Over at Sand in the Gears Tony Woodlief has an interesting take on the .XXX domain problem from a Christian's perspective. I read Tony partly because he's a good writer, but mostly because he's another passionate Christian, and a good one at that (i.e. non-fundamentalist).

Anyway, he thinks that the .XXX domain is being opposed by porn companies/sites because those sites also participate in the selling of censorship software. And that's certainly the problem. The censorship, I mean, not the fact that the porn companies have anything to do with censorship software (though I wouldn't be surprised in the least).

The problem with the .XXX domain isn't that it can be easily filtered by the world. The problem is in its classification. What is porn? Isn't this indicative of the famous phrase, "I know it when I see it?" Because I see it, and I know it, but if I post a picture of a topless woman here, which I have all the right in the world to do, would that mean I need to get misterorange.xxx? What about the nipple cake that Ericka made last year? Would that send me to the pr0n ghetto?

While I'm sure there's a component to this that reeks of industry profits, I think the free speech issue is more relevant and what is actually keeping .XXX out of our lives.

The fact is, if .XXX is ever embraced, we should be worried.