August
18, 2005
Column #1,251
Fight The .XXX Domain
The Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers (ICANN) that
governs the Internet came within a whisker of establishing an .XXX domain
for porn Web sites this week.
However, a top Bush Administration official persuaded ICANN to
postpone the decision one month.
Some believe the creation of an .XXX domain will clean up the .com
domain where there are millions of porn Web sites, and make it easy to block
obscenity from computers.
However, the Family Research Council warns the step "will not require
pornographers who are on the .com domain to relocate to the .XXX domain.
Instead, they will keep their current .com porn sites and EXPAND their
empires to the .XXX domain," says Pat Trueman, FRC's senior legal counsel
and former Chief of the U.S. Justice Department's Child Exploitation and
Obscenity Section.
The last thing America needs is to double the availability of hard core
pornography.
Instead, what's needed is enforcement of existing laws which make the
selling of obscenity illegal. There has not been one case in which the
Federal Government has prosecuted the most graphic sex on the Internet or
Cable TV.
In fact, the Bush Administration has been surprising lax in enforcing
obscenity laws, unlike the Reagan and Bush I Administrations which
incarcerated a number of pornographers and confiscated their bank accounts.
Few have gone to prison in the last five years. The new Attorney General is
promising fresh enforcement actions, and did hire Bruce Taylor, a Bush I
prosecutor, to lead a new task force to step up action. That is a modest
sign of hope.
The ICANN initiative presents a superb opportunity for the Bush
Administration to take two decisive steps:
1. The U.S. Department of Commerce, which must approve the ICANN
proposal, should refuse to do so on grounds that it will make obscenity more
available. "Pornography violates the dignity of the women and men involved,
destroys marital bonds and pollutes the minds of child and adult consumers,"
says Trueman. Indeed, many therapists have told me that half their divorce
cases involve husbands addicted to pornography.
2. The U.S. Justice Department should announce its intention to
prosecute hard core obscenity on the Internet and Cable TV. That would make
GM and other major corporations investing in porn, have second thoughts
about profiting from filmed prostitution.
What's encouraging is that Commerce Assistant Secretary Michael
Gallagher wrote a letter to ICANN's Chairman stating that "The Department of
Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and emails from individuals
expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and
children... The volume of correspondence opposed to the creation of a .XXX
domain is unprecedented. Given the extent of the negative reaction, I
request that the Board will provide a proper process and adequate additional
time for these concerns to be voiced and addressed before any additional
action takes place on this issue."
The result is a one-month delay which offers people who care about this
issue the opportunity to write a letter urging that the .XXX domain not be
established.
There is a technical reason to do so in addition to the obvious moral
issue. If you type in FRC.org, computers translate that into an alphanumeric
address which is more complicated and difficult to remember:
208.159.115.3. If you enter that number in a browser, you will get the
Family Research Council.
According to David Burt of Secure Computing Corp., if the .XXX domain
is created, each new porn site has to be researched individually, and
tracked by its numeric identity "the same way we currently track .com porn
sites. And that's a big job. We currently have 2.1 million pornography sites
we filter, which at a rate of 200 pages per site translates into about 420
million pages of pornography. So rather than making our job easier, the main
impact of a .XXX will have for the filtering companies is to simply create
more pornographic sites for us to filter."
If you do not want to have more pornography made available, write to
Asst. Secretary Michael Gallagher, U.S. Commerce Department, Washington,
D.C. 20230, and tell him you not only oppose ICANN's approval of the .XXX
domain, but also demand that existing obscenity laws be enforced on the
Internet and Cable TV.
If you or a family member have been harmed by pornography, confess it.
As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, "Have nothing to do with the fruitless
deeds of darkness, but rather expose them" (Eph. 5:11).
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