WASHINGTON, DC – With the opening of another public commentary period on the proposed .xxx sponsored top-level domain by ICANN, leaders of conservative Christian groups are once again imploring their members to voice their opposition to the sTLD.“FRC opposed this action the first time around, on the grounds that it would be unenforceable – and grant a legitimizing status to the porn industry,” Jared Bridges, web editor for the Family Research Council, posted to the organization’s blog in an entry dated January 9th. “While there have been a few revisions to the initial proposal, they don’t appear to offer much incentive for pornographers to leave the .com domain.”
Bridges added that the “domains that are available today including .com, .net, .gov, .edu, .us, etc., represent certain areas of societal value. The proposed revisions do nothing to address the fact that granting a niche business its own top-level domain name would be unique to pornographers, who would gain a status currently only available to groups like schools, governments and nations.”
According to the Baptist Press, the American Family Association sent an email to its members on January 9th exhorting them to voice opposition to the .xxx sTLD.
“ICANN would ask the pornographers to voluntarily move to the new triple X domain which would contain nothing but pornography,” Don Wildmon, chairman of AFA, wrote in the email. “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 their other existing domains,” added Wildmon in the email. “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.”
Opposition to the .xxxTLD from the Christian Right is nothing new; some have even suggested that it was a flurry of complaints from evangelicals that led ICANN to reject the proposed ICM Registry contract for operation of .xxx last May.
“We objected for many reasons, but the most obvious was that porn sites would be free to keep all of their current domains, such as .com, and add the .xxx domain,” Jan LaRue, chief counsel for CWA, said in May, according to the Baptist Press. “Anybody who thinks that would help parents protect kids from porn on the Internet has crashed in the cranium.”
In 2005, Family Research Council’s senior legal advisor, Patrick Trueman, delineated the FRC’s basis for opposing the .xxx TLD.
“The .com domain has been a cash cow for the porn industry and pornographers will not give it up and remove themselves to the .xxx domain,” Trueman said at the time. “Instead, they will populate the .xxx domain and perhaps double the number of porn sites available on the Web.”
A former chief of the U.S. Dept. of Justice “Child Exploitation and Obscenity Unit,” further asserted that an official .xxx domain “cloaks the porn industry with legitimacy,” and could serve to deter obscenity prosecutions.
In a recent editorial, Ray Sanders, executive editor of the Oklahoma-based Baptist Messenger, urged his readers to contact ICANN and express disapproval of .xxx. Sanders’ also voiced concern over the possible “legitimization” of pornography represented by a domain devoted to sexually explicit material.
“In the name of entertainment and education, society has already succeeded in calling gambling ‘gaming,’” Sanders wrote, according to the Baptist Press. “Now pornographers are trying to convince us that filth is art and education by designating Web sites with a self-descriptive labeling system.”
“We don’t need more pornography,” added Sanders, “we need to empty ourselves of the pornographic trash we already have.”
