The implications of new Top Level Domains ' .xxx' and '.kids.us'

June 2005

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has just announced that it has entered into negotiations to establish .xxx as a new Top-Level Domain (TLD). This comes on the fairly recent heels of the establishment of .kids.us as a TLD. So, what are the implications?

The idea behind the .kids.us TLD was to create a safe place within the Internet for kids to surf. Supposedly, parents could set the browsers of their children only to access sites within this TLD. Sites within this TLD are not permitted to contain violent content, pornography, drug or alcohol references, and interactive services such as chat rooms and message boards are barred. All material must pass a content review, and sites within .kids.us cannot link to sites outside of this TLD.

Sounds good, right? Well, actually, this concept has not caught fire. Indeed, little more than 20 sites now are operational within .kids.us, a couple years after this TLD was set up. Why?