Are You Ready For The Porn Ghetto?

[desslock]

Well another thing .... why does the existance of the xxx domain presume that all adult websites must use it?

Not every FM Radio station uses the .fm domain. Non profit organizations do not use org.

Plus.... this proposal is not segregation. This proposal is zoning, exactly like the land use zoning laws that cities use to divide one area into single family homes, and another area mixed business use. Instigating this proposal is a fundamental, dramatic change to the way the Internet has been organized and operated.

Also, to require an industry to purchase its address from a monopoly provider is absolutely rediculous.....

Steve

[gaystoryman]

The joys of the internet and differing opinions and views. That is part of what makes this great and something that will suffer with the advent of segregation. Yes segregation Steve not zoning.

Zoning refers to a plot of real estate where certain building can be built and operated, and to some extend even what type of business can be opened. However the XXX TLD is segregation as it applies to people, to all who display non comforming images and text and ideas. The ghetto's of Warsaw were not zoning changes Steve, they were segregated communities just as the small black townships where before integration took place. Not zoning in any way shape or form.

For those who thing that well this is gonna get the government off your backs, you only need to look at recent history to show you that is just not going to happen. By embracing this segregated TLD you are only making it easier for those who oppose our lifestyle, our concept of what is and what isn't acceptable to isolate and eventually try to eliminate.

Alarmist you might say, but history has clearly shown that no matter how good the supposed intentions are, segregation and racism are not good for those being isolated. Hitler came to power promising pride and work, he didn't get to power promising war and extermination. The Russian revolution of 1917 was about bread instead of guns for the people and the end result was a 70 odd year arms race. So no, history clearly shows that as much as you might wish that idealistic goals are the true aim of segregation, reality is that it is merely window dressing for other aims and goals and ambitions.

Scoff if you will, but when all you nice adult sites are behind a XXX TLD it is very easy for a George Bush to put pressure on Google and MSN and Yahoo and others to cut XXX TLD from their indexes. Laugh you might that it would never happen, but get real because the assault has already begun. Do you really believe that the lawsuit against Google for its database is really to 'test' out filter programs?

Sure Google is battling it now, but even they aren't capable of endless legal battles. And frankly to put your trust in 9 people who have political masters is to say the least, a bit naive. Given the views stated by the new CHief Justice on Adult and the New Associate Justice, I'd be a lot more worried than not.

Appeasement only prolongs the struggle as Britain and France found out in 1939. All the XXX TLD will do is make it easier to isolate and find everyone. YOu think 2257 is crazy, wait till you see the requirements that could be easily added without legal recourse. Think about it before you embrace segregation as a way of appeasing those who want to attack.

Right now and since its inception, 2257 has been in the courts. It hasn't stopped the flow of child abuse one iota. It never will because it simply doesn't attack the problem, instead it attacks those who could actually help erase it. Look at how the government attempted to add all website owners to being required to list their addresses and be available for inspection of records and now with the XXX TLD they can have all that without the need to pass one single law. It can simply become a term of service to get a XXX domain.

There is the economic factor as well. The adult industry is lucrative and so it can afford the top guns in the legal profession. What will happen when that income drops to mere drops instead? Will those top guns still defend you?

By segregating the adult community it lessens the economic viability of the whole industry. Discreet pressure on the major search engines alone would have a devastating effect. Without that flow of easy to find sites, how many people will not seek alternative means? Magazines will see a rise but your website sure won't.

Without free and unincumbered access your revenue stream is going to dry up and then how many lawyers will you have on staff? So when the final wave does come, there won't be many to begin with, and those that are left won't have the means to fight. Think that is wrong? Look at history to see exactly how true that is. Look to 1932 Germany and by the time Hitler was finished, 12 million people had been exterminated. They couldn't afford to fight, to buy their freedom because they were denied jobs, denied the opportunity to work, and in short order they were easily gotten rid of.

That is history's lesson on segregation so before you jump up and down embracing the XXX TLD think about it.

