[90243] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Schwartz)
Thu May 11 23:33:24 2006
From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com>
To: <ahebert@pubnix.net>, <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 20:32:50 -0700
In-Reply-To: <44637706.1020208@pubnix.net>
X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: nanog@nanog.org
Reply-To: davids@webmaster.com
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
> Why?
>
> If we can coral them in it and legislate to have no porn anywhere
> else than on .xxx ... should fix the issue for the prudes out there.
The major problem with this is that many other governments have "dangerous
ideas" that they'd also like to be easily able to identify and isolate as
well. If the United States gets to corral porn, why can't China corral
Democracy? Why can't Russia corral advocates of "terrorism" (which some
might consider independence).
I think it would be an incredibly short-sighted policy on the part of the
U.S. government to restrict the Internet in the hopes of controlling things
like gambling and pornography. The precedent of government isolating
"dangerous ideas" will be adopted by many other governments and we will have
no sound ideological grounds to oppose.
DS
