ICANN Needs to Stop Laying Down Freedoms and Start Laying Down the Law

Oh No The Internet is Broken!!!

I never thought I would ever even think these words:

Something in America is TOO Free!

I hate to say it, but it’s true. That “something” is the Internet. The world wide web is a place of a lot of chaos. The anonymity breeds negative emotions and fuels our urges to be bad without any sense of consequence. In less than five minutes, you can create a completely anonymous profile on a random website and commit typographical hate-crimes without any worry that a badge will show up at your door. The worst part, is that no one is trying to do anything about it. The latest example of this is coming from ICANN.

• http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/06/icann-approves-open-domain-name-rules-whatever-is-a-go.html
  

The link above basically says that ICANN, in all of it’s brilliance, decided to open up top-level domain names so that companies can make litterally anything take the place of “.com”. Now companies will have website names like http://drink.coke and http://ilike.cheese and http://buy.menon and http://pepsi.generation . Dot com is going to become a thing of the past. Soon we will all be nostalgic about the times when we could locate the website of a company by simply thinking of the name and adding a “.com” to the end. What a wasted oportunity.Doesn’t seem so bad to you yet, huh? Well what are you going to think when somebody in the porn industry decides to make a website address called http://freeporn.4kids ? Or maybe we will get lucky and someone will create http://sexwith.children ! This idea is starting to sound stupider by the minute right?

Lay Down The Law!

This also has me concerned about people who have trouble using the internet to begin with. Your parents think the Internet is a confusing thing now with putting a www in front of things and all the .com’s; Now they have to reach through their already strained memory to remember that it’s not http://www.coupons.com, but now it’s iwannaclip.coupons. This is one area where creativity should not be allowed.

What should they have done?

They should have made top-level domains a way of catagorizing websites and laying a foundation for Internet Regulations. ICANN should have created a submission process to suggest new top level domain catagories and then created laws surrounding those domains. For example:

• Yes, there should be a “.xxx” top level domain, but by law if you are considered a porn site you should be required to have that as your only domain. “.porn” “.pron” “.pr0n” “.adult” “.xrated”
• “.com” You can only hold this as a domain name if you are selling something on your website. “.buy”
• “.kid” Any website with this domain name should have content that has been approved child safe. “.children” “.4kids” “.family”

This would allow us to stop companies from “cybersquatting” because they would have to lease the right to use the top level domain name. Also, it would bring in extra income from enforcing fines to companies that broke the laws. Parents could rest easy that their child will not be exposed to any adult content when their filter is set to only allow “.kid” domain names. I am very surprised and disappointed that ICANN did not think of this. 

The World Ends Dec 21st 2012

I’m not looking forward to the future of the internet if this is how they are going to handle it. This decision is only going to make the lack of policing on the internet worse and probably spiral it into a circle of chaos that no one will enjoy. Maybe the world ending in 2012 is just a metaphor like on Donnie Darko. Just like he lost the love of his life, so shall we lose our precious precious internet. 

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