Porn Sites Closer to .xxx Web Address

An online red-light district could soon flourish under a new .xxx Internet address which backers say could help computers filter porn sites.

The company that wants to run .xxx has tried and failed three times before to win permission from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, to set up a top-level domain name - or TLD, the name for Web address suffixes such as .com or .org - dedicated to pornography.

ICM Registry LLC chief executive Stuart Lawley says the agency was under pressure from Christian groups and governments unhappy with the spread of online porn to reject his bid since he first tried to register the domain in 2000.

Under criticism from an outside panel, the agency's board acknowledged Friday that it had not treated the application fairly, saying it would now move swiftly to carry out standard checks on Lawley's company.

Lawley says he thinks the new address could easily attract at least 500,000 sites, making it after ".mobi" the second biggest sponsored top-level domain name.

He expects to make $30 million a year in revenue by selling each .xxx site for $60 - and pledges to donate $10 from each sale to child protection initiatives via a nonprofit he has set up.

He also says he will make it easy for Web blocking software to filter out ".xxx" sites by requiring them to carry a machine-readable metatag marking them clearly as porn.

"It will promote more labeled content," he said. "People who want to find it know where it is and people who don't see it or want to keep it away from their kids can use mechanisms to do so."

Skeptics note that porn sites would likely keep existing ".com" storefronts to allow their businesses to be found more easily. There is no requirement for porn sites to use .xxx.

The adult entertainment industry is worth some $13 billion a year, according to the California-based Adult Video News Media Network.

Lawley already has 110,000 reservations for the new domain, he says, and could get the Internet suffix up and running within six to nine months after ICANN checks that ICM has the financial means and technical know-how to run it.

"I think we could do a million or more. There are several million adult TLDs already out there," he told the AP before the ICANN board meeting.

ICANN acknowledged Friday that its refusal to accept .xxx was "not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy." It agreed to swiftly re-examine the ".xxx" application.

It is the first time that ICANN has been effectively forced to review a decision. ICANN says it is only obliged to follow the law of California, where it is based, but says it agreed to follow the findings of the accountability review by a panel drawn from the Internet community.

[AaronT3]

I think there should have been a .XXX domain the first time it was suggested 10 -15 years ago. We have .ORG, .COM, .NET, and .GOV already, why should we not have one explicitly for porn. As a parent it is so easy for kids to get around firewalls because the site have obscure names with .COM. Now as a parent all I have to do is block .XXX and since every porn site must use that extension now (or be "severely" fined I hope), I don't have to worry about back-doors or cleverly misspelled names that currently get by parenting switches. I say YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!!!!

[HugeNasser]

Oh, so this means everybody has to change their URL reg?
Mine is HugeNasser.com maybe I need change it ?

[linfinster]

I like the idea and think it should be mandatory.

[AaronT3]

Me to =-])

[AaronT3]

Me to =-])

[Thomas10429]

Ok, think this through - sites are NOT required to use it, will be VERY likely to retain their original .com (etc) address so they can route 'customers', and will not take the 'other' porn off the net.

The 'other' porn are all the sites that have NSFW (Not Safe For Work) notations but fall under Blogger, Tumblr, WordSmith, etc. All of these will still have the .com TLD and freely (pun intended) provide materials that will need to be filtered if parents are too dumb to monitor what their kids are doing online.

[stinger1z]

Conservative christians want to keep their kids off porn. So why are they aware of it in the first place??

[rwsmith29456]

I don't think it's a bad idea. People that want it can find anything and people that don't can more easily stay away from it.

[lordgoogoo]

Mrs fun-buns !!! Come out come out wherever you are !!!

[John_Merritt]

Ah yes we are ever so close to perfecting the '7 deadly sins', not as a person but as a nation. Is there any country that still has morals and decency left anymore?

Please spare me with the freedom of speech and expression diatribe, and democracy we have no one else in the world enjoys. That is long agoplayed out. The 'fight for freedom' in staging two wars while countries all around this world are asking hemselves 'What are they fighting for and what are they talking about', because our freedoms are costing this nation much more than others and yet we continue to play the fools.

[osukwm]

I really tried to make sense of your comment, but was unable to do so. Then again, anybody who starts with "Spare me the freedom of speech and expression diatribe" probably doesn't have much of value to add to the discussion anyway. You won't be spared it because it is a fundamental cornerstone of advanced Western civilization, and the product of centuries of philosophy, political discourse, and bloody sacrifice. That's why it would be better to just spare us the ill-conceived statement it took you 20 seconds to concoct.

[badger4149]

No kidding! There's an ancient Chinese saying that goes, "If you talk, don't drink. If you drink, don't talk."

[rdupuy11]

There is no clear reason why this is being objected too, other than obstruction. This would make filtering of, yes only some sites, but all the sites that choose to go this route, a no-brainer to filter them out.

That's progress.

[magnumdr]

All of the websites that are online for all people to view should have to be rated as a site for the general public. Any other sites that cannot follow the G rating should not be allowed to be on the internet!!!!!

[PatDaddy67]

That would make it very hard to document and distribute information on other things of import such as the violence in Darfur, etc... The fact that the web is for the most part free and open, is one of the best modern tools for fighting oppression and tyranny world wide. It's not perfect, but it is very useful.

[osukwm]

Sure, and why not burn all the offensive books while we're at it? We might as well just institute full state control of all media, so that we can scrub any content that reactionaries like yourself might find offensive. After all, Communist China does it, and we all know what a what a morally upright and humane society that is. Or you could stop living in a puritan dreamworld and join the rest of us in the 21st century. Try putting a little more thought into your "ideas", or just stick to watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie and your old Disney VHS tapes.