Are dot.kids for EU?

The European Parliament wants a domain name developed to provide a safe playground for children on the internet.

It has suggested setting up the domain as .kid that will only allow websites that contain material suitable for children 12 years-old and younger.

Prohibited content, includes any mature content, inappropriate language, drugs, violence, tobacco, gambling, weapons and criminal activity. The EU has suggested the sites should be regularly monitored by an independent authority. It would mean that in an educational context, some of this banned material may be allowed; but the boundaries are vague.

However, a similar idea was rejected before by ICANN, the governing body for the internet's naming system. It felt it would be too difficult to control and had the potential to actually cause more harm if unsuitable material managed to bypass its censors.

In addition such a domain may not be attractive for companies. A similar scheme to the EU proposal already exists in the US and the .kids.us has failed to attract many content providers.

A New York librarian Jean Armour Polly, the author of six editions of a family friendly directory Net-mom's Internet kids & Family is unenthusiastic about the US attempt as a 'safe playground'.

"There are currently less than twenty-five active websites in kids.us," she wrote in June 2005, saying there are only "eight that are worth visiting."

She blames the high annual fee and the requirement that there can be no links out of kids.us boundaries as the main reasons for deterring content providers.

Struan Robertson, a technology lawyer with Pinsent Masons said: "It's difficult to see why those that already run popular websites for children would want to migrate to a new .kid space if all it brings is hassle and expense."

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