Re: MEDIA: ICANN rejects .xxx domain

[Jim Popovitch <jimpop () yahoo com>]

David Schwartz wrote:
>         The major problem with this is that many other governments have "dangerous
> ideas" that they'd also like to be easily able to identify and isolate as
> well. If the United States gets to corral porn, why can't China corral
> Democracy? Why can't Russia corral advocates of "terrorism" (which some
> might consider independence).
>
>         I think it would be an incredibly short-sighted policy on the part of the
> U.S. government to restrict the Internet in the hopes of controlling things
> like gambling and pornography. The precedent of government isolating
> "dangerous ideas" will be adopted by many other governments and we will have
> no sound ideological grounds to oppose.

Excellent points.

I question then why we even have a need for any TLDs.  Why not just 
plain ole hostnames like nanog, www.nanog, mail.nanog.  This would make 
life soooooo much easier for many many companies that are legally forced 
to have to register every freaking TLD in their name just to protect IP 
etc.  I would imagine that the US Govt would back this proposal simply 
because of the problems with a particular TLD for www.whitehouse.

For the sake of discussion, please don't branch into an argument about 
scalability.  ;-)

-Jim P.