Inside Internet Filtering

On Friday, June 25th 2010, ICANN approved the .xxx domain extension after many years of debate. They claim that this is helpful because by creating an “adults only” section of the Internet it will make it easier to filter. Instead of having to block sites one by one, like we must on the .com extension, they say filtering companies could just block any domain with ending in .xxx.

This just isn’t the case:

1. Just because .xxx now exists, doesn’t mean all the porn sites with .com addresses will change to .xxx. So we still have to filter .com sites one-by-one.

2. Porn sites likely won’t stop buying .com and only buy .xxx. I expect them to buy both the .com and the .xxx. So there will likely be more porn domains in the future.

3. .xxx domains aren’t limited to just adult sites. Non adult sites will buy the .xxx site to protect their name, and many are already reserving them. So, a blanket block of .xxx by an Internet filter could result in over blocking.

In the end the .xxx domain won’t make Internet filtering any easier, but it won’t necessarily make the job any more difficult either.

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