How will new internet extensions change things???

[Rico121]

I was reading an article about the new extensions for websites today, i.e. the exsisting '.com' '.co.uk' etc and the new rules which will allow pretty much any extension imaginable, for example '.xxx' and '.sex' just to name a few.

My question is do you think they will realease '.uk' and will it be beneficial to get it for your assigned business? And finally, where do you find out a list of what will be realised and when it is realised?

 

[quikshop]

I was reading about this in the paper this morning, I think its great and its going to make marketing websites SOOOO much easier.

Put your website address in print and they might remember the name of your website, but was it a .com or a .co.uk, or I think it was a .uk.com.

You will soon be able to buy a web address with a domain extension relevant to your website, .xxx or .sport or whatever, bring it on I say

 

[Moneyman]

money for the cyber squatters.

 

[Rico121]

You don't think its gonna make things really complicated. I mean lets say for example, your website is called hats.merton (Borough of london) and you tell people your website but someone forgets the extension, now they search in google but hats.london, hats.hackney, hats.mitcham and many more come up, how are they going to find you and you loose the business.

 

[TotallySport]

I like the idea for porn sites, it will make it much more child friendly, providing there is some sort of informed towards them.

The rest I like the way they are, the problem IMO with multiple extensions, is if you take your eye off the ball someone will come and duplicate your business under a similar name, which makes it easy for the big boys but adds to more costs to the Small fry.

 

[Tim R-T-C]

My prediction - you will receive approximately a million spam messages each day from firms that buy a generic extension eg. .sports .jewels etc. and then try and sell you your domain on that extension or threaten to sell it to a rival firm.

I really can't see how any normal business users will benefit at all - or in fact any of the average internet users.

 

[Mattonella Tile Studio]

I agree it will be a free for all for people buying up and selling names. I'd have thought more new extensions could have been added but in a controlled manner i.e. .xxx .ltd

 

[MartCactus]

I like the idea for porn sites, it will make it much more child friendly, providing there is some sort of informed towards them.

As soon as anyone implemented any blocking of .sex or .xxx sites the pornsters would stop using those domains. Many already have .com domains and won't switch in any case. And it would be impossible to regulate (ie to legally force the use of .xxx or similar).

The rest I like the way they are, the problem IMO with multiple extensions, is if you take your eye off the ball someone will come and duplicate your business under a similar name, which makes it easy for the big boys but adds to more costs to the Small fry.

I'm staggered ICANN have gone with this. Whilst the idea of being able to create new domains in foreign character sets (like chinese, arabic) is a good one, this free for all could overwhelm and confuse web users.

As you've said it will just encourage more cybersquatting. Already many companies hold the .com, .co.uk, .ltd.uk, .net.uk, .net, .biz etc for their company. Now they'll have an almost unlimited number of confusingly similar domains to try.

It just appears they are trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. We find customers are still usually able to buy a good distinctive domain with .co.uk or .com. Sure they won't get pure dictionary word alone in a domain but with good distinctive combinations there is still no problem.

One assumes that eg I could apply for .ukshop and then I'd make money by selling domains yourdomain.ukshop. But if you have almost unlimited domains being generated, then surely this is going to mean many of these companies fail. If my ukshop company failed, my users would have to hope someone bought the company, else all their domains disappear.

 

[Mattonella Tile Studio]

It just appears they are trying to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. We find customers are still usually able to buy a good distinctive domain with .co.uk or .com. Sure they won't get pure dictionary word alone in a domain but with good distinctive combinations there is still no problem.

I couldn't obtain mattonella.co.uk as it had already gone so opted for mattonella-tiles.co.uk. I think I still would have chosen that even if mattonella.random became available as who would remember what the .random was

 

[Rico121]

As you've said it will just encourage more cybersquatting. Already many companies hold the .com, .co.uk, .ltd.uk, .net.uk, .net, .biz etc for their company. Now they'll have an almost unlimited number of confusingly similar domains to try.

The rest I like the way they are, the problem IMO with multiple extensions, is if you take your eye off the ball someone will come and duplicate your business under a similar name, which makes it easy for the big boys but adds to more costs to the Small fry.

Will this not also make it really difficult to sell websites to people as well or are people who setup websites for a living not responsible for domains.

Also one thing it didn't say in the article is why this is being done, does anyone actually have the answer?

Sorry to repeat the question but was just wandering if anyone knows where I can get info of when the new domain names are being realised?

