How the Fight Over the .XXX Domain Reflects the American Soul

Internet Porn Industry and Christian Groups Both Oppose Proposed .xxx Domain Name

The decision by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to introduce a .xxx domain name for internet porn sites beautifully distills so much of American culture.

First, you got the Christian right and the adult industry coming together to fight the new domain. The church groups don’t want to further legitimize porn; the porn groups do not want to be “ghettoized.” From the New York Times:

The alliance “made for strange bedfellows, for sure,” said Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association representing more than 1,000 adult entertainment businesses. The company sponsoring the dot-xxx domain, the ICM Registry, said it had a vision of a red-light district in cyberspace that was a clean, well-lighted place, free of spam, viruses and credit card thieves. Content would be clearly labeled as adult and the whole neighborhood would be easy to block. Anyone offended by pornography could simply stay out.

“It is good for everybody,” said Stuart Lawley, the chairman and chief executive of ICM. “It is a win for the consumer of adult content. They will know that the dot-xxx sites will operate by certain standards.”

That did not satisfy religious groups that opposed the dot-xxx domains, fearing they would make pornography even more prevalent online. And Ms. Duke said that “there is no support from our community” for the plan.

Most of the coverage has focused on the nuts and bolts of the move. Will companies have to register their .xxx counterparts to avoid squatters? Will porn sites actually use the domain? Will this actually be of any help to parents or libraries or churches that need to filter out porn?

That aside, it is an amazing trick of our society that these groups can live in such parallel, yet dominant and overlapping, universes, for internet porn is both ubiquitous and widely accepted – in stark contrast to all other forms of pornography – yet not publicly acknowledged as such, just sort of seeping into culture through sly jokes about men and their computers, allowing churches to, what, pretend it’s not out there?

This takes us deeper, into our timeless debate over legalization versus prohibition in terms of moral behavior. In the United States, we love guns but hate marijuana. We tried to get rid of beer – which failed – and have never allowed prostitution. It seems a random mix, without philosophical underpinnings, entirely directed by the random acts of history, compared with, say, the Netherlands, where they actively debate the limits of their society across the board.

As for the practical questions, it will take years to see how it all filters out, so to speak. But I like this take from Flavorpill’s Caroline Stanely, via a roundup on the subject at the Atlantic:

ICANN has approved the creation of a .xxx domain for porn, which is great news for really dumb people searching for adult content online.

Photo by hansol

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