This was news to me, but just happened to a friend. After a change in his business he decided to change his domain name, registered a new one and let the old one expire. It turns out that porn sites snap these up, then offer to sell them at a very high price ($3,000 in this case). There are still plenty of links out there to his old domain, including a few on our own links pages until a member informed us of this. Something to keep in mind if you're considering letting any of your domain names expire. I don't know if this is an issue specific to NSI, or if any expired domain is a target for porn hosts.

Yupp. A lot of people search for expired domains that are listed in for example big search engines like Yahoo. They buy these and have them forward to their own website. This is not just for porno sites, many people with many different sites do this.

I had this happen to me with a domain that accidently expired (long story). We had to remove all the links from our other pages to that domain super-fast. Not fun at all.

One of the many dirty tricks pulled by porn sites is redirection from a large number of otherwise totally unrelated domains. A number of people (myself included) have suggested the creation of a separate domain for adult sites, such as .sex, and that they should all be required to use it exclusively. That would reduce many of the problems associated with these sites as well as aid in the filtering of them.

However, ICANN, in its infine stupidity and blindness, has done nothing about the matter in the years it has been suggested. They prove that hindsight is not always 20/20.

Originally posted by Duster
One of the many dirty tricks pulled by porn sites is redirection from a large number of otherwise totally unrelated domains. A number of people (myself included) have suggested the creation of a separate domain for adult sites, such as .sex, and that they should all be required to use it exclusively. That would reduce many of the problems associated with these sites as well as aid in the filtering of them.

However, ICANN, in its infine stupidity and blindness, has done nothing about the matter in the years it has been suggested. They prove that hindsight is not always 20/20.

Don't mean to bring this offtopic, but who would enforce this? The government? Also, what consitutes porn? What if I think something is pornographic but you don't? Once we become the "morality police" (and it seems just so easy to push all the "bad stuff" into a corner and forget about it), then the next step is to ban it. And why don't we ban anything about guns too, because they could kill people...and computers too, because all those people who brought guns into school were avid computer lovers.

But back on topic...
I don't think that you have an obligation to keep your domain names just because someone is too lazy to check the sites that they have linked. If you're linked to frequently, it would be nice, but it's not your duty...

qslack,

You can read more about the overall idea at http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2788&highlight=.sex+ICANN ICANN would be in charge. However, with a regulation requiring adult sites to use the .sex domain exclusively, all it might take is reporting offenders to their registrar, who could then disable the domain name(s). This could apply to redirected domains as well as those with content.

It would aslo apply to all adult sites, not just those with pictures of naked people. Included would be the sites for finding sexual partners, discussion forums on the subject of escorts, and other related sites. Sites dealing with naturism (nudism) would not be included as they do not deal with sex, only being nude.

One of the beauties of this plan is that unlike efforts to outlaw pornography and the problems with defining obscene, it does not seek to outlaw anything. It is more like business zoning, requiring that businesses of a particualr type be limited to a zone for that purpose (i.e. .sex).

It also allows individuals to report offenders to registrars, thus doing away with the need for an impossible enforcement bureaucracy.

Stiff fines for such sites operating beyond the allowed domain (past a certain cut off date), competition and and economic pressures would tend to keep within their designated TLD. It would make it easier for people to find such sites (which benefits the sites) and easier for others to avoid them. Filtering software could block the entire TLD and the problem with redirects would be reduced, if not eliminated.

Earlier this month, one of my forum members let me know about a link I had to a diving site whose domain name had obviously expired and been acquired by a porn site as it now redirected to that site. I removed the link at once. However, it could easily happen to any site as links change over time. It's not a question of being lazy or not, especially when you have thousands of links, as my diving site does.

I totally agree. I was trying to do research on the whitehouse, and just to let y'all know, it is www.whitehouse.gov :D Anywho, I'm afraid to type in URLs anymore b/c I think they might go (and prob do go) to a porn site. It was really bad when I was looking for halloween customes so i tried to go to Halloween.com (however you spell it?!) which is a custom shop but misspelled it and got sent to a porn site. I think that a .sex domain is a great idea!!

I still think it's an inherently flawed idea. ICANN are not the police of the Internet and they have no business being anything but what they are meant to do (and they can't even do THAT well).

I'm sure that once this plan is initiated, anti-ICANN sites would mysteriously show up as pornographic, and many other types of sites would be wrongly listed. If .xxx or .sex existed, then any "sane" employer or parent would try to block access to that, right? That's censorship.

What would sites that had just a few porngraphic pictures in a hidden-away directory be classified as? What if only IPs were used?

BTW, I've stumbled across porn sites accidently (I was reading an old WHT thread that linked to truehost.com, I think, and that's now a porn site). I've been tricked into going to the nameless site (it starts with a goat and ends with a .cx) so many times I aliased it to 127.0.0.1. But that doesn't make me in favor of censorship.

Originally posted by qslack

[SNIP]

I'm sure that once this plan is initiated, anti-ICANN sites would mysteriously show up as pornographic, and many other types of sites would be wrongly listed. If .xxx or .sex existed, then any "sane" employer or parent would try to block access to that, right? That's censorship.


So, if an employee is fired or a child is grounded for stealing (because the employer or parent decided to take the appropriate action), are they (the employee or child) being oppressed or having their rights infringed upon? Censorship, would be not allowing anyone access to the material, not what an employer or parent decides to do at their own home or business. That's not censorship in any way, shape or form.

A similair case is that of www.modemdrivers.com. I was once searching for modem driver files and instead of
modemdriver typed modemdrivers. It took me to a porn site. Luckily, no one was sitting beside me or it would have taken some explaining.

Now modemdrivers seem to have metamorphosized into a search engine.

Im sure there must be such variations of well known domain names which are pointed at porn or other unrelated sites.

Cheers,

Matra

how about this only one domain for one website,

I am against more regulation, more rules, we have enough already,

13+ plus boys usually have enough sense to know BIGGIRLS.com is a bad site, or XXXMICKEYMOUSE.com may not be the best site for their school paper....

What about the people that have spent 6 digits or more to buy some of these porn domains? (I think sex.com sold for like $10 million or something). They should just have to give up their domains?

Hmmm...

Sex.com was actually stolen.

The rightful owner only got the domain back a couple of months ago.

Adam