> do you then agree that security through obscurity is valid?
Not if obscurity is your only defense. I think obscurity of some forms, like using unusual port numbers, can be part of a defense-in-depth strategy to foil purely scripted attacks and save your resources a bit.
> .xxx just makes it easier for regulators/high-horse 'do-gooders' to target whole swathes of content...
And here we have it. It's a temptation I doubt they will be able to resist. Giving it to them that easily is just removing one more element of a defense-in-depth against censorship attempts.
> Why not have TLDs at all? Why not just have global content tags?
This is more of a technical issue, but my first reaction to doing everything via tagging is that spammers are going to spam: If you give them the opportunity to add tags to addresses you end up with the same scenario that lead Google to ignore keywords on websites.
Depends how you constrain the tags. I mean, I hear this "people lie" thing, but when was the last time a brick-and-mortar business website you saw lied about where they are? What benefit does one have in saying your business is actually located in New York City rather than Miami.
I don't see why the same wouldn't apply for porn. If I'm running a pay-for porno site offering premium woman-on-horse action, I'm not interested in, I dunno, gay guys turning up. The people you want turning up are the target audience because those guys are going to pay you money. If the cost for lying in the tag is sufficient (i.e. Google won't rank you as high), then you've got a motivation for telling the truth.
> I mean, I hear this "people lie" thing, but when was the last time a brick-and-mortar business website you saw lied about where they are? What benefit does one have in saying your business is actually located in New York City rather than Miami.
All I know is, I remember the web before Google and I remember how much spam every single search pulled in on the engines that were susceptible to keyword spam. I think that's a pretty solid piece of empirical evidence that if you give people the ability to do it again they will. It doesn't matter why.
> The people you want turning up are the target audience because those guys are going to pay you money.
Spammers simply don't seem to think like this.
> If the cost for lying in the tag is sufficient (i.e. Google won't rank you as high), then you've got a motivation for telling the truth.
This might work. I know, however, it would be yet another arms race.
Not if obscurity is your only defense. I think obscurity of some forms, like using unusual port numbers, can be part of a defense-in-depth strategy to foil purely scripted attacks and save your resources a bit.
> .xxx just makes it easier for regulators/high-horse 'do-gooders' to target whole swathes of content...
And here we have it. It's a temptation I doubt they will be able to resist. Giving it to them that easily is just removing one more element of a defense-in-depth against censorship attempts.
> Why not have TLDs at all? Why not just have global content tags?
This is more of a technical issue, but my first reaction to doing everything via tagging is that spammers are going to spam: If you give them the opportunity to add tags to addresses you end up with the same scenario that lead Google to ignore keywords on websites.