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Dear Sirs,
I am writing to express my discourse over the re-consideration of the proposed .xxx tld whilst I am in agreement that children do need to be protected online, those protections must not be made in direct contrast to other right afforded by those individuals who not only use the internet as a communications medium but also, as a business.
It is my firm belief that the proposed (and once failed) .xxx tld will not achieve what ICANN is setting out to do, for the following reasons:
1) .XXX will in no way, shape or form creates a reasonable assumption that children will be protected online by keeping adult orientated content away from minors however, if you do want to create a framework that will allow the protection of children on the internet, a better route, in my opinion, would be the creation of a new .kids top level domain.
If adopted, the .kids TLD could be utilized by various computer manufacturers and browser companies to effectively 'block' access to sites that aren't on a .kids TLD as an industry wide standard until such a time as the owner of the machines chooses to 'deactivate' that functionality in essence, ensuring that children who do go online unsupervised by their parents will not be able to access any type of material unless it is located on a .kids TLD.
2) .XXX serves no legitimate business need at the present time to the world wide web as a whole except for those companies who seek to profit from online pornography. Instead of giving those companies yet another vehicle to flood the internet with content that may be harmful to our children, why not create a TLD such as .kids that will ensure parents can restrict their children's access only to such a TLD in a manner not dis-similar to how parental controls work on most televisions equipped with a V-Chip? That, to me, would certainly make more sense in the long running fight against protecting our children on the internet along with educating parents on the uses of such internet filtering.
3) .XXX will in effect, segregate web publishers right to protected speech. By its very existence, the creation of a .XXX TLD that should only be utilized for pornographic websites will allow government and private sector censorship of content on the internet that they may not agree with and want to regulate. This in itself could potentially slow the growth of the internet as an education tool to many millions of adults, teens and children around the globe. Let us not forget that countries such as China already limit what their citizens can and cant view online, the .XXX TLD could potentially enable many more countries around the world to do the same on a much larger scale.
4) .XXX will be regulated despite assurances that it will be a 'self-regulated' Top Level Domain. IFFOR, the primary supporting organization of the proposed .XXX TLD will create policy that owners of a .XXX domain will need to attain to, for this reason alone, creating the .XXX TLD should be scrapped instead, if policy must be created for a specific TLD, create a .KIDS (or similar TLD) where distinct policies can be placed on the owners of that TLD so as it may only be used for content that can not be deemed 'inappropriate' for children to view.
5) .XXX is opposed by international governments. More and more international governments are voicing their concern over the proposed creation of a .XXX TLD in fact, rather than the creation of a .XXX TLD many countries governments are suggesting that they would in fact endorse a .KIDS top level domain as a method of protecting children online.
6) .XXX does not have the support of pornographers and adult businesses. As the proposed .XXX TLD is something that is going to be 'voluntary' it would certainly make sense to scrap plans given that the vast majority of adult companies in cyberspace right now seem to be against the idea. However, at the same time, many of these companies are all for labeling their sites with parental filtering codes from organizations such as ICRA and, the creation of a .KIDS TLD. I would suggest to you that given the online adult industry is purported to be worth tens of billions of dollars each year, the creation of a .KIDS TLD that the industry would support will be a much more profitable venture instead of wasting time, resources and money on a TLD that as of right now, doesn't look as if it will ever be voluntarily used by the majority of those companies it is being created for.
Given all of the information above in view of my own non-support of the .XXX tld, I strongly feel that this idea should be scrapped and, instead, more viable options should be considered, such as a .KIDS TLD. As I stated at the start of this correspondence, protecting children online should be something that EVERYONE has a concern with however, limiting the rights of the masses in order to protect the few is not a direction that I feel ICANN should be taking. Instead, pool the resources of ICANN, IFFOR, International governments and the companies and individuals who publish websites to come up with a more viable solution, such as a .KIDS TLD which would be a lot easier to not only police but, implement.
Sincerely Yours,
Lee Windsor, GA Media Corporation.
As with Chip, if any of you would like to use any or all of that communication, feel free to do so :)