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Post by smartarse on Apr 2, 2007 12:53:53 GMT 10
here is an update on the push for a .xxx domain to house all the internet's legitimate pornography (which was a finals topics at Australs last year, and a good one i thought) www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/30/business/icann.phpSince i'm not convinced that net neutrality is a good topic, and the standard internet censorship/ban internet gambling topics are pretty boring, this is probably the most interesting net motion going around.
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Post by rudro2000 on Apr 4, 2007 21:40:48 GMT 10
Hey Tim! Whats up? Okay basic question; What does creating a .xxx domain for pornographic sites really mean in technical terms? Does it mean that according to the proposal all adult sites will have a .xxx tag in its address? Then what happens to those adult sites that don't comply? Is there a global internet authority that can actually check them? If this is done on a national level for a particular country then the adult site in question can simply shift to a server located outside that country. So what does this really mean in terms of practically controlling adult content on the net?
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Post by smartarse on Apr 8, 2007 17:28:45 GMT 10
Hey mate, good to hear from you, as always.
And as usual you ask a good question.
Firstly, to the 'model'. Your description is accurate. A new domain .xxx would be established, and 'adult entertainment' sites would be required to shift to a site within that domain, and close any other sites.
In effect, all pornographic sites that were not operating under a .xxx domain name would become illegal by definition, irrespective of the specific nature of their content (so even if the material on the site was otherwise legal).
So that brings us to enforceability. Is there a global body that can enforce internet regulations? No. ICANN is the closest thing there is, and its an office within a US government department - purposefully not international (which is an interesting topcic is its own right, but thats another story).
So who can enforce the regulations then? well firstly national governments can, and would have an incentive to do so (since few governments of any persuasion are in favour of the internet being full of pornography). Even highly liberal societies would be able to support this move because it doesn't restrict access to pornography by adults, it merely reduces the likelyhood that anyone who isn't looking for porn will find it (such as children).
But what about those countries that just don't care, or are too poor to care?
Well internet pornography, like internet gamblin, has one weakness - payment. Not very many people set up pornographic sites as a charity and that means credit cards. since all the major credit card companies are registered in Western countries, they are all potentially vulnerable. So nations can make it illegal for credit providers who operate in their jurisdiction to facilitate payment to pornographic sites that are not registered in the .xx domain, regardless of where they are registered. This sort of "universial jurisdiction" has many precidents - the US Alien Torts Act, and the Belgium Genocide Act are two well known examples of where governments have given themselves the authority to punish specific kinds of crimes regardless of where they occur. Yes this would be a pretty dramatic expansion of that principle, but so what?
Similarly, most commercial websites have another weakness - advertisers. Again governments can target businesses which operate in their jurisdiction but advertise on 'illegal' sites. The US government based a law allowing this in relation of online gambling sites last year and my understanding is that its worked fairly well (i.e. after a couple of prosecutions most american listed companies have stop advertising on online gambling sites - significantly reducing their revenue).
Now, is all this a full-proof enforcement mechanism? no, but no legal enforcement is ever fullproof. But there is good reason to think it would work. Firstly because there are plenty of 'family groups' and other community organisations who will make it their purpose in life to track down rogue sites and seek to cut off their access to credit and advertising through the courts, and of course the majority of the pornography industry will comply with the law and they'll be pretty keen to see cheaters punished because its in their business interests. So all up you'll have a large and well resourced information network to help governments track and punish sites that break the rules.
Hope that helps!
