Internet Agency Delays Porn Decision
Porn Web sites can't park themselves at a ".xxx" address quite yet.
A global Internet oversight agency has deferred a decision for at least 70 days on whether to create the ".xxx" domain name as an online red-light district.
The board of ICANN - the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - has given its chief executive and chief lawyer two weeks to recommend options for the agency to handle the controversial issue. ICANN, which was meeting in Kenya, oversees the allocation of Internet addresses globally.
The proposal to create the ".xxx" domain was first made in 2000. It has been rejected three times so far.
Last month, responding to complaints from ICM Registry LLC. which has put in a bid for the domain name, an outside panel questioned ICANN's grounds for the latest rejection in 2007. As a result, board members have been weighing the matter ahead of formal consideration of the ``.xxx'' bid.
ICM, which planned to charge $60 for a site to register a ``.xxx'' name, first proposed ``.xxx'' in 2000 as a way to help the online porn industry clean up its act. Those using the domain would have to abide by yet-to-be-written rules designed to bar such trickery as spamming and malicious scripts.
And parents could set up Internet software to automatically block any site ending in ``.xxx,'' reducing the chances that minors and other Internet users would accidentally stumble on pornography online.
Given its voluntary nature, however, ``.xxx'' would unlikely have much effect on parents' ability to block porn sites. And because a domain name serves merely as an easy-to-remember moniker for a site's actual numeric Internet address, even if its use is required, a child could simply punch in the numeric address of any blocked ``.xxx'' name.
Anti-porn activists, meanwhile, worry that the creation of a virtual red-light district would serve as an endorsement of the adult-entertainment industry, as ``.xxx'' would be sitting alongside other suffixes such as ``.com'' for commercial sites and ``.edu'' for schools.
Skeptics note that porn sites would likely keep their existing ``.com'' storefronts, even as they set up shop in the new ``.xxx'' domain name, thereby expanding the number of porn sites on the Internet.
When ICANN last considered ``.xxx,'' board members also expressed worries that the suffix would leave the agency in the business of regulating content, or the type of material that would find itself there.
The board also questioned whether ``.xxx'' had the support of the adult-entertainment industry, as many operators of porn sites were concerned that governments would later make the voluntary red-light district mandatory.