.xxx domain

I am concerned about online safety, which I have written about:

Foremost to me is the issue of “duty of care” as a teacher towards my students. In a physical environment, it is the responsibility of the presiding teacher to ensure a reasonable safe learning environment. When we select teaching/learning material, we bear the responsibility to screen out inappropriate material. In the online world, the physical safety is not our issue. The learners should be in the safety of a laboratory or their home – which is beyond our control. The material accessible via the Internet is very difficult to censor and filter. In our particular case of online role play, the duty of care should be about the psychological safety of the players playing the simulation.

My position has been:
1. I don't believe any kind of censorship or filter will work. See a good argument by Mark Pesce
2. Voluntary regulation is only effective if there are strong policing. There ARE always people who do not play by rules. Hence policing is required to REDUCE the "bad guys".

By creating a .xxx domain, we can give the adult industry a space for them (which is to their benefit too because people visiting sites within .xxx domain will be interested in the material in the first place). However, it must be accompanied by a global government agreement to move adult content from .com domain to .xxx domain and set up strong policing framework within the .com domain.

I don't see the logic of Senator Helen Coonan's argument. Adult content IS not going to disappear. .xxx domain IS not about reducing pronographic content. .xxx domain will help POLICING! Don't fantasize that Australia can implement a filter/censor firewall to block out adult content. Try policing instead!

BTW, why US Department of Commerce has so much power over ICANN which is supposed to be independent, see news:

But the U.S. Commerce Department, which created ICANN as an independent body to take over its management of the domain name system, raised concerns about proposed mechanisms for managing the .xxx Web sites.

Critics said this was the third time Washington had delayed approving .xxx addresses, and blamed the influence of religious conservatives in the United States for the holdup.