I suppose it was inevitable: '.xxx' domains have been approved by ICANN:

Stuart Lawley, chairman of the ICM Registry, could not be immediately reached for comment. In an interview last year, Lawley said that .xxx domain names would cost around $75 and come with no restrictions except that any sexually explicit content feature only adults. "Apart from child pornography, which is completely illegal, we're really not in the content-monitoring business," Lawley said.

The ICM Registry plans to handle the technical aspects of running the master database of .xxx sex sites. A second, nonprofit organization called the International Foundation For Online Responsibility will be in charge of setting the rules for .xxx. It's intended to have a seven-person board of directors, including a child advocacy advocate, a free-expression aficionado and someone from the adult entertainment industry.

I'm kind of ambivalent about pornography. On the one hand, it seems 80-90% of it is all about objectifying women. (Yes, I've been in a porn shop. Yes, it was good for a few chuckles. No, I didn't buy anything ... though the football-sized vibrator would've been a nice curiosity piece for the lobby at the office.) On the other hand, I feel that the more seed spilled in excitement over a website means the less seed spotting some guy's shorts as he follows me down the sidewalk, hands in pockets. In other words, I see some merit to the idea that porn helps keep the dogs off the streets.

But I have to object to the $75 registration fee. Don't they know what kind of dough these pimps are making? A few years ago, I moved into a town right when they published a business journal overview of the region. In the video production category, the top company was a porn producer. They were making some $30 million a year. The next company down the list was at something like $1.2 million, and they were catering to the A-list agencies. If mom-and-pop.com has to pay 8 bucks to register their domain, it seems only fair that bighotcocksinaction.xxx should pay $240.

Now let's talk about something this might presage, something we won't like. Let's go back to what Lawley said:

"Apart from child pornography, which is completely illegal, we're really not in the content-monitoring business."

What concerns me is this: If we've set aside a triple-x wasteland of ejaculation-worthy online entertainment, does this mean that we can look forward to thought police for the rest of the web? Is that the real meaning of AOL's slogan "a better internet"? I'm not sure I like the idea of Big Brother deciding whether my content is up to .org snuff.

[via Peter Hughes at Technology Bytes]

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