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Pro-Family Supporters Frustrated Over Stalled Broadcast Decency Bill
By Bill Fancher and Jenni Parker
AgapePress
May 15, 2006
Page 2 of 2
The 9-5 decision by the private agency that oversees Internet operation reverses its preliminary approval last June of a domain name for voluntary use by the adult entertainment industry. CWA's chief counsel Jan LaRue is calling the vote "a win against a multi-million dollar, six-year effort on behalf of the porn industry." She says the vote demonstrates the power "regular folks" can have by raising their voices against "the power-brokers who think they can run the universe without opposition."
Last year LaRue met with officials at the Department of Commerce to express vehement opposition to the new .xxx domain. CWA urged its members and supporters to contact government officials and voice their disapproval of the idea as well.
After the Department of Commerce received thousands of e-mails voicing similar objections, the Bush administration announced its opposition to the creation of the domain. Opposition letters were also sent to Paul Twomey, CEO of ICANN, who later told media that the ICANN board was "certainly very conscious" of the controversy, although its decision to reject the .xxx domain was not driven by political considerations.
LaRue says the pro-family group objected to the porn domain for several reasons, but the most obvious concern was that, under this plan, porn site operators would be free to keep all their current domains while adding the new .xxx domain. "Anybody who thinks that would help parents protect kids from porn on the Internet has crashed in the cranium," she says.
CWA's chief counsel considers the decision by ICANN a major victory indicating the power of the pro-family public, and she is hopeful that this turn of events will send a clear message to U.S. lawmakers. "Now that ICANN has had the good sense to listen to the American people," she asserts, "those in Congress who are proposing legislation to create a porn domain need to take a virtual reality check."
The special .xxx porn domain was a bad idea for many reasons, LaRue contends. Among these, she contends, is that the domain would appear to legitimize the porn industry and its creation would mean, in effect, allowing an industry that violates federal obscenity laws with impunity to regulate itself.
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