Charles on… anything that comes along

Don’t ask me why, but it’s taking a week for my articles from the paper to appear online. (Hmm, perhaps it’s so people will have to pay to read them either way?)

In which I examine the case for the “.xxx” top-level domain, and conclude that actually it won’t stop pr0n and that the pr0n-producers won’t willingly troop over there and give up their .com domains.

Why? Because if they go to .xxx then every corporate firewall in the world will block them. So any pr0n-maker with half a brain (and most of them have a fair bit more, at least where money is concerned) won’t go there without a fight.

There’s also the question of how, precisely, you define what should go into .xxx: how strong does something have to be before it “ought” to be included there? Whose definition of pr0n do you use - as in, which country’s? Or in the US, which state, since these things vary from place to place?

I’m surprised that ICANN has reconsidered this; the idea was floated in 2000 (when it was still a bad idea; nothing has changed there).

I’m more optimistic however about the idea of a “.kids” domain, where in theory you’d have stuff that only “kids” (under 16s? anyway, someone could decide) should be reading. Much easier to police; and simpler in theory. Also, you’d just do an exclusionary rule - anything not in .kids and that isn’t (say) Google, you block. Safe surfing ahoy!

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• That "independent investigation" into MPs' expenses? It's already going on (21 May 2009; score: 34.86%)