Are The New .XXX Internet Sites Really A Good Idea?
We’ll you three guesses as to what you can find when you type in one of the Internet’s new .XXX Web sites…
Wow, that was certainly fast! But, unless you’ve been living underneath a rock for, well, your entire life, you probably already know that XXX is used when describing pornographic material. And now, it’s also the domain name of sites that contain pornographic material. Starting yesterday at 11:00AM/EST, more than 100,000 sites that regularly display porn begin using the .XXX domain names. The thought is that by creating these domains, parents can closely monitor exactly what their kids are looking at online and make browsing safe for them. Web sites that may not have seemed like porn before will now be identified clearly so that it’s easy to tell the type of material that’s available on these sites.
On the surface, it sounds like a great idea. The advocates for it have made a point of saying that it’ll help protect Internet users from porn. Critics of it have said that it’s going to make it easier for all porn to be eliminated from the Web one day. But, regardless of where you stand on the issue, it’s hard to argue the impact that it will have on keeping kids away from XXX sites.
However, is this really as great as it seems? I could make an argument for either side of the debate. On the one hand, I understand why parents would want this for their home computers. Rather than them having to navigate to every single site that their kids visit—or, better yet, every site that pops up on the screen while they’re at the computer—they can check their computer’s history and identify .XXX sites quickly. For that reason alone, the new .XXX domains are a great idea. But, at the same time, there are no doubt groups of teenagers and other young people out there who now know exactly where to find pornographic material and how to hide it from their parents. They now know that they have to go on and clear out their caches when they’re done on their home computers, for fear of their ‘rents finding their .XXX domain stash.
However, I think this .XXX debate will ultimately do more than good. If nothing else, it’ll get people talking about porn on the Internet again and offer parents a subtle reminder as to why they need to keep an eye on their kids’ Internet use. Will it stop children and young people from coming into contact with porn? Not likely. But, will it make it easier for parents to block certain domains and monitor what happens on their computer? Certainly. And isn’t that what this is really all about?
