The .xxx domain names, previously only available as part of a restricted pre-sale, are now generally available. But with their release comes concern at the prospect that they could be used to censor sites containing sexual material, and some people fear that porn sites could eventually be forced away from the .com world altogether.
Critics have been lining up to attack the .xxx launch. They argue that many companies have effectively been forced to buy the domains in order to ensure that others do not. And they claim that many governments will now consider mass-filtering .xxx. There are also concerns that non-porn sites that feature any kind of sexual content could eventually be shepherded over to .xxx en masse.
There certainly seems to be no good reason to launch .xxx. It doesn’t do anything, at least not anything positive. Will it make it easier for consumers to find or avoid porn? No. The whole thing seems like a colossal waste of time that will just cost a lot of people a lot of money, and that will make online censorship a little easier. I’d say it’s a threat to freedom of speech, but the whole concept of ‘freedom of speech’ has already been eroded by gross misuse of the term anyway.
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