Government may block access to .xxx.
India’s government will block access to the .xxx top level domain name, according to an article in The Economic Times.
A senior official at the ministry of IT said that the domain goes against the country’s IT Act and Indian laws.
Other countries will certainly block the top level domain name, but this shouldn’t worry adult site operators. After all, many countries currently filter the web sites accessible within their borders. As long as adult sites aren’t forced to use .xxx this won’t affect them. (I don’t see a forced conversion as a possibility. Only the U.S. government would really be able to try such a thing given its special relationship with the root zone. Some congressman might propose such a scheme to appease his or her conservative base, but it wouldn’t go anywhere.)
But the article also quotes an Indian “cyber lawyer” who says this move could easily be challenged in court. He said it’s illegal to distribute adult content but watching it is permitted.
Take the article for what it’s worth — it also says .xxx registry ICM Registry is “set to make $200 million” and that it “has already registered about 250,000 domains…even before approval came in this month”. That’s not true. Even if the latter part was true, that wouldn’t come close to $200 million.
Jeff Schneider says
Hello Andrew,
Being the former Marketing Analyst for the Rockefeller I.B.E.C. Group, I had the privelage of observing the Roll out of New Financial products by the hundreds, and we all know who wound up on the short end of the stick, the consumer.
All these new extensions, being billed as the next coming of .com, are analagous to the same hosing people got who invested in these new investment products. The biggest Financial scam has now been replaced by the biggest new extension scams that come out almost monthly.
This post is yet another indication of where most new extensions will go.The originators will make lots of money and the Domainers or Consumers will lose out.
Our advice to our clients, has and always will be stick with the .Com Channel and run from the new extensions. Just a word to the wise.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
Jp says
I think it wouldbe pretty easy for a country to block an entire extension. And so what f the Gac eared against this. Stuff like this isn’t icann’s problem, it’s ICM’s problem. I’m sure ICM was aware that stuff like this way ahead of time and must have figured they’d still ten a profit.
Jon says
I am sure India and China will block .xxx by default, it makes no sense for them not to. And I am sure literally 100% of businesses and many ISPs will block .xxx in the west. And India and China are a lot more important for large porn brands than people think. These countries may not do a lot of online porn purchasing presently, but you still want them to know and like your brand, they have too many people with increasing disposable income to ignore.