The effort to create a top-level domain suffix for adult Web sites has failed, for the third time (HT: X3). ICANN voted 9-5 to defeat the proposal, which was roundly opposed by an unlikely alliance of religious groups and the adult entertainment industry.

Read more on .xxx Domain Proposal Fails, x3…

I’ve discussed previously the complex interrelationships between the next-generation gaming consoles and hi-def DVD formats, especially as complicated by the pornification of culture and technology.

So far I’ve focused on the battle between Sony’s PS3 (paired with the Blu-ray format) and the Xbox 360 (paired with the HD-DVD format), and argued that the hi-def formats rather than the porn industry itself would act as a decisive influence.

Read more on New Player in the Console Wars…

According to published reports, China is planning on adding new censorship regulations covering blogs and webcasts (HT).

President Hu Jintao says the government needs to take these steps to “purify” the Internet, leading to “a more healthy and active Internet environment,” according to the Xinhua news agency.

Read more on ‘Great Firewall’ Not Great Enough…

Good news (at least I think it is). Acton.org is a site not blocked by the “Great Firewall of China” (i.e. government censors). A big HT to GetReligion (which is blocked).

Read more on Acton.org Makes it through the Wall…

Karl Bode at Broadband Reports accuses various free-market think tanks of inconsistency and even hypocrisy in their approaches to the question of broadband internet regulation: “Wouldn’t banning towns and cities from offering broadband be regulation? And wouldn’t it be ‘un-necessary regulation’ considering companies like AT&T have discovered they can simply compete in the muni-wireless sector? Strange how such rabid fans of a free-market aren’t interested in allowing market darwinism to play out,” he observes (HT: Slashdot).

Read more on Banning Broadband or Making Markets Possible?…

The editors of PC World magazine have done a little survey of how users around the world access the Internet, based on the responses of over 60 worldwide publications that “either carry the PC World name or are associated with us in some way.”

Read more on Broadband Abroad…

The Green Wifi Prototype

One of the concerns with the “little green machine” (discussed previously here and here) has been the issue of Internet connectivity. Little enclaves of mini-networks just won’t cut it…these computers need access to the global web.

Read more on Wi-Fi in the Developing World…

Ever since the popularization of the Internet, a debate has raged—within and without Christian circles—about the effect of the medium on human development and relationships. A serious and plausible charge against the Web came from those who thought its mode of disembodied communication would alter the form of human interaction for the worse. (See, for example, Quentin Schultze’s Habits of the High-Tech Heart, reviewed in the Journal of Markets & Morality by Megan Maloney.)

Read more on Cyber Communication…

Radley Balko, blogging at Cato@Liberty (he also blogs at The Agitator), writes about the creeping campaign in Washington state to crack down on internet gambling. A new law would impose “up to a five-year prison term for people who gamble online,” but since passage has also been used to “to go after people who merely write about gambling.” Citing an editorial in the Seattle Times, the law prohibits not only online betting but also transmitting “gambling information.”

Read more on Toward a Government-Run Gambling Monopoly…

According to published reports, market mechanisms, and specifically competition, are accomplishing what many decriers of the “digital divide” have long contended only big government could do. The AP, via LiveScience.com, reports, “Middle- and working-class Americans signed up for high-speed Internet access in record numbers in the past year, apparently lured by a price war among phone companies.”

Read more on The Digital Collide…