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Moral Concerns That Are .stupid

By Tom W. Bell and Glen Whitman

ICANN, the international non-profit that governs the naming scheme for the internet, has decided to allow ?almost any domain suffix,? rather than limiting the options to the familiar .com, .org, .net., etc. This sounds like good news... but why the ?almost??

However, [ICANN chief executive Paul] Twomey told Agence France-Press that the organization will still try to block or reject any domain name that it deems inappropriate for security or moral reasons.

I?m trying to think of any good moral reason to reject any domain suffix. I can?t think of a single word or phrase that might be put in a domain suffix that isn?t already out there in the form of actual domain names or the actual text of web pages. The F-word, for instance, appears on hundreds of millions of web pages, so why not let it be used as a domain suffix?

More importantly, domain suffixes like .sex, .xxx, and dot-any-profanity-you-want will just make automatic content filtering that much easier. So if your moral concern is shielding children from material you consider inappropriate, you should be in favor of having obscene domain suffixes.

The morality police are just too officious for their own good.

Full post as published by Agoraphilia on July 06, 2008 (boomark / email).