Cox May Propose Net Domain For "Adult Material".

In another bid to "protect" children from adult content on the Internet, Rep Christopher Cox, R-Calif., is planning to introduce legislation that would create a new Internet domain for Websites containing pornographic materials. Under the legislation, the yet-to-be-named domain, would, like the most popular .com, .org and .net domains, be added to the legacy root server and be designated solely for use by adult entertainment sites. Although the legislation is still in the planning phase, it would not seek to force adult entertainment sites onto the adult domain. Rather, the bill would offer some level of protection from litigation to adult sites that agree to move to the new domain.Such proposals raise concerns among civil libertarians. While he could not comment on the Cox bill specifically, ACLU Associate Director Barry Steinhardt told Newsbytes that creating adult-specific domains such as ".xxx" could lead to a "ghettoization of speech" - whereby many online providers would be shoe-horned into an Internet "red light district." Whether Congress even has the authority to mandate the creation and introduction of a new generic top-level domain (gTLD) to the Internet name space is another question. The authority to add new gTLDs rests - in theory at least - with the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which has been charged by the US Commerce Department with managing the domain name system (DNS). Any proposal to add a new gTLD would have to be considered by ICANN_s multinational Domain Name. The question of whether and how to add new gTLDs has generated thorny debates within ICANN and in the Internet community at large.