TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Not so Fast! 'xxx' Startup Put on Hold

Re: Not so Fast! 'xxx' Startup Put on Hold

John Levine (johnl@iecc.com)
19 Aug 2005 15:59:15 -0000

> As far as I know, rumors to the contrary about certain Scandinavian
> countries notwithstanding, child pornography is completely illegal
> throughout the world.

Quite true, but the definition varies significantly at the margins.
In the aforementions countries, pictures of nude 17 year olds are
legal erotica, in the US they're child porn.

Among the bad things about .XXX is that it makes it much easier for
governments to shunt indecent content off to a ghetto, for varying
local definitions of "indecent". I'm sure there are plenty of places
in the U.S. where they'd love to push nasty topics like contraception
and homosexuality into .XXX, purely to protect innocent children.

R's,

John

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But they do that now, with filtering
programs. Filtering, never a perfect solution, now can filter out
the sexual topic of women's breasts, but the problem is it cannot
seem to understand why 'breast cancer' is not the same thing as 'I
love to look at and fantasize on those breasts'. But to the filter
writers, what is there that you cannot understand about '.xxx'? If
I write a filter and I say that a dot followed by three x's goes no
further into my computer, then other things like the context in which
'breasts' or 'sex' or whatever is to be taken becomes a moot point
doesn't it? If the real problem that '.xxx' makes writing and main-
taining filtering programs too easy? If local communities or govern-
ments decide what is to go into '.xxx' it would seem to me that all
the fuss over effective and ineffective filtering would go away. PAT]

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