[Poll] Should Domains Like .Porn and .Sex Be Allowed on the Internet?

Porn is pervasive on the Internet… if you know where to look. It is made and distributed by professionals, amateurs, aggregators, bootleggers and pirates. Really, it is just like any other type of content you can find on the Web.

When the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the applications for new Top Level Domains, a number of proposed domains were related to adult content, such as .sex, .porn and .adult. Critics say that these domains should be banned from the Web because they will lead to more pornography, while open Internet proponents say there are great benefits to cordoning off porn to these specific domains. Should .porn and its kin be allowed? Vote in the poll below.

There are a variety of arguments to consider in the .porn debate. Morality in Media (MIM), an organization that has opposed the public dissemination of pornography since 1962, lists two specific reasons for officially opposing the new gTLDs. Foremost, MIM maintains that more porn domains will mean more porn on the Internet. Second, MIM says that nonporn entities (schools, brands, companies, individuals) will be forced into buying .porn domains to avoid the humiliation of having their own online identities tied to a pornography-related domain by someone else.

The second point in an interesting one. This type of extortion has been a major reason why many people have opposed opening new top-level domains in the first place. ICANN has worked to address these concerns in the rules it has set up for how domain owners handle their registries. ICANN has two separate rights protection mechanisms (RPMs) that apply to owning a top-level domain, including a sunrise period (where brands can acquire their domains before the registry is made available to the public), as well as a trademark claim service that will be handled by a company called Trademark Clearinghouse.