Governing Body Refuses to Control Porn

Some lies just don't hold water, and this is one of them, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) reached a decision Mar 30 reports the AP and other news sources, against a separate domain extension for porn sites. The much heralded .xxx extension would put them in the "tricky business of content regulation." (AP) Now this has raised questions as to why both religious right members and the pornsters were both in on the decision and apparently happy with it? What we who use the web apparently have to tell them is, that's nonsense of the highest order. What do you think will happen? What do you think people will do? These next few paragraphs will put out some thoughts being expressed by many others along those lines, among them John Dvorak of PC Magazine fame (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2110548,00.asp) already speaking out loudly about this: "It amazes me how this works time and again. There are two groups against the idea of an .xxx top-level domain. One group consists of some supposedly Christian "family values" pressure groups. The other group is the pornographers. Does anyone find this alliance a little disturbing? "[Dvorak, 2007] Some of us do find it disturbing, but beyond that, some of us find the amount of dirt being piled on this heap, too deep!

XXX makes sense as an extension, on some of the blogs out there they use .biz, .com, dot whatever; no, what's getting under the skins of the porn propagators and the moralists, both, is that without the porn, they lose...bucks. That's right, sin in religion equates to bucks out of the pulpit- oh I know, that's a jaded viewpoint, and worship isn't supposed to be about money, but a good sermon against sin, come on, the moralists live for such. On the other hand the porn sellers want to be able to say that the moralists are crazy, trying to forestall their ability to make a living, trying to limit them, and all the while they are gaining free publicity, in an arena that is dying out, from within.

Maybe the truth of two tired extremes is too haunting for either of them to deal with, does the apathy that is presented by the major league yawn of everyone, indicate how little interest there is in their poles apart life styles? Parents who themselves aren't viewers of pornographic material are shocked into action when their child is. Religious extremists, who are anti-porn for the theory of free speech, are shocked at how it is used against them. Extremes are the polar opposites that keep people apart, debating instead of talking and communicating, and controllable, manipulatable. So what is to be done has to be done individually and it must be the individual decision to tell those who reach dumb decisions that further polarize otherwise intelligent people, that such a decision won't work, doesn't work, and won't be tolerated. If ICANN is too afraid to make a ruling that makes them take control over the webs content that is offensive to a great many peoples children, then let's insist that our homes not be so? It is impossible to legislate morality, but it is not impossible to teach morality by example.