FW: [NCSG-NCUC-DISCUSS] Tom Morris takes on xxx

[Milton L Mueller]

No, it's not a sin tax. The price is not set by ICANN or the GAC but by the registry operator. There are some "sin regulations" imposed on ICM by GAC-ICANN, though, which add to costs. But as noted, no adult site is required to register there. 

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> So it's really a sin tax.
> 
> We could tax .gambling to fun probability mathematics education in high
> school.
> We could tax .prostitution to fund abstinence education.
> Would we tax .atheist to fund religious education or tax .god to fund
> science education?
> 
> I'm just raising the question if the purpose of ICANN is to be in the
> morality tax business.
> 
> I personally don't like morality taxes. I used to live in San Francisco
> where I committed the immoral act of owning a car. San Francisco looks
> down on car owners as sinners the way non-smokers look at smokers.
> That's just kind of something I find annoying, unless of course I'm the
> one who gets to decide who has to pay the sin taxes. (not me!)
> 
> Getting back on track. If ICANN gets into the sin tax business then
> that's mission creep. It leads to creeping into law enforcement, moral
> police, things that ICANN should not be doing.
> 
> Granted someone needs to protect children from predators but .xxx has
> nothing to do with it. And it's logically inconsistent.
> 
> porn.xxx - tax
> porn.com - no tax
> 
> Now - if there were a TLD where to join the TLD requires special
> processing - like .lawyer might require validating that you are a member
> of the bar - then the cost of doing that should be included in the
> domain. But in my mind he cost has to be directly connected to the TLD.
> 
> And - that is the point I'm trying to make.
> 
> On 3/22/2011 4:32 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> > It's supposed to donate to general foundations/organizations working on
> child abuse. But really that's mostly posturing of course; governments have
> seized on regulating the .xxx domain as if putting requirements on it really
> combats the more serious problems. As Perkel pointed out, the logic behind
> that often doesn't hold up.
> >
> >>
> >> --
> >> Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
> >> Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and Deputy
> >> Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
> >> Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/