Senate thinks ICANN should have approved .xxx domain

In a September 20 hearing convened by a Senate Commerce subcommittee on an agreement between the federal government and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), members suggested that ICANN should have approved an adult domain called .xxx instead of rejecting it. That domain could be used to segregate pornographers, they said.
But an acting assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Commerce told the Senators that the Bush administration last year asked ICANN to halt the process (see earlier blog post), citing "e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children."
ICANN President Paul Twomey said his group had received more than 100,000 complaints about .xxx from groups such as the American Family Association. ICANN's rejection of .xxx, Twomey said, had "a lot to do with the...timing of the request" rather than an objection in principle.
More information is available in the second half of this article from ZDNet News.

Public Libraries and the Internet 2006

The Information Use Management & Policy Institute at Florida State University just released (August 2006) its latest biannual survey of Internet use in public libraries. One of the most significant findings in this report is the increasing dependence of government on public libraries to deliver "e-government" services to citizens without computers at home. As librarians spend more and more time assisting people with e-government services, they are beginning to resent the fact that they get no funding or training from government for this job.

Attorney General wants data retention

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales considers child pornography and "obscene" content to be among the highest priorities of law enforcement, and has been meeting with the major Internet Service Providers in an attempt to convince them to increase record retention time to two years to help provide law enforcement agents with information for combatting terrorism and child pornography. View the report from Ars Technica here.