[icann.org...]
These are the proposals that have met "evaluation criteria", meaning ICANN believes these organizations are have the financial and technical know-how to manage a TLD. (Of course, ICANN thinks Verisign is competant....) All proposals still have to go through a public comment period (next month) before ICANN even begins the real decision-making about which domains to add to the root.
I some of these proposals are even goofier than the last bunch, but I think that a couple of the proposals (like .travel) will interest some webmasters here. If you've got strong opinions on them, you might want to get your thoughts together for the public comment period.
Doesn't look like any of the ersatz new.net TLDs made the cut.
Actually, new.net has a .travel and a triple-X TLD that would be in trouble if ICANN approved somebody else's proposal.
As for new.net themselves, I don't think they filed any applications. The way their business has been going, I doubt they had the money to spare for the application fee.
Would I need a new domain for just a few of my pages? How would I know which ones - would a central body tell me, or would I have to guess which ones belonged and risk some kid of penalty if I guessed wrong?
In the U.S.A., obscenity is defined as explicit sexual material that, among other things, violates "contemporary community standards"- from the article above.
Sounds like the USA really needs to decide what is/what isn't adult material - with guidelines/rules publishers can decide. For those that walk close to the line it could be a problem but for the vast majority of internet publishers it would be an easy decision. For information about rape, birth control and sex: with well written and thought out guidelines this could be avoided.
The problem with different countries and different standards - don't we have this problem now? How would an 3x domain make any difference?
One thing that would disappear is domain hijacking by pornographers - no longer would an innocent looking link from a hobby site lead to a flood of animated gyrating gif's and popups.
Basically from the article in the previous posts the two main opponents were the pornographers and freedom of speech lobbies.
Pornographers - well no surprise - involves some work for them.
Freedom of speech - there is no such thing, say the wrong thing in the wrong place and you're in trouble, don't believe me - say "I've a Tom in my bag" in an Irish accent next time you're at an airport security check. What is the problem with saying that there is a right place/wrong place for adult material on the internet? -- or would it be that the freedom of speech objections come from the pornographers?
Still, .3x can help branding and labelling. A hosting company, for example, can advertise .3x domains, instantly letting the adult producer know that he/she can host there.
It removes confusion as to the content of the site, and conceivably - in the very long run - lead to better content filtering, not to mention categorisation (oh if all sites contained what it said on the label. :)
Except for some of the affiliates of course, who'd rather have non-descript ones.
As to the new ones, .cat would be a regional tld, important for their region and language (Catalā), not for the rest of the world.
But most of the people that registers on of the new TLDīs will have a lot of confused visitors...
"the site was europe.travel or it was europe-travel.com, or a subdomain like europe.travel.com? Iīm confused, I think that Iīll go to a search engine"
.web could be nice, but we are starting to have too many tldīs... it will start to be confusing...
I think I'll stick to .com, although I can see the real experts in the domain business making a buck load of money in this release.
TJ
The MPAA started out with 4 ratings, G, M, R and X. However, as X ratings were given to pornography, an X rating became like the kiss of death for anyone who wanted to make a film about adults who might occasionally discuss or do adult things. Producers and studio execs began demanding that directors deliver a movie that could receive an R rating. Directors and writers felt they were being forced to compromise their vision.
So the MPAA instituted the "NC-17" rating, and dropped the "X" from their system. The "X" is now voluntarily applied by those who wish to identify their films as being of a certain nature. The MPAA system is voluntary, but major distributors have an agreement with the MPAA not to distribute unrated films.
I think we're fast approaching a system where sites will be "rated" by the TLD they choose. ISP's will not host sites that don't have a 3X when the ISP determines they have 3X content. What this does is leave sites in limbo that are not pornographic but have content unsuitable for children. The ISP's could force these sites to either register as a 3X, water down their content , or find an ISP that's willing to risk a lawsuit when some child stumbles onto this unsuitable content that is registered as a .com.
The 3X is going to have to be supplemented with a .adult (or something more international) and probably several more TLD's. I think the MPAA provides an instructive lesson. Until TLD's intended for filtering potentially objectionable content are established with some sort of thought, just slapping a .3X on some sites won't give the result I think some people are after. I really hate to see this sort of industry regulation either legislated or decided in court.
Jack Valenti's account of the history and rational behind film ratings is at:
[mpaa.org ]
