from www.citizenlink.org – Horror stories seem to share a common premise: An unholy monster terrorizes ordinary folks who need some special magic – a wooden stake or a silver bullet – to completely and finally put an end to the foul beast.

It appears that the dot-xxx top-level domain has this same unholy ability to survive. Having already been killed several times over, ICM Registry Inc., and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) have again resurrected plans to create a dot-xxx domain.

The concerns of pro-family groups have not changed in ten years. Those concerns are:

* dot-xxx will create an entirely new pornographic realm on the Internet. Proliferating pornography will not protect children from pornography. It will only increase the risk of exposure. Pornographers will not be required to abandon their dot-com Web sites.
* Creating a dot-xxx domain confers legitimacy to a largely criminal industry. It’s like creating a free-market zone for drug dealers or prostitutes to operate more effectively.
* There are state and federal laws already in place prohibiting the sale or distribution of hard-core pornography, but many Internet sites currently violate those laws. Will they adhere to the regulations of a dot-xxx domain, especially without the force of law behind them?
* Moving pornographic content to a dot-xxx domain might hamper law enforcement efforts. The problem will be seen as settled and further ignored.

ICM has been ruthlessly pushing this idea for years. ICM President Stuart Lawley [pictured] told Computer Business Review that his company hopes to register half a million sites, generating about $30 million annually.

You’ve heard the saying about herding cats? Try ensuring 500,000 porn sites aren’t breaking rules. Lawley told Family News in Focus that he plans to hire third-party contractors to make sure all sites correctly employ adult content ratings (meta-tags), but will rely on the complaint process to identify sites peddling child pornography.

In other words, the porn viewers themselves will police the new domain.

Worse, there will be “a nonprofit foundation that will include all stakeholders including child protection advocates, free speech advocates and members of the adult entertainment community that will receive $10 per domain per year,” according to Lawley.

With half a million Web sites, this foundation will receive $5 million per year. Lawley told Family News in Focus that “a lot of that money will be spent on parental awareness … [and] child education in the classroom on a national basis to make sure the people know what triple X is and, if they choose to, how to deploy filters and how to make those filters more successful.”

Now we’re going to protect children by “making sure they know what triple X is”?

Lawley also assures us that a dot-xxx domain “allows the responsible members of the adult entertainment community to identify themselves as such and … go about their business without fear of persecution.”

That persecution, presumably, is the pressure from pro-family groups to enforce federal obscenity laws. Fear that the porn industry would finally be free from prosecution is precisely why the common folks from this nation and around the world have fought so tirelessly to kill the dot-xxx beast.

If a silver bullet exists, it will be found among the public comments generated from average folks.

Please take a moment to register your concerns with ICANN and then invite your friends and family to do the same. Send an email to [email protected].