 

[MartCactus]

I couldn't obtain mattonella.co.uk as it had already gone so opted for mattonella-tiles.co.uk. I think I still would have chosen that even if mattonella.random became available as who would remember what the .random was

Yes, this is my view of why the current system isn't broken (yet). We've had many customers with the same situation... they might be called Pyramid widget manufacturing ltd... they can't get "pyramid.co.uk" so they have something like pyramidwidgets.co.uk which works just fine for them.

 

[TotallySport]

I like the idea for porn sites, it will make it much more child friendly, providing there is some sort of informed towards them.

Should read

providing there is some sort of inforcement towards them.

But I agree it would be hard but not impossible, there are excellent spiders and robots that could be used to checc by ICCAN, and there are great picture recognition software, so all content could be checked automatically and finialised by real people if there is a problem. Take away there domain name and they loose there business and income. Apart from that Pron and War are the two things that drive the internet so people will also find it easy to get what they want and I think it will work out for them, but getting them to make that leap of faith would be hard. if they wanted to keep a .com they could have .xxx.com.

Even if they provided a meta tag to indicate it was a porn site which would make it possible to block on browsers that kids use or are in puplic areas I would be happy.

 

[MartCactus]

Should read

providing there is some sort of inforcement towards them.

Its just never going to happen.

Firstly define porn. We operate in the UAE as well as the UK. Their definition of unsuitable content is rather different, so who's rules apply?

In the UAE they block lots of sites, including alcohol related ones. They do this without there being a .booze domain. So if ISPs in UK want to offer porn-proof hosting, the technology is already there.

ICANN just could not get involved in ensuring that porno sites only existed on .xxx domain. And what about people who'd invested millions in purchasing existing rude .com domains? Would they be compensated that their investment was now useless?

 

[TotallySport]

Authorative bodies produce rules all the time that people and business don't agree with, and to be honest I am not about to get into that arguement, I agree my version of what should be allowed to be seen by children isn't the same as other peoples and I would happily leave that to them.

ICCAN get involved in ownership of domain names, and will continue to do so, if they wanted to set this up, there would be a way around keeping the companies happy with their existing domain names, something along the lines of existing names can be forwarded to a .xxx domain. TBH it's not my desision to make or worry about, but I think it would benefit the internet and make it better and safe for kids. (And yes I know there are other risks, and ways to protect them)

However turn it on its head, and the people that want to look for porn related site could have defined way to catagories their system (not just using .xxx) and make it easier for certain people to find what they want fast, but will they see that and work together, I vey much doubt it.

 

[MartCactus]

ICCAN get involved in ownership of domain names, and will continue to do so, if they wanted to set this up, there would be a way around keeping the companies happy with their existing domain names, something along the lines of existing names can be forwarded to a .xxx domain. TBH it's not my desision to make or worry about, but I think it would benefit the internet and make it better and safe for kids. (And yes I know there are other risks, and ways to protect them)
.

ICANN just don't have the resources to police this.

They'll only police domain name disputes if someone complains and will pay legal fees etc... eg if cocacola claims that someone has infringed their copyright on a domain. In that case ICANN has the resources because the complainer (or complained against if they lose) will have to pay costs.

But policing porn would require them to do this at their own expense, if not who would pay? If you complained about a .com with porn on it would you pay the investigation fees?

Its the same reasons ISPs can't be held liable for what is accessible via their network... they do not have the resources to police it. To ensure anything that was illegal, defamitory, trademark or copyright infringement etc wasn't accessible via a given ISP would crush them under impossible costs - and they'd have to pass those on to customers. In short we'd have to be prepared to pay massively more for a censored internet than for an uncensored one.

If you don't want your kids to access porn, its up to you to install software etc to block it from them, or signup to an ISP that offers this type of feature. ICANN can't possibly afford to police such a system.

 

[TotallySport]

Sorry forgot to ask in the last post, but what is UAE?

ICANN just don't have the resources to police this.

I think I pointed out in an earlier posts it would be fairly automatic to check sites content, using spiders, crawlers, robots and image comparison software.

I don't think your comparison from ICCAN's position with an ISP is a good one, an ISP simply provides access to the internet, but ICCAN is the highest level authority for governing domain names, so in effect it is ICCAN's job to manage them.

I simply think that ICCAN and certain industires could use this system to better manager content on the net, I understand this will not happen as it is a capitalists world and not an idealists one.

