16 September 2005

Internet .xxx real estate, going fast!

Patrick Trueman, of the conservative Family Research Council, takes on the Internet in a USA Today editorial, and makes it very clear that he just doesn't get it:
It was Churchill who observed, "There is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at, without result!" And this must be the sentiment of pornographers. For years there has been near unanimous condemnation of the notion that they should be rewarded with even more space on the Internet. Yet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet's governing agency, is moving ahead on this seductive idea.
Oh yeah, that precious limited "space on the Internet". It's a shame that it'll be going to porn merchants when it could be used for...what on earth is he talking about? It's clear that he doesn't understand that the name space on the Internet is, in practical terms, unlimited, and although some names are better than others, there's always room for another name.
Most who advocate for a .xxx domain for porn sites say children would be the chief beneficiaries because filtering pornography would become a simple matter - just block .xxx sites. That assumes that pornographers would give up their .com sites, the cash cow of the porn industry, and move to .xxx.

Pornographers may be sleazy, but that hasn't affected their sound business sense. They have been making millions on the .com domain since long before Michael Dell sold his first computer over the Internet, and they would keep all their current .com locations.
Maybe yes, maybe no. There's no inherent reason why .com should be any more profitable than .xxx. It's not as though .xxx sites would be any harder to find.

Besides, porn merchants really don't want children looking at their sites. They want people with credit cards looking at their sites. I think many of the big porn merchants would be happy to move to the .xxx domain.
Pornographers would simply expand to .xxx, thus perhaps doubling the number of porn sites and doubling their menace to society. Thus the argument that .xxx would benefit children is without any basis in fact.
News flash, Patrick: Pornographers can, today, buy just as many domain names as they want. In fact, some of them do buy many, many names, which doesn't increase the number of sites, it just increases the number of names under which they can be found. .xxx will likely have little or no effect on the number of sites, and if any do give up their .com names — and you'd better buy them when they give them up, Patrick, because if you don't, others will — you gotta count that as a win, yes?
Furthermore, creating a designated domain for pornography would simply have the effect of legitimizing much material that is likely illegal.
Ah, this is the real problem. The only action people like Patrick want taken on things they disapprove of is to eliminate them. It's all or nothing with them. There is no understanding that people are going to do these "bad" things anyway, and given that, the best thing to do is to minimize the harm that comes from them.

Just one example, one that has effects that can be seen here in Southeast Asia: social conservatives disapprove of premarital sex, so the only thing they want to do is to tell people not to have sex. Any hint of real sex education, ways to minimize the risk of pregnancy or disease, is anathema. The Bush administration has done their best to implement that policy, and given the financial clout of the US, has been fairly successful at it. And people, here and all over the world, are getting sick and dying for the sins of people like Patrick Trueman.

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