Congress Approves Dot-Kids

Child Safe Domain

[digitalghost]

Article in the Washington Post:

[washingtonpost.com...]

Links outside of dot-kids are forbidden.

I'm always sceptical when the government wants to play babysitter, this doesn't lessen my scepticism.

[CHC]

I've got k1ds.us! :)

[IanTurner]

And just how do they intend to police the linking business.

I am sure that there will be plenty of server side redirects and use of things like mod rewrite that will not be obvious.

[bobriggs]

'NeuStar's primary responsibility is to police the new domain...'

'cannot post hyperlinks to locations outside of the kids.us domain'

Ah-ah-ah, little Johnny, there'll be no linking to nickelodeon.com -

And just how do they intend to police the linking business.

Exactly. This just looks like another piece of feel-good legislation to me. Even if they wrote some spider to check all the domains in the webspace, they would also have to look at external (and/or internal) javascript links, flash, java, etc methods, in addition to the redirects and rewrites that IanTurner mentions.

Note that ICANN criticized the .kids proposal, prompting .kids.us - which I don't think it can do anything about?

[dingman]

No, I seriously doubt that ICANN can do anything about .kids.us, any more than they could if I decided to start selling namespace in .kids.my-domain.com. However, I think anyone who decides to limit their child's browsing to .kids.us will be doing that child a severe disservice.

[roneill]

I read in another article they plan on creating an agency to basically monitor the domain.

[IanTurner]

An agency to monitor the domain implies cost, that cost will have to be passed on to the purchasers of the domains in someway. The domains will then be overpriced and no one will use them.

Unless of course they fund this out of taxation. In which case the general populace of the US could end up paying for the policing of domains owned by non-US citizens.

[dingman]

And I'm betting this initiative was primarily supported from the same side of the aisle that usually complains loudly about bloated government, too...

[bobriggs]

[washingtonpost.com...]

"You can have the safest place in the world, but if nobody goes there, nobody is protected," NeuStar Inc. Director of Policy and Business Development Jim Casey said Tuesday after the House of Representatives voted 406-2 to approve the "Dot-Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002."

I want to know who the -2 intelligent ones were. It's just feel-good legislation designed to keep the incumbents in office. A challenger can't say he voted 'for the children'.