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Post by rudro2000 on Apr 9, 2007 4:13:26 GMT 10
okay i got what you are saying. The model seems to be feasible in the western world but being in India I am always forced to think in terms of the situation here. all in all your model promotes policing of pornography rather than a ban of pornography itself. That would mean that the government would have to spend its resources and set up a policing mechanism to monitor porn sites that are not complying with the law and furthermore it would have to monitor credit card companies and advertisers to check whether these guys are not fuelling illegal porn. So the mechanism that you are suggesting is humongous. I mean if the government was now to set up a mechanism to track down sites that are not complying with the law and then find out who among their citizens are accessing the site and paying for the same and then going through that person's credit card statements and then prosecuting the card company of sanctioning the transaction.... I mean it is almost an impossible task. First of all if the site is based somewhere else I don't see how the government can force them to furnish the details of their financial records. So in that case they would have to monitor credit card holders who pay for stuff over the net. Now that too is not possible because well its impossible to go through the details of millions of credit card holders. So the only option left is to force the card companies to furnish their records and then going through them to check whether any illegal payments have been made which is again a next to impossible task and the card companies will simply tell the govt. to fuck off, especially if its a foriegn card company. So the sheer humongous nature of the task makes it seem quite infeasible. And then in a country like ours where the government is not even ready to accept the exisyence of pornography (in spite of there been an apparent boom in the local porn industry) how do you expect the government to agree to this policy? Plus then there is the issue of lack of resources. And then what about free foreign porn sites? how do you tackle them? There are plenty of those.
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Post by smartarse on Apr 9, 2007 14:40:58 GMT 10
Well Rudro you raise some valid concerns, and some frankly irrelevant concerns. But i'm happy to respond to them all.
First the question about whether or not this model is about banning porn. you're right to say that it doesn't ban porn, but it is about better regulating porn (which would help expose and root out the really bad stuff like kiddie porn and snuff).
As for the cost issues of establishing enforcement in developing countries such as India, i have many responses.
1) so what. India has the biggest, and one of the least efficient civil services in the world. you have both the human and economic resources if you really want to deploy them effectively.
2) but more importantly (because i suspect that previous point won't convince you) the model doesn't rely on developing countries, because as you say, its quite viable in the West. The practicalities i outlined above would have a dramatic impact on the availability of pornography (outside the .xxx domain) everywhere, even if its only enforced in the West.
Because the key is the credit card companies, and they all operate in the west, and so they'll all vulnerable to prosecution in the West. You say that the companies might tell the government to fuck off, but i don't think so. the major credit companies make billions of dollars in the West and they aren't going to risk that to protect the tiny number of people who want to visit illegal porn sites.
And if western governments grant themselves universial jurisdiction over 'illegal' porn sites, then it doesn't matter if India can't/won't enforce it, its the same credit card companies in India that are in the US - its still Visa, Mastercard, Diners, etc, and unless they want to be unable to operate in the West, they'll have to comply.
The US has already forced credit card companies and ISP's to give up information under anti-terrorism laws, so why not anti-porn laws?
in that sense the compliance costs aren't that high. as i said before, there are any number of community groups - family groups, religious groups, etc - who would willingly trawl the internet looking for illegal sites if there was a reliable mechanism to shut them down. the government wouldn't have to devote much resources to doing 'cold searches', they would have plenty of tip-offs.
And thats the other weakness of porn sites - they want to be found. apart from the really sick ones, they need/want a large number of customers/members, so need to be able to be found. shit, all you'd need is google to find most of them! and the really secret kiddie porn sites are already subject to investigation and prosecution by police in Western countries, so no change there except that they now have an additional charge to punish site owners with.
3) my final response is to point out the obvious - this model doesn't have to be full-proof. there will be high compliance because most porn sites are run as legitimate businesses who just want to make money and avoid trouble. So .xxx will fill up pretty quick. this will make life a lot easier for parents and schools (etc) who can easily set up filters to block all .xxx sites, thereby greatly reducing the amount of pornography that kids might be exposed to. yes a small percentage of porn site operates will attempt to break to law. many will get caught and punished, some will not. the point is ITS BETTER THAN THE STATUS QUO, which is all it has to be in most debates.
Internet censorship is extremely difficult and can't be done flawlessly, but thats the context for the debate, not the end of it.
