Weighing in on .xxx

[Author/Editor's note(s): I considered doing a cute "no porn" logo since I've bene playing with GIMP lately but I figured it might be in poor taste, and I'm running late as it is.

Also, I'm going out of town for four days, so the updates might not be daily.]

For background information on the subject I'm about to discuss, start with the Wikipedia article.

ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It was formed in the late 90s to handle the hustle and flow of internet traffic. It's something like a zoning commission for the internet, run by committee.

The following entry was springboarded by Regina Lynn's wired news editorial on the topic.

I'm rather torn on the .xxx debate myself. When I first heard about it, I thought it was a great idea. But the more I think about it, the less it appeals to me.

I'm not a big fan, you see, of porn. I have something of a negative history with the stuff. The guys at XXXchurch are my heros. I once encouraged a local bible study at my Alma Matter to create an offshoot meeting to deal with pornography addiction, and helped lead the meetings for that group for a semester.

So the ideal of corralling all of the porn in one place, and putting a label on it and a fence around it and opening it up to oppression and censorship and taxation, is appealing to my anti-pornography mentality.

But my politics cannot support that move.

There are a couple of reasons. One is that I believe that the freedom of the internet is important. I think that the wild-west mentality we have here is valuable. It keeps us healthy, competitive, and reasonable.

That mentality drives the development of the internet in ways that we aren't driven in day to day life because protective legislation, government funding, and idiotic laws designed to keep us from doing anything that might be considered harmful to ourselves. The widely held belief in American society is that the government exists to take care of us and protect us, even from ourselves, and I view the internet as a haven where that mentality is not yet rampant, where we still realize there is untamed territory out there and we must thrive in it.

It means that we rise up in anger when China moves to censor its bloggers from using phrases like "democratic rule" and "human rights." We cry out with shock and anger because we know, instinctively, that censorship is something that doesn't belong in this part of the human experience. The internet is not a place for control, it's a place for freedom of expression and information, because we as a species need an outlet for that freedom that is unfettered.

In addition, I think that the untamed nature of the internet provides an important social mirror. The army is getting a fantastic amount of information out of its milbloggers in Iraq right now. Information it has never had before about what the soldiers think, what they want and don't want. Information it would never have gotten if the internet was organized and government sanctioned and polite and restrained and registered.

That social mirror extends to all of us. We should all have the guts to look that reflection in the eye and see it for what it means. We would realize that as a culture we are easily swayed by aggressive advertising and simple tricks. We give in to pop-up adds and shiny interactive displays (Ooh, punch the monkey! I can do that!). We allow spammers to e-mail us and they're obviously making money because capitalism doesn't suffer the indigent business plan to survive. And yes, we encourage pornographers to proliferate and generate more and more free, easily accessible porn* for our children to discover and give them a very, very skewed lesson on sexuality.

*Those two links are very, very NSFW. Don't click them at work, at home, or at school. Do not click them in a car. Do not click them in a bar. Do not click them on a boat. Do not click them with a goat. Do not click them though you can, DO NOT CLICK THEM SAM I AM.

Where was I?

Oh, so the painfully clear, non-airbrushed, excruciatingly honest social mirror that the internet works rather like Snow White's mother-in-law's magic mirror. And right now it is telling us things we don't want to hear.

It is telling us that we encourage retailers to use spam. So those of us who don't have created spam filters. Great! That is healthy, independent internet advancement.

It is telling us that we are fascinated by the boring, everyday stories of angsty high-schoolers that we've never met. That we'll spend hours commenting on their stories. Wonderful, we need to sigh, admit that, and move on.

And it is telling us that we're twisted, sexually repressed freaks who search for things like "perverted voyeurs" (yes, yours truly turned up as a search result for that phrase on google last week) when we're bored. It's telling us that we like pornography. And sadly, it's telling us that we seem to prefer BAD pornography. The majority of the porn you'll run across falls into two categories. Disgustingly lurid images of amateurs in basements taken with (judging from the visual quality) a three year old webcam being run by a monkey. Or extremely airbrushed, overly-lit lesbian porn usually starring a couple of women with 80s hairstyles, bright red nails, too much makeup, and oh yeah, dead, soulless eyes.

And there is a LOT of it. But according to Capitalism, there is only enough of it to support the porn surfing habits of 1 billion internet savvy people (mostly driven, I suppose, by the 223 million Americans who surf).

So I think that it is healthy for us to take a gander at the internet and realize that this is what most of us seem to like.

So, does the .xxx domain appeal to my politics?

No. For one, we lose the valuable social mirror effect. News about porn use will become less and less prevalent. The uneasy laugh that America has had to adopt as porn is pushed to the front of its mind will be lost. It won't drive social change and improvement. It certainly wont drive a reform of sexuality or erotic art as a medium, because we'll go back to ignoring it.

I don't read playboy magazine, and I don't encourage people to, but I think that Playboy was one of the best things that happened to America, because it forced people to look at more than just attractive women, it forced people to look at themselves. I think the internet is doing the same thing right now and regulation will only quell the growing awareness and unease that these honest assessments could be driving.

In addition, I am concerned for my personal freedom of speech.

What constitutes Obscene material? As United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said Jacobellis v Ohio, (a landmark Pornography case), "I shall not today attempt further to define [hardcore pornography] ...But I know it when I see it."

What if the regulations are very strict ("to protect the children!" they'll shout), so strict, in fact, that even my website is scrutinized? After all, I've written of perverted voyeurs in this very post. I've written past works of fiction about Vampires seducing women, and high school girls writing about sex.

I certainly don't want my website shut down or forced to move to the .xxx domain because I wrote about seducing a co-worker.

So it is that I arrive at my conclusion: the .xxx domain is a bad idea. It will push the pornography problem to the back of the American consciousness and let us go back to ignoring a rising epidemic of pornography addiction and the rapid change of sexual mores. Mores that might be changing because the society is changing, but might be changing because the industry is encouraging them to change.

The internet provides us a chance to talk openly about previously taboo subjects that have a powerful impact on all our lives. Making them taboo all over again won't make them go away.