But let's take it one more step, to show why this really isn't zoning but out and out racism. Let's not just have a XXX TLD but you know what, lets have a BLK TLD .. and put all those who are black skinned and own a website into that TLD... tell me then that XXX TLD isn't racist and segregation. Tell me when you take any minority group and put them behind a brick wall it isn't segregation.

It is naive to believe that the government is in favor of this to protect children. We are smart enough to know that no matter what you do, the CP asswipes will exist on the internet, whether it is in a dot com or a dot org or any other TLD you might want to name. One place you more than likely won't find them will be in the XXX TLD because they aren't that stupid. They aren't open now, why will they be later? It is absurd to believe this will eliminate them or harm their operation. It won't. As for stopping children from seeing adult content, wake up and make the one's who brought them into the world responsible for a change.

Poor Justin is a victim according to everyone on the media, yet not a word about his mom who hadn't a clue he was doing all that? She's was a bloody councillor and didn't know? Like excuse me but I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday. Of course she knew, she just didn't want to deal with it. Just like most parents don't, because it is inconvenient to them. Tough shit. Parenting is not about what is best for the adult, it is about raising a child to become an adult, and that means assuming responsibility.

If you truly want to end child abuse, start teaching people how to be parents and start making THEM accountable instead of strangers.

my quarters worth :coffee:

[maxpower]

I for 1 will not give up my .com’s I don’t give a shit .com’s are all I will buy and I don’t see that changing. If I have to move to another country to do my work I will tell you one thing they will definitely regret it. If you don’t like what’s online don’t pay to have internet service, we are the ones that made the internet and really the home PC business what it is, with-out porn how many people do you really think would even own a PC at all? Now that they have made their money and established it they want to jerk the rug out form under the people that made it all possible. I say FUCK THEM! They will have to pry my .coms from my cold dead hands :bomb:

[desslock]

Well I don't think anyone would disagree with you about all those things. And I don't agree at all with the proposed rule. I think it's a terrible idea.

But the proposal being offered is de facto zoning. Wikipedia even calls zoning "regulation of the kinds of activities acceptable for certain areas." This is exactly what is being proposed, and it is a dramatic departure from the way the Internet was organized.

Now I would argue that zoning has historically been used to segregate areas, and that is what people are complaining about here. Why is the ICANN proposal segregation? Simple, because it introduces zoning to the Internet.

By the way, the largest city in the United States without any zoning is Houston. Every time there is a referendum (the latest was in 1993), the proposal loses because the blacks and hispanics vote against it. Zoning commissions are always operated for the benefit of the elites. New York City invented zoning in the early 20th century.... That's one reason it is one of the most expensive places to live on Earth today.

Steve

PS: If everyone really has such Kafkaesque scenarios of what the government may do to adult websites.... once again, why not do what every other industry does, and that is to form an advocacy organization. Just run TV ads that say "We are not China. Respect the Internet" ... stuff like that... Draw a line to something the Chinese government would assert.... it would resonate.

[basschick]

well, i do have a problem with it. of all the parents i know who are not adult webmasters, not ONE of them uses any filter for their children. that is a big fat fucking zero.

if what they wanted was to protect children, wouldn't the obvious and inexpensive thing be to come up with a law requiring sites with inappropriate content for minors to put a piece of code in their meta tags? and then ALL filters could check for that code. then require parents to USE some kind of filtering and voila! problem solved.

it would be simple, easy, free to implement and would allow 100% successful filtering out of all sites using that snippet of code. medical sites, art sites or other sites that have things that might not be appropriate for kids could use this code without being considered porn and being put on .xxx.

the catch here is that parental responsibility is not something that is even mentioned anymore. but with just a little of it, we could all work together happily without a financial burden being placed on one group of people.

[gaystoryman]

I think with all due respect Steve that what you are saying, in regards to calling this zoning is one of the major reasons people like Bush and his ilk get away with all that they do.

By making it sound less ominous, less distasteful people get used to it. Look at the words they use now, ethnic cleansing instead of what it truly is... race murder. You call people who are fighting their own kind, secular violence, as if it is cloistered behind some monastery. Time to stop the pussy footing and call a spade a spade.

Compare the definitions and tell me again how this is just 'zoning'.