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Post by rudro2000 on Apr 9, 2007 19:11:30 GMT 10
No mate you got it all mixed up. I said that it was fine in the west cause they are implementing similar policies and probably have the resources and the efficiency to do the same. But I am talking in the context of India. In my previous post I said that the local porn industry is on a rise. Which means that in recent years a lot of India based porn sites have cropped up on the net. It is also a fact that the majority of these sites are payed and unlike several foreign porno sites do not rely on advertisements. So the point about this legislation being workable in the West doesn't really count cause we have our own brand of porn to deal with. Now most of the major credit card companies here are the ones based in the west. But the policies differ. Granted it's the same credit card company but its policies in the US bound by US laws are quite different from the way they operate here. CITIBANK India operates in compliance with Indian laws not US and if the Indian government is not able to force them from facilitating payments towards illegal porn sites then they wouldn't mind doing so cause thats how they are earning money. And since there has been an increase in the number of local porn sites that means that there has been an increase in the number of people watching internet porn as well which in turn means that they are bringing in some substantial amount of money for these credit card companies. So it all boils down to the will of the government and the credit card companies to comply. Firstly keeping aside the technical and resource challenges the government is not ready to accept policing of porn because according to this model you are recognising legal porn unlike here where the establishment has a complete 'NO' policy towards the issue. By implementing this policy you are saying that legally approved porn is okay as long as it is accessed in the legal manner by adults. The government here has a problem with the very notion that any kind of porn is acceptable. Secondly unlike in the west we do not have many organisations that will take up this cause as the people are not even comfortable discussing the issue itself in public. This might be hypocracy but thats how it is. And thirdly Credit cards in India because they are based abroad are in a better position to bargain with the government than in the countries where they are based. heck the government is borrowing from them and if the government forces them to shut shop then the government will fall cause that would totaly unacceptable to the people cause the great India middle class really leads a borrowed life (they really do you will be surprise as to how much of credit there is in the market here and how much we are dependent on it). And trust me the card companies know it. Then my last arguement is that if it was possible to order porn sites to move to an exclusive domain then why isn't it possible to order them to shut down completely? I don't see the majority supporting the cause of porno sites...
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Post by smartarse on Apr 9, 2007 21:27:28 GMT 10
No mate, i understand what you're saying about the differences in India, but maybe i didn't explain my position properly. The argument i'm making is that if you implement this policy in the West, then you DON'T NEED TO DO IT IN INDIA because even porn sites that are registered in India are accessible in the West, and so Western governments can demand that credit card companies refuse to honour payments made to those sites. In that way a very large number of 'rogue' sites (those that didn't move to the .xxx domain) would be taken out of business. But then that leads us to the question of can governments compel credit card companies to cooperate? Of course they can, and i already cited examples of credit card information related to anti-terrorism investigations (including for example, money transfers - the so called SWIFT code issue, where the US forced international banks that had branches in the US to give up sensitive customer information to fight terrorism). And i'll give you another example of cross-jurisdiction law enforcement involving the web news.com.com/Australian+man%2C+ISP+found+guilty+of+piracy/2100-1030_3-5788344.html?tag=st.rnSo you see, Western governments and legal systems are empowering themselves to regulate credit companies and ISPs that infringe their domestic laws in foreign countries when the impact of that crime can be felt at home. However your real question is, is government strong enough given the public's need for credit and the value of online porn to credit card companies? good question, but the answer is 'yes'. No matter how profitable online porn is, the REST of the credit industry is worth more, so both governments and credit providers have an incentive to make this scheme work, because NEITHER wants to push it to the point where governments have to punish credit providers - it would be mutually assured destruction, hence it won't come to that. Even if the Indian government is too weak to do it, i want to stress again, if it works in the West then India gets the benefits without having to do anything. But ok, lets deal with the harder issue - India doesn't recognise the existance of pornography. Leaving aside how ridiculous that is (which you recognise, i know) this policy is actually good for India because once all (or the vast majority) of porn is housed within the .xxx domain, the Indian government can simply force ISP's not to allow access to the .xxx domain. While that would force them admit that internet porn exists, at least they would be admiting its existance at the same time that they were effectively censoring it. even though its not the point of the .xx proposal to ban porn, it would make it a lot easier to ban if thats what a government wanted to do. Would that be a big change for the Indian government? apparently, but this is debating, we're not trapped by what governments will do, we're free to debate what they should do.
