I recently got an email from AFA. This is normal as I tend to get them once a week or so asking me to pledge support to this cause or another. Most of the time I just ignore them because I simply don't have time to respond to every call to arms that comes down the pipeline. But this one had me taking a second look.

Your help is needed to stop pornographers from having their own Internet domain.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is studying the possibility of giving the pornography industry their own domain. ICANN would ask the pornographers to voluntarily move to the new triple X domain which would contain nothing but pornography. There would be no law to force them to the new triple X domain. ICANN would depend on the good character and integrity of the pornographers to be considerate of others, including our children!!!

In addition to having the triple X domain, the pornographers could (and would) continue sending out billions of pornographic images on every other domain. As bad as pornography is on the Internet now, it would be infinitely worse with the triple X domain. The establishment of a triple X domain would give legitimacy to the pornographers.

I'm not arguing for or against porn on the internet. It's there, it's going to be there no matter what I do or think. But I do think that it needs to be regulated just as adult book stores are. If you can't prove how old you are, you can't get in. Yes, I realize that the prospect of proving your age across the internet poses its own unique set of problems. But that doesn't mean that it should be abandoned.

But that's not the point of my post. My point is actually a question. What the heck is the AFA thinking? Seriously, what are they objecting to? Allowing someone to run a pornographic web site no more legitimizes it than allowing someone to run an adult book store. Last time I checked, they're pretty much free to run whatever type of business they like (within the bounds of conventional law). Heck, I'm all for the creation of a ".xxx" domain. It would make my life SO much easier. When I configure firewalls and content filters, I'd know exactly what to block. Yes, I know, there's nothing forcing pornographers to use the domain name. But there would be a number of them who would use it. And those would just make dealing with the whole thing so much easier.

All in all, I just can't seem to get worked up about this one and instead of support, I think I'll be sending the AFA a big WTF?

Posted by: Drew at 07:26 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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