Zoning
1. To divide into zones.
2. To designate or mark off into zones.
3. To surround or encircle with or as if with a belt or girdle.
(dictionary.com)

Segregation
# The act or process of segregating or the condition of being segregated.
# The policy or practice of separating people of different races, classes, or ethnic groups, as in schools, housing, and public or commercial facilities, especially as a form of discrimination.

(dictionary.com)

There is no way that the religious right want this for protecting children, it is their way to isolate us so they can dictate who can see what and not see what. Even the article Lee quoted, calls this the Virtual Red Light and if you ask any policeman on why they favour red light districts, they'll tell you it is so they can control the undesireable elements and the associated crime. In reality, it is so they know who to watch, and can easily locate them. XXX TLD is the same, call it zoning if you wish, but if you look at the real definition of segregation, that is exactly what this is.

:coffee:

[hdkbill]

The problem of course is that parents no longer accept responsibility for the actions of their own children....hell, for that matter, not even for themselves. We've become a society of "blame someone else for our problems...and expect someone to fix it for us".

Bill

[basschick]

quite true, and if the parents don't use filtering for their kids, putting porn sites on .xxx won't help or change anything in any way.

besides, what about OTHER sites that could be harmful to minors that aren't porn? should doctors who show things from surgeries have to be put on .xxx? what about extreme violence sites? they are certainly not suitable for minors but they are definitely not porn.

The problem of course is that parents no longer accept responsibility for the actions of their own children....hell, for that matter, not even for themselves. We've become a society of "blame someone else for our problems...and expect someone to fix it for us".

Bill

[hdkbill]

quite true, and if the parents don't use filtering for their kids, putting porn sites on .xxx won't help or change anything in any way.

besides, what about OTHER sites that could be harmful to minors that aren't porn? should doctors who show things from surgeries have to be put on .xxx? what about extreme violence sites? they are certainly not suitable for minors but they are definitely not porn.

Basschick,

So true, but unfortunately it seems as if it is the adult industry who is in the cross hairs at the moment. I mean, the religious right has targeted us and gay issues as the replacement for communism. They have to do something to keep their funds coming in.

And, if the truth were known, the politicians aren't really tyring to protect kids from seeing adult material. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that the minute a kids sees a url ending with .xxx that will be the first one the kid looks at if the parents don't have filters on the computers. And, what about 2257, anyone who thinks that protects minors needs to go buy some more swamp land in Florida and start building an Ark.

Hugs,

Bill

[basschick]

i see them concerned with only 3 things:

gay marriage (and gay rights)
porn
abortion.

the "conservatives" and so-called christians live in a fantasy world. the ones i talk to have no idea of real problems. child and spousal abuse is out of control, people are starving and homeless - but they don't really believe any of that, probably because they don't want to

too bad their fantasies spill over on the rest of us...

Basschick,

So true, but unfortunately it seems as if it is the adult industry who is in the cross hairs at the moment. I mean, the religious right has targeted us and gay issues as the replacement for communism. They have to do something to keep their funds coming in.

And, if the truth were known, the politicians aren't really tyring to protect kids from seeing adult material. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that the minute a kids sees a url ending with .xxx that will be the first one the kid looks at if the parents don't have filters on the computers. And, what about 2257, anyone who thinks that protects minors needs to go buy some more swamp land in Florida and start building an Ark.

Hugs,

Bill

[Paco]

The problem of course is that parents no longer accept responsibility for the actions of their own children....hell, for that matter, not even for themselves. We've become a society of "blame someone else for our problems...and expect someone to fix it for us".
Bill

Woo hoo! Bill, you just opened a HUGE can of worms!
(Going off-topic, somewhat.)

I agree: responsibility and accountability have gone the way of the dodo bird - many persons want to look at others for their shortcomings, but not themselves.

Too many parents expect others to police their children, but NOT with a firm hand.
Too many people expect the government and society to bail them out of their financial problems (bankruptcy), over and over again (once, sure, I guess I can try to understand. But the truly off the wall are those that declare personal bankruptcy - how the hell can a person expect to keep what they purchased, on credit? Give back your HDTV and gaming console you POS!).