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Post by rudro2000 on Apr 10, 2007 3:21:29 GMT 10
Okay I have got three questions. Firstly regarding that article you posted; how was that man collaborating with the ISP? I got the part about he posting links to sites that were hosting illegal pirated music but I couldn't understand as to where did the ISP come in and what sort of a deal did this man make with them. secondly, does a credit card company operate according to the domestic laws of the country in which they have branches and if so then does that fact that their host country have different laws have any bearing on their functioning in their branch countries? Thirdly do porno sites cater to specific demographics? I mean to say that do porno sites have a specific target audience in mind? If so then would that mean that Indian porno sites depend mainly on Indian viewers for revenue? I think if these three questions are tackled properly then we don't have anything to argue about. And lastly political will of the government has a lot to do in debates here. I think I have told you this before. If there is no political will then its an arguement against feasibility. There is no way that the government here will dream of passing a legislation requiring all porno sites to move to a .xxx domain cause that would simply be perceived as accepting the existence of porn and saying that porn if legally watched is okay. Which is like political hara-kiri over here.
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Post by smartarse on Apr 10, 2007 9:25:05 GMT 10
Well i can't remember all the details of the case - it took me two days to remember the case at all! - but i think the ISP was advertising on the site, and so the site owner had some arrangement with them to reduce his costs... but honestly i don't remember the whole thing. if you google the case you'll find it was covered fairly well in the tech media at the time. In terms of your second question, i'm not sure if i entirely understand it. I think you're asking how a multi-national (such as a credit card company) operates when every host country has different laws - do they have to comply with them all? and the answer is yes. But heres where it gets tricky - if a MNC is based in (say) the US, but has branches in (say) India, then US laws don't apply to its operation directly (for example, the US can't enforce a minimum wage for Indian workers). BUT, the US can say that companies that wish to operate in the US have to meet certain standards abroad (think of economic sanctions - the US can force all companies who have a presence in the US to comply with a sanctions order or risk being punished in the US). So its quite complicated, but suffice to say that in a debating context you can get away with a lot of things that would be tremendously complex (but not impossible) in the real world. third question - the target market for porn sites. I can't imagine why you think i'd know the answer to something like that? Seriously though, i would imagine that there are localised target markets - so Indian porn sites probably cater for the tastes of men in the sub-continent in terms of preferences for ethnicity of the women, and maybe other aesthetic preferences. I'm guessing that the American/Western prefernce for Pamela Anderson-type women is not universal. But given that i've never seen an Indian porn site, this is all speculation. Finally to the issue of feasability in the Indian debating context. I guess from what you're saying that this would simply be a bad topic in the Indian debating-culture context. So i'm not suggesting that you run it at domestic tournaments. But as i said a few posts ago, this was a finals topic at last year's Australs, so its worth thinking about if you're attending international IVs.
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Post by rudro2000 on Apr 10, 2007 21:49:39 GMT 10
Yeah i get what you are saying about economic sanctions and all but this isn't the same. We can hardly club porn policing with other issue that invite economic sanctions. I don't see how the US will be bothered about whether porn is legal or illegal in India. What I am trying to say with the two points about MNC rules in various countries and local target market for porn is this... Lets say there is an Indian based porn site that, like you mentioned, caters to a certain target audience in the Indian subcontinent with its preference for women with sub-continental ethnicity and so on. So clearly this target audience is the main source of revenue for this site. Now obviously this site will be available in the US and lets say that the US government decides to impose the .xxx legislation. so if any of the credit cards operating in the US decides to sanction any kind of payment to this site which is being made by one of their clients in the US then the US government can take action against the card company in concern and thus there is every reason to believe that the card company will comply and ban such a payment to this site. But that's not the point. For two reasons a) the people in the US are not this site's target audience and therefore not their main source of revenue. and b) the card company in the US will comply but its branch in India will not because they will not need to do so and that is because the Indian government cannot dream of legitimising any sort of porn and that is what this legislation will do. in the meantime the card company is happy cause this is a good source of income for them in India. So you see even if this legislation works in the US it will not have any impact on local Indian porn sites because of the pecularities that exist here. So in conclusion, if you are ruuning this debate then set it in the context of some western country and do not take the responsibility of trying to show that this will affect porn all over the world. And in case you remember that was my main querry in the beginning when I asked whether there was an international body to monitor sites.
