"Put porn where it belongs - in an online ghetto"
Quote:
Put porn where it belongs ? in an online ghetto
Plans to set up a porn-only internet domain should be welcomed
by Barbara Ellen
It's interesting that Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is setting up a porn-only internet domain, where addresses will have the suffix xxx rather than www. Interesting also that porn companies are very unhappy about it. Of course they are. Never mind the self-serving flannel about censorship, dedicated space online will result in an online porn ghetto, with sex sites filtered out more efficiently, loss of passing traffic and plummeting revenue.
That's the thing about porn companies ? they love screwing, so long as it's not with their bottom line. They know that xxx will be a disaster because it could herald the end of a phenomenon which has been around since the internet began ? the culture of "accidental pornography" (AP).
Most of us will have been sucked, so to speak, into AP. I have, during research. Before the more advanced blocking technology, it was hazardous to type "teenage girls" or, indeed, teenage anything into a search engine. Let's just say you'd get more than you bargained for, albeit surprisingly little information on British youth's intergender socioeconomic dynamic.
Elsewhere, horror stories abound of innocent children being just a few clicks away from donkey love. In truth, it's not children, or hacks like me, who make up the bulk of the AP demographic. It is the porn-deniers ? people who end up on sex sites, but prefer to pretend, even to themselves, that they're "just surfing". Sure you are.
This is the current bizarre situation ? a system set up to make things easy for those in porn-denial and those who sell to them. Meanwhile, the rest of us are forced to take action and often pay to avoid the same porn (parental restrictions, spam technology etc). Is this what xxx would do ? flush out the AP hordes, force them to make clear, defined choices about their online destinations, instead of lurking in the shadows of the regular web? Well, good. This would solve the main problem of online porn ? not the people who want it, but the people who don't: not for themselves or for their children.
As for censorship ? excuse me? When did porn (watching strangers shagging) become a basic human right? Porn consumers, who like to think of themselves as latterday Larry Flynt-esque freedom fighters, tend to take themselves, and what happens in their pants, drearily seriously. They might be surprised to learn that most of us couldn't give a liquorice thong what they get up to online, so long as it's all consenting adults. In the same way, most of us wouldn't care about someone buying dirty films in hotel rooms ? so long as we don't have to watch with them. This is what's happening right now on the internet, the whole of society being forced to deal with porn because one group wants to.
Ultimately, asking that someone type xxx instead of www has got naff all to do with censorship. If anything, it's helpful. In the supermarket, people don't march around the cheese or wine aisles looking for washing powder. So why must they search the entire internet looking for porn? There you go, porn lovers, society just made it easy for you ? your own designated smut aisle.
This move might upset porn peddlers and those poor, shy porn-deniers ? diddums. If people want porn, then basically they'll have to go forth and get their porn. In a strange way, the pro-porn lobby got what it always wanted. Hasn't it always argued that an individual's pornographic consumption is a private matter and not hurting anybody else? With xxx finally this looks like becoming true. As for porn ending up in an online ghetto ? it's where it rightfully belongs.
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