Dot-Kids On the Skids
Group Shelves Proposed Domain Name
Staff -- School Library Journal, 1/1/2001
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the nonprofit corporation that manages the Web's domain name system, has rejected proposals to add two new online domains. One was .kids, a domain for children and young adults under 18; the other was .xxx, a domain for pornographic content, which would have been easy for Internet filtering software to bypass. (See News, November 2000) "ICANN didn't want to create a restricted domain," explains Brett LaGrande, an ICANN media representative, of the November decision. "The Web is international, and the definition of who is a 'kid' differs internationally." The .xxx domain was even dicier, says LaGrande. "ICANN felt it wasn't their role to define what's pornographic," he says. There will be an opportunity in the future to resubmit proposals, but for now, LaGrande says, the organization accepted the proposed domains "they felt most comfortable with." Those new domains include .coop (for cooperatives) and .museum (for, obviously, museums). Doug Johnson, Mankato (MN) Schools' director of media and technology, feels that a .kids domain might have been useful, but wasn't essential. Plus, he isn't fond of calling children "kids," joking that he thought the word "should have been the sole property of goat breeders." Still, he says, "I don't see that such a domain would be harmful unless overly ambitious technology directors set their filters to block everything but .kids."--W. M.