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Post by smartarse on Apr 11, 2007 10:53:16 GMT 10
But the US will enforce credit payment restrictions in India for the same reason that will enforce them in the US - because if it doesn't then every porn site in the world will shift to India. There doesn't need to be an international enforcement body because we have something better - the US government. ICANN is a US government body, and presumably if the US government decided to set up a .xxx domain (which admittedly this administration is NOT in favour of) they would want that regulation to be respected.
So again, its irrelevant whether the Indian government admits to the existance of porn, or the luna landing or Big Foot. If the US government decides that credit card companies cannot operate in the US if they accept payment from porn sites that are not registered in the .xxx domain, then thats the end of it.
Yes enforcement will likely focus on sites primarily aimed at a US/Western market, but like i said, if this regulation is to have any meaning, the US wouldn't be able tolerate any country being a haven for these sites. Not only would family groups and religious groups be pressuring the US govt to stomp on foriegn porn sites, the legitimate porn industry (which is a very powerful lobby) would also be pushing this enforcement - because its members will have incurred the costs of moving to the .xxx domain (which are more than financial - moving address carries with it the need to rebrand and remarket your site, and risks losing customers in the transfer - which is of course why many people in the porn industry are against this idea) and they would not want free-riders getting away with breaking the rules.
But again i'll conceed that this is unnecessarily controversial model in the Indian debating context, but it would barely raise an eyebrow at an international IV
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Post by rudro2000 on Apr 11, 2007 19:57:06 GMT 10
okay fundamental question, how will having a .xxx domain for porn sites regulate porn? how will you ensure children will not be able to access these sites?
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Post by smartarse on Apr 12, 2007 12:06:04 GMT 10
because at the moment its very hard to filter out porn sites using the usual key-word filter software because most of the words you would input in the filter would be contained in many, many legitimate, non-pornographic sites. but there would be NOTHING on the .xxx domain except porn, so filters could be set to simply block the entire domain, thereby locking off millions of images without impeding legitimate internet activities by children. there are plenty of classic examples of porn sites that have been set up on urls that the designed to lure viewers by accident - the famous 'whitehouse' site (i can't remember the exact url - and i don't want to search for it on my work computer!) but there were others that were based on common spelling mistakes of other commonly searched for sites (the kinds of spelling mistakes that kids make). But at the moment thats not illegal and there isn't much that can be done about it. see news.com.com/2100-1032-5198125.html
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Post by english on Apr 12, 2007 14:33:03 GMT 10
and as for stopping children accessing the sites, it wont necessarily stop them, bar filters as Tim mentioned. But any model will not stop children/teenagers/under-agers WANTING to view this material - no one can legislate against needs/wants of the population.
What the .xxx domain will do is make it easier to bar these sites from accidental browsing.
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Post by rudro2000 on Apr 12, 2007 15:58:33 GMT 10
okay now that we have got that clear. Now lets consider this. Suppose I open up a porn site here in India. The site is based in India and is an Indian porn site whose target audience is Indians. So I am not much bothered about whether someone in the Us is accessing it or not. Now I do accept Visa as payment to get a full version of my site. So now tell me do you think that the US government will force Visa to implement a world wide legislation which says that they cannot make payments to any illegal porn site (like mine) the world over? What I am asking is that is it possible for Visa to make such a world wide decision for all its branches? ( I am not trying to prove a point just clarifying) Secondly since you have now clarified that the entire point of the excercise is to make sure that children don't accidentally come across porn then the entire issue takes a different twist. So what is the real purpose here? To sheild children until they are ready for porn? If so then I guess we are on the same page.
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