.xxx domain name approval heralds online red-light district

by Stevie Smith - Jun 28 2010, 07:05

After several years of repeated refusals, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has finally given the nod to .xxx as an official online domain designation for websites carrying pornographic content.

The creation of .xxx domains has been sponsored by the ICM Registry, an organisation that is looking to create a contained online red-light district that operates within certain standards and is free of spam, virus attacks, instances of identity theft – and is easy to avoid by users not drawn towards such content.

However, although you may think the arrival of .xxx domain extensions will provide a way to avoid tripping over porn sites while web surfing via search engines, it is expected that the majority of the Internet’s approximately six million pornographic sites will not embrace the new designation.

According to the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association representing over 1,000 adult entertainment businesses, the creation of an online red-light district will lead to regulation and censorship.

“If the board doesn’t like what a producer creates, there is the possibility that they could censor it,” outlined Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, in a New York Times report. “This will ghettoise our industry and make us a target of regulation.”

The ICM Registry has said it expects the registration of around 500,000 new .xxx domains when the new suffixes go live in the spring of 2011.

However, it’s likely that many of those registrations will be larger sites moving to register .xxx versions of their existing addresses in order to prevent others