I am happy to do my part to protect my kids online, but there are other groups of people that simply don't want to view it, current options although do stop porn content also block alot of other content and functionality of the web which I don't have a problem with, this would be one simple way of filtering content which would be very easy to impliment on any and every system, not hidden technology no special programming, total openness.

As i said before it could also be used to filter to help people find what they want, but as I said it ain't gunna happen.

 

[Tim R-T-C]

Perhaps those of you debating the .xxx domain don't realise was that it was actually adult websites that put forward the idea originally - the idea was that it was going to be like a voluntary code of practice and that the websites in this domain would actually have to sign up for checks to ensure that their material was not illegal. It would be a 'sponsored TLD' like .ltd or .museum.

It would not force all adult sites to register as .xxx (in the same way that not all firms have to use .co) and the filtering problem would not be much of an issue since most of the people who would use these sites (should) do so from home and would be able to disable their webfiltering software when they wanted.


Either way, this is not going to happen now - .xxx like any other TLD will become open territory under these new proposals.

 

[TotallySport]

Hi Tim

I used to live in Haworth, I have family in Keighley and I used to work at the Kings Arms In haworth and run the Bay Horse in skipton (now the tad pole). Small world.

As i said I think the domain names could be used an excellent filtering term, I think certain industires could really benefit from it, as well as certain areas of the public, will have to wait and see what they end up with.

 

[Steve2507]

With regards to the "policing" of the internet by ICANN. It is not ICANN's responsibility to decide what is right or wrong with regards to what is available online. That decision is down to the government concerned. If a person does not like what they find on a site then go elsewhere. Likewise it is not the Internet's governing bodies job to protect our children, that responsibility is firmly with the parents.

Personally I am sick to death of the idea that the state should protect us and ensure we don't see anything we shouldn't see. What ever happened to common sense and freedom of choice? Parents should take some responsibility with their children rather than blaming the Internet or ICANN.

With regards to the domains I read the details as anyone being able to have whatever extension they wanted. So domains like sex.toys, sex.toy, temptations.direct, sex.shops, marital.aids, blue.widgets, allthe.bluewidgets, black.thingumyjigs would all be acceptable.

 

[MartCactus]

Sorry forgot to ask in the last post, but what is UAE?

UAE = United Arab Emirates (a country which includes emirates of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and 5 other smaller ones).

 

[TotallySport]

Hi Steve

I don't think any has suggest what is the right or wrong way to adjust url extensions, just offering opinions and options. Due to the nature of the internet I don't expect anyone to dictate what is and isn't allowed online, only that some information and options would not be suitable for some people and it would be usefull to filter them easily, this isn't restricted to porn, although it is the option i have used in my examples. And yes there are people who will find it OK to let their children at any age view what ever content they want.

Personally I am sick to death of the idea that the state should protect us and ensure we don't see anything we shouldn't see.

That is not what we are suggesting either, my point if if you make all sex industry sites have an .xxx or similar extensions it would do to things:

1, Make it easier for me to not view any sites which have been deemed to have an .xxx extention, which means if I don't want to look at it its easy for me not to very very easily, there is no big brother tactics as the information is still there, but if I see fit I can restrict the content if I wanted to. (This would work in the same was as if i don't want to walk down the red light I don't have to, but if I do i know where to go)

2, Make it easier to filter, say if you have sex toys you could have .xxx.toys so if I want to look for sex toys either information or ecommerce, i would be directed to exactly the sites I am intereted in, other ones could be .xxx.movies or .xxx.celebs.

Parents should take some responsibility with their children rather than blaming the Internet or ICANN.

I didn't see anyone asign blame either just point out that this could be used as an excellent filting tool, unless of course you think it's a propriate for young children to stumb upon inapropiate sites due to a simple spelling mistake?

Steve, getting a little off topic but since you are in a related area to most of my posts, would you consider putting a line of code in you home page that stated to the nature of your business, that ment your content could be filter easily, providing it had no effect on all your web based information, placings, rankings etc? and why?

 

[MartCactus]

With regards to the domains I read the details as anyone being able to have whatever extension they wanted. So domains like sex.toys, sex.toy, temptations.direct, sex.shops, marital.aids, blue.widgets, allthe.bluewidgets, black.thingumyjigs would all be acceptable.

We've been discussing this quite a bit here... largely how many new domains will be created, the fact that they might be created in foreign languages like Arabic and Chinese.

