Tag Archives: Internet

.xxx domains are about to arrive

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Pornography is about to get its own domain suffix.

From here:

After a 10-year battle, Internet watchdog Icann has finally given in to the creation of an Internet domain dedicated to pornography.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which governs the website naming system, yesterday approved the creation of a top level ‘.xxx’ domain, opening the way for a red-light district online for pornographic websites.

Icann gave initial approval last year, but carried out further consultation checks over the application.

It is now poised to sign an agreement with the ICM Registry, which is backing the domain, allowing .xxx the same level status as .com and .org.

Religious groups argue that giving adult websites their own corner of the Internet legitimises the content.

But pornographers aren’t happy either, and worry it will ghettoise their sites.

I’m in at least three minds about this:

First, I am in favour of free speech on the Internet and that includes saying and displaying things I disagree with.

Second, I think pornography is harmful; since we are well past the stage where it can be banned, ghettoising it might be the next best thing.

Third, pornography is only a symptom of Western decay; to focus energy on its evils is to treat the symptom, not the disease. The West needs more radical medicine.

I think I’ll settle on number three, garnished with number 2.

 

 

 

Even Borat has better Internet access than Canadians

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It appears that the CRTC’s ruling to enforce usage based billing for Internet access is to be overturned. Canadian geeks are rejoicing.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that Canada’s ISPs are providing particularly good service to their Internet customers – particularly on upload speeds. I subscribe to an online backup service which constantly sends the contents of my hard drives to an online server; the only problem is, Canadian upload speeds are so slow, it can take months for new files to be uploaded: in fact, Canada’s upload speeds are even slower than Kazakhstan’s. Of course, Kazakhstan doesn’t have the CRTC playing nanny.
From here:

Average upload speeds available to Canadians are even more striking in the netindex.com rankings. Canada is in 64th spot globally, at 1.35Mbps, behind smaller countries with less developed infrastructures, including:

  • Mozambique, ranked 62nd, at 1.41Mbps.
  • Swaziland, ranked 61st, at 1.43Mbps.
  • Kenya, ranked 58th, at 1.52 Mbps.
  • Kazakhstan, ranked 40th, at 2.10Mbps.

Access to the Internet has become a human right

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According to ahumanright.org at least. To rectify the abhorrent injustice of being unplugged, ahumanright.org is building a  free network.

The organisation doesn’t make it quite clear as to why Internet access is a human right – probably because to try to do so would expose the flimsiness of the reason. Its aim is to give everyone a voice. It’s going to be dreadfully noisy: just think of the spam – sorry, reliable information.

From Google to Oh Lord in Iran

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Iran is in the process of further isolating its inhabitants by replacing the evil Western Internet that assaults delicate Iranian sensibilities with so much nasty free information, with an intranet (a closed network) complete with its own search engine call “Oh Lord”. Have to keep those Mohammed cartoons at bay somehow.

Hadi Malek-Parast, Director General for Research and Development at the Iranian Information Technology Company, told the Iranian Mehr News Agency on Sunday that Iran has started developing a national search enginged dubbed ‘Ya Haq’, a Persian expression meaning “Oh Lord.”

Speaking of the need for faster search capacity and higher security for the country’s online communications, Malek-Parast said Ya Haq would be ready to launch in 2012 and referred to the project as a domestic Intranet, as opposed to an international Internet.

“They are not just developing a search engine, they want to develop an Intranet, instead of an Internet, which would be some kind of local Internet and only give access to state institutions and internally approved sites,” Pujan Ziaie, a senior IT strategist in Iran’s ‘green’ opposition movement told The Media Line. “The discussion began a few years ago and is based on a feeling that the Internet is a Western weapon. They are threatened by it but they cannot ignore it so they are trying to imitate what China has done.”