FC: British Telecom wants ICANN to regulate sex-themed web sites

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Some of the corporations hoping to influence ICANN want the group to 
segregate web sites with erotic or sexual-themed material. In a post sent 
apparently accidentally to a public mailing list, we see that the British 
Telecom delegate to an ICANN working group says such sites must not be able 
to register in, say, a new top level domain (.ent?) created for 
"entertainment" purposes.

"This is becoming a more significant issue for us as the introduction of 
digital tv and its potential for distribution on the Net raises the public 
awareness of this issue," wrote BT's John Lewis.

It might sound like a good idea at first, but there are lots of problems 
with it. For instance, who decides what sites have an unacceptable 
percentage of sex-themed content? ICANN? British Telecom? Network 
Solutions? Morality in Media? The police?

It's not an obscure issue. Web sites that most of us might think to be 
perfectly legitimate contain sex-themed content. Editors of news 
organizations like Salon and CNET testified in the Child Online Protection 
Act lawsuit that they could be vulnerable to prosecution because their 
content might upset America's self-appointed purity protectors. (The judge 
agreed, and blocked prosecutors from enforcing the law.)

Original post from British Telecom's John Lewis:
http://www.dnso.org/clubpublic/ga-full/Arc00/msg00090.html

Mirrored copy here in case it disappears from the archive:
http://www.well.com/user/declan/docs/msg00090.html

Background on ICANN DNSO working group:
http://www.bcdnso.org/WGrapporteurs.htm

Article on Salon and CNET testimony in COPA lawsuit:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,17465,00.html

-Declan

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