Australian Sex Party: .XXX Represents Huge Censorship Push

AUSTRALIA—According to the Australian Sex Party, the .XXX top-level domain approved by ICANN on Friday spells the beginning of the end for the Marina del Rey, California-based organization that doles out domain names and numbers. In a statement released Monday, Sex Party president Fiona Patten said that ICAAN had forced the new domain onto the world’s online adult industry after many years of loud and sustained protest. “Not only have they have ignored advice from us”, she said, “but they have ignored the advice of their own Government Advisory Committee (GAC), which included the Australian government. Even the religious groups were against this new [top-level] domain being created. It was probably the first and only time we will ever see sex industry, government and moral’s groups all lining up to agree on internet censorship.” The decision, she added, is a huge blow to a free internet and will increase censorship of the net in ways that could not have been imagined a few years ago. “Although we would hope that it never happens, with all adult sites corralled under one .XXX domain it would be an easy thing for the Communications Minister to simply ask all ISP’s in Australian to filter the new domain and all adult material would be denied to adult Australians,” said Patten. “If adult sites continued to hide under a .com or a .net address, it would be a simple matter for the Minister to legislate that all adult sites must trade under the new .XXX domain”. For the first time, continued Patten, ICAAN also has approved content guidelines for a new domain that places them in the position of being de facto regulators of parts of the internet. “The content that they will accept for .XXX will accommodate a considerable amount of Refused Classification material in Australia, which will almost certainly encourage the federal government to look at some sort of filtering arrangement,” she said. The current political uprisings in the Middle East have relied heavily on the internet and both temporary and permanent websites to gain traction and disseminate information. The necessity for some of these sites to ‘hide’ on the internet and remain inconspicuous is obvious. “If ICANN starts forcing new domains on particular organizations and industries, it leaves the path wide open for dictators, theocracies and even democracies to start using those them for censorship and manipulation,” she said, adding, “How long will it be before all media groups will be expected to register under a .med domain or political groups under .pol?” The U.S. adult industry organization, the Free Speech Coalition, has vowed to make the new domain unworkable and could be organizing an international boycott, said the Sex Party statement, which noted that the company that ultimately succeeded in lobbying ICAAN to approve the .XXX domain (ICM Registry) is not even an adult industry based company. “In allowing a non adult industry company to set up and profit from this new domain, against 90 percent of the expert advice they had, ICAAN has not had the particular interests of the industry at heart,” said Patten. “This is a dangerous precedent. ICM as the registrar of the new domain will also have to monitor the content.” For more information, visit the Australian Sex Party website.