposed .xxx domain was delayed Tuesday after a top Commerce Department official said he had received 6,000 letters and e-mails opposing the plan.

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Supporters say a porn-only domain could make it easier for parents to block access to adult entertainment websites on children’s computers, and some say it could set the stage for virtual “zoning laws” requiring all pornographic websites to abandon the .com domain for .xxx.

But conservative groups and representatives of the adult entertainment industry oppose a .xxx domain. They have different reasons but agree on one thing: It wouldn’t do anything to prevent unwanted sexy e-mail or keep kids away from adult sites.

Whenever social conservatives and smut peddlers agree, someone is confused. In this case, it’s social conservatives. With a .xxx domain, the Family Research Council and other groups would have a fairly easy case to make that the other domains should be family-friendly by law. Legislation banning indecent material from the rest of the Internet would be a realistic possibility and could well be upheld by the Supreme Court as a permissible “time, place, and manner” restriction on speech. “Indecency” is a much larger category of material than “obscenity.” Some pornography is obscene, but all pornography is indecent.

The Family Research Council would apparently rather focus on gathering support for prosecuting obscenity. It’s a worthy goal and should be pursued. But, realistically speaking, only a small fraction of the pornography could ever be found obscene. So, why not take this chance to protect children from all pornography by putting it under one domain?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Constitution and Courts, Technology, The Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.