As far as I am concerned, if YOU cannot take care of YOUR responsibilities (children &/or business ‘ventures’), more or less by YOURSELF, maybe YOU do not deserve the right to reproduce or wonder off on some business venture. (Yah, I am sure many think that is a fascists attitude. Oh well!) Please, keep in mind I am not talking about the citizens of a third world country ... I am going on about North Americans (Canadians and Americans).

EVERYBODY wants to be a movie star (or ‘be like Mike’), yet nobody is reading the script. Blah blah, and a wah wah, I have too much pride to get a regular 9-5, but not so much that they can still expect good ole Uncle to fix their shit!

Uh, sorry folks. I must have spent too much time in the backcountry, away from society, as it seems since I've been back all I want to do is blah blah.

[basschick]

Paco - i don't think parental responsibility IS off topic. i think it IS the topic. we have all sorts of very easy and free ways for parents to keep their kids from seeing most porn. even though they are easy AND free, and come complete with most major dialup/dsl accounts, no parents bother to use them.

if parents took just a tiny bit of responsibility, they wouldn't have to be so upset.

look at that grandma who bought her 14 year old grandson GTA3 - San Andreas. there's a big fat M MATURE on the front and the back of the box. it says it's not suitable and it says WHY. she bought it and gave it to the kid and now is suing rockstar and demanding government action. if she had spent 2 minutes or less reading, her 14 year old grandson wouldn't have ever seen that game. but 2 minutes is FAR too much time to spend on the children these people claim to love and care for. they'd rather just yell.

[Paco]

Paco - i don't think parental responsibility IS off topic. i think it IS the topic. we have all sorts of very easy and free ways for parents to keep their kids from seeing most porn. even though they are easy AND free, and come complete with most major dialup/dsl accounts, no parents bother to use them.
if parents took just a tiny bit of responsibility, they wouldn't have to be so upset.
look at that grandma who bought her 14 year old grandson GTA3 - San Andreas. there's a big fat M MATURE on the front and the back of the box. it says it's not suitable and it says WHY. she bought it and gave it to the kid and now is suing rockstar and demanding government action. if she had spent 2 minutes or less reading, her 14 year old grandson wouldn't have ever seen that game. but 2 minutes is FAR too much time to spend on the children these people claim to love and care for. they'd rather just yell.

Thank you Madam - I was not sure if some would appreciate the tangent, I went off on, so I threw in the apology.
I do agree with you. The problem is bad parents are becoming more frequent and the voices (complaints) are becoming louder. Because the government could never get away with forcing them to take 'proper parenting classes', additional rules have to be applied.

In all honesty, I truly hate censorship (I view the .xxx domain proposal as a form of), HOWEVER, it is needed, thanks to the bad fathers and mothers!

[gaystoryman]

Thank you Madam - I was not sure if some would appreciate the tangent, I went off on, so I threw in the apology.
I do agree with you. The problem is bad parents are becoming more frequent and the voices (complaints) are becoming louder. Because the government could never get away with forcing them to take 'proper parenting classes', additional rules have to be applied.

In all honesty, I truly hate censorship (I view the .xxx domain proposal as a form of), HOWEVER, it is needed, thanks to the bad fathers and mothers!

If the problem is bad parenting (for which I agree) then how does censorship and segregation solve it? Isn't the only way to solve a problem is deal with the cause not its effects? That's sort of like saying if a person has a cough due to cancer of the lungs, give him cough syrop.

What is needed is action against the cause, not the symptom. And while cough syrop might help the cough, placing adult sites under XXX isn't going to help stop one kid from seeing naked pictures. Sorry but while it is most likely a losing battle, caving in to the puritans is not going to solve anything, it never has as history clearly bears out.

[basschick]

you know what amazes me? you wouldn't think so, but there actually are laws in place to keep parental neglect from harming children. too bad no one applies those laws.

even if all porn disappeared off the web, there are still chatroom predators, sites showing dismembered bodies, and a lot of other stuff i certainly wouldn't want children to see. the bottom line is that without parental supervision and guidance, children are at least going to see things they shouldn't and at most become victims.