Bush signs "Dot-Kids" Act

President Bush has signed the Dot-Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act, which will create a "dot-kids" domain of G-rated sites on the Internet's World Wide Web within a dot-us addressing space.

The bill, which was co-sponsored by Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota, praised the passage of the legislation in saying, "Everyone who's a parent appreciates the difficulty of supervising their children on the Internet. This is a tool for parents. We're not censoring anything. We're just going to try to provide a domain that's safe for children." The adopted legislation is one step short of earlier proposals for a stand-alone dot-kids suffix (to be equal with .net and .org suffixes) on the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). Since the address, kids.us, has been reserved for use by the U.S. government, the names that can exist within that address are limitless (for example, vacations.kids.us, movies.kids.us, goodbookstoread.kids.us). The Dot-Kids Act provides that Web sites with kids.us addresses can not post hyperlinks to locations outside the kids.us domain, and prohibits instant messaging and chat rooms, except where the site operator is sufficiently vigilant to assure that the features adhere to the kid-friendly standards mandated by Congress and developed for the dot-kids domain.

NeuStar, Inc. was awarded the government contract to run dot-us. Dot-us is America's sovereign Internet domain, as is dot-uk in England and dot-jp in Japan, along with the Internet's global addressing system of dot-com, dot-net and dot-org. NeuStar's primary responsibility will be to police the new dot-kids domain, ensuring that Web sites with kids.us addresses comply with the G-rated, child-friendly content standards of the Dot-Kids Act spelled out by Congress.