From what I've seen the effect of all this might be exaggerated somewhat. The proposal I've seen is that this won't be like registering a new domain where it costs you perhaps 10 bucks a year. It would cost perhaps $50,000 per year to get the rights to a domain suffix, and assuming its an auction perhaps a lot more. You'd also need to present a business plan and show that you've got the technical clout to run a domain suffix. Most of us haven't.

So the only people who will buy and create a new suffix would be

1) people who believe they can resell domains on that suffix, eg I think I can create .shop and then resell domains on that, or .sex or .xxx

2) big companies like ebay might register .ebay and then they can create their customers stores at

customerstorename.ebay

If the costs of setting up a new suffix are $50,000+ per year then its unlikely we'll get .toy etc. Since if I bought that suffix I'd have to stump up $50k per year, so I'd have to be able to sell a lot of .toy domains to make it pay.

So in the end the effect of this might be relatively limited. .Com and .co.uk (for Brits) will continue to be gold, and anyone selling the others would still have a tough time (in the same way .biz was touted as a rival to .com but never really caught on).

.london and similar have been touted... but how many people would buy that when they've already got a much better .co.uk domain. I suspect there might be an initial frenzy, followed by a period where these get sidelined just like .biz. and .ltd.uk

 

[MartCactus]

That is not what we are suggesting either, my point if if you make all sex industry sites have an .xxx or similar extensions it would do to things:

Sure it would make it easy to block, but that is why they won't use it. So the problem is enforcing that. Pornsters wouldn't choose to have a domain that is so easily blocked.

In the same way we could mandate that .spam be used as the sending domain of all spam emails, and therefore make blocking spam easy. ICANN could enforce it (as you've suggested with porno) and the spam problem will be eliminated as anyone who wants to block spam can do so. So if it were possible for ICANN to enforce use of domains, then we'd have a solution to spam! But they just don't have the resources.

Of course this just doesn't work. Spammers, like pornsters just won't use it - they'll not voluntarily sign up to anything that makes it easy to block their sites.

 

[TotallySport]

UAE = United Arab Emirates (a country which includes emirates of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and 5 other smaller ones).

LOL, i did think about that but since we were taling about the internet I thought it was some authority, body or organisation

But since the UAE is only a relaively small part of the world and I supposed it is informated but the governments, I suppose that is big brother tactics and thats not what i was refering to, i don't have a problem with information being there, i simply want to be able to filter it accuratly and easily.

 

[worlddom]

I'd be incredibly cautious to invest large sums of money into setting up an online presence using a made up extension with no history within the SERPs. It's hard enough getting the existing ones ranked!!

It may be an idea to register the names you want and then see how things pan out over the next 5 years.

 

[MartCactus]

LOL, i did think about that but since we were taling about the internet I thought it was some authority, body or organisation

But since the UAE is only a relaively small part of the world and I supposed it is informated but the governments, I suppose that is big brother tactics and thats not what i was refering to, i don't have a problem with information being there, i simply want to be able to filter it accuratly and easily.

The silly thing with their firewall is that its relatively easily avoided by using a VPN (virtual private network). You can buy monthly VPN service from providers outside UAE for around 15 bucks. What then happens is you connect to a remote location (eg the service provider in the USA) via an encrypted "tunnel" and from there you can do all the naughty things you like, for example looking at pictures of beer on the heineken website (alcohol sites are typically blocked in the UAE). Of course if you really want to look at a beer you can always walk into one of Dubai's numerous hotel bars and purchase one - whilst looking at pictures of beer on the web is clearly deemed to be unislamic, its considered perfectly fine to sit in a bar and drink one

 

[TotallySport]

Interesting point about spammers, but you have the evaluate spam you don't really have a site designed to spam people, spam is design to drive interest to you and in general spam comes from sites you have logged onto, or registered to, so if it came from a porn site it would have .xxx and would be filter anyway, if it came from a hotmail account claiming I had the nigerian lottery, i suppose that would be a little different but easy to filter on the email programs. Most of my spam are newletters from various companies I don't remeber signing upto, lol.

 

[Steve2507]

Hi Steve

I don't think any has suggest what is the right or wrong way to adjust url extensions, just offering opinions and options. Due to the nature of the internet I don't expect anyone to dictate what is and isn't allowed online, only that some information and options would not be suitable for some people and it would be usefull to filter them easily, this isn't restricted to porn, although it is the option i have used in my examples. And yes there are people who will find it OK to let their children at any age view what ever content they want.

That is not what we are suggesting either, my point if if you make all sex industry sites have an .xxx or similar extensions it would do to things:

1, Make it easier for me to not view any sites which have been deemed to have an .xxx extention, which means if I don't want to look at it its easy for me not to very very easily, there is no big brother tactics as the information is still there, but if I see fit I can restrict the content if I wanted to. (This would work in the same was as if i don't want to walk down the red light I don't have to, but if I do i know where to go)

2, Make it easier to filter, say if you have sex toys you could have .xxx.toys so if I want to look for sex toys either information or ecommerce, i would be directed to exactly the sites I am intereted in, other ones could be .xxx.movies or .xxx.celebs.

I didn't see anyone asign blame either just point out that this could be used as an excellent filting tool, unless of course you think it's a propriate for young children to stumb upon inapropiate sites due to a simple spelling mistake?

Steve, getting a little off topic but since you are in a related area to most of my posts, would you consider putting a line of code in you home page that stated to the nature of your business, that ment your content could be filter easily, providing it had no effect on all your web based information, placings, rankings etc? and why?

Fair enough, I took your post differently to how it was intended, my mistake.

Putting code in the homepage wouldn't make any difference. Our site has 60K pages, so you need to put such code in all those pages. There are already systems in place where websites can be filered without the need for websites to add code. If you look at our homepage it quite clearly states that we are a sex shop, so any page that had the term "sex" in the title could easily be blocked with current browser software. Where my wife used to work she couldn't access our site or any of our competitors and that was 3 years ago so the software is out there.

You mention provided it had no effect on rankings, this would be impossible to determine. If G is using the toolbar info to rank sites (i.e. the number of visitors who have the toolbar installed) then having such code would reduce the visitors which would then affect the rankings.

 

[TotallySport]

Fair enough, I took your post differently to how it was intended, my mistake.

Putting code in the homepage wouldn't make any difference. Our site has 60K pages, so you need to put such code in all those pages. There are already systems in place where websites can be filered without the need for websites to add code. If you look at our homepage it quite clearly states that we are a sex shop, so any page that had the term "sex" in the title could easily be blocked with current browser software. Where my wife used to work she couldn't access our site or any of our competitors and that was 3 years ago so the software is out there.

You mention provided it had no effect on rankings, this would be impossible to determine. If G is using the toolbar info to rank sites (i.e. the number of visitors who have the toolbar installed) then having such code would reduce the visitors which would then affect the rankings.

I agree there are unreliable ways to filter sites, all the local libraries in our are have online facilities were you can go in and browse the net, at one point you could search anything,since then they have improved the filtering to allow content that only none offensive or legal information if available so if you want to look at warez related topics it is suppose to filter it out, but there are always ones that sneek through so its no way perfect.

I am only speaking hyposthetically, but lets say you had a code you put in your web site 1 line that told browser that your web site sold sex toys, now that could filtered out sexual content sites if there were not wanted, but if people wanted to search for sex toys, you could use something that used this line of code and it would only bring up sites that had your code in, now yes you might get less visitors, but you visitors would be interested in your products and in theory would generally stay on your site a lot longer and have a high convertion rate, also you would only be competing with sex toy shops, so movie sites, and informaion sites wouldn't be in the in the search. To be honest if there was a line of code of ecommerce sites and I could specify I was a sport shop it would make it much easier to search what I wanted and not what google had indexed, it would almost be an extenson of google shoping on a larger scale.

Filtering is done on your content which leaves it to be inacurate, and not everyone has the same knowledge as you to make it clear you have inform the spiders what they are.

Of course people will imply abuse the system and it wouldn't work but the potential is excellent for the end user.

Anyway enough of the dreaming, back to work.

 

[MartCactus]

Interesting point about spammers, but you have the evaluate spam you don't really have a site designed to spam people, spam is design to drive interest to you and in general spam comes from sites you have logged onto, or registered to, so if it came from a porn site it would have .xxx and would be filter anyway, if it came from a hotmail account claiming I had the nigerian lottery, i suppose that would be a little different but easy to filter on the email programs. Most of my spam are newletters from various companies I don't remeber signing upto, lol.

The vast bulk of spam that I get to my business email address is nothing that I've ever signed up for. My email address has been in existence for well over 10 years, and during that time spammers have obtained it from spidering the web, hacking sites, and probably some illegitimate people who sold lists of email addresses of people who did sign up to their site.

But the issue is that spammers won't use a .spam domain to send mail or to host their spam promoted websites. They don't want their sites to be easy to block. Pornographers are the same. And gambling sites too. Its just a non starter to expect these industries to either police themselves, or to expect ICANN to police the use of domains. There are millions of .com domains alone. How much would it cost to police them all and ensure none have porno content on them? A .com domain costs what about 10 bucks a year or less? How much would this need to rise to raise enough cash to let ICANN police content?

 

[martin001]

Put your website address in print and they might remember the name of your website, but was it a .com or a .co.uk, or I think it was a .uk.com.

.... or was it, .computers, or .pc or was it .technology

Surely it is likely to be even harder to remember what the domain name was from seeing something in print, as at the moment if I cant remember what the domain was I know at least if I try .com or .co.uk I will find it.

 

[Moneyman]

As soon as anyone implemented any blocking of .sex or .xxx sites the pornsters would stop using those domains. Many already have .com domains and won't switch in any case. And it would be impossible to regulate (ie to legally force the use of .xxx or similar).

.

I think they could force the porn onto xxx . You just remove the dot com from them and give a free xxx. ok they can then come up with agkagkgkasgksgad dot com but that wont achieve anything. They are selling porn after all and having a xxx would help them.

i have always felt that we are going to split the internet in two. One legitimate regulated and checked and the other free for all as now. Say companies house would only give dot com dot uk or whatever to limited companies so the domains would just be an extension of their remit. You would have to pay say a hundred a year but payments would be covered as in bricks and motar and fraud protection built in. All customers would know where they stand. You wouldnt have to join but it would show how legit you were.

 

[MartCactus]

I think they could force the porn onto xxx . You just remove the dot com from them and give a free xxx. ok they can then come up with agkagkgkasgksgad dot com but that wont achieve anything. They are selling porn after all and having a xxx would help them.

It wouldn't help them if lots of companies were blocking their content.

How would you feel if you'd paid millions for a good .com domain, and then someone came along and took it from you and replaced with a new .xxx instead? I'd be pretty miffed.

Imagine for example that ICANN decided that only americans could have .coms, and that brits should use .co.uk, and therefore came along and took your prized .com that you'd spent millions promoting and building traffic to away. How would you feel?

This entire debate shows no concept of the scale of the task being advocated for ICANN. It is a technical body - it has zero resources to police the content of domains. It would be like asking the mobile phone companies to ensure their products aren't used by drug dealers, escorts etc... its just too expensive.

ICANN is a private company. Its revenue comes from us as domain owners. If we decide that we want a colossal bureaucracy to enforce what domain owners do with their domains then
1) we've got to be prepared to pay many times more for our domains
2) I'd suggest they start policing more damaging content first. Like for starters

- close down any domain that is used to host a spam promoted website, and to insist all spam is sent from a .spam so its easily blocked (of course this, like trying to stop porn on any site other than .xxx just won't work)

- close down any scam or phishing sites

If ICANN wants to start policing the net, they could start with these two things that are much worse problems than porn.

But think about it, not only the massive new costs of policing all this, but the legal costs, the appeals, the claims that "its not porn its art", or "it might be porn in USA, but here in sweden this is light entertainment" etc etc. The bureaucracy required would sink the net.

But trust me folks. This will not happen. XXX domain might well come into being, as might .sex with the new rules. But ICANN or anyone else doesn't have the resources to prevent pornsters using other domain suffixes, and they never will. It isn't going to happen, its complete fantasy, its just the same as expecting them to be able to prevent spam by insisting on a .spam domain.

Lets face it porn sites are easily blocked anyway - there are plenty of solutions out there if you really feel you or your kids might "accidentally" stumble onto something like this.

 

[Moneyman]

I think the idea of an opt in scheme works. Give the management of a domain extention to various groups like the companies house or the charities comission and let them give them out when they see fit (or take them back). that way only a .ltd will be owned by that limited company etc. and you can be sure that any .charity will be a bonafide charity. you could have all banks having an extension of their own which might stop spoofing especially if you had a browser feature which flagged it.

Leave .com etc alone as free and let the legit people bounce you onto their legit site. that way they wouldnt lose their ranking and slowly quality sites would work their way across.

As for porn. most sites want you to know they are porn sites so they are hardly going to hide themselves or be ashamed to use the .xxx . i am only guessing here as i have not yet had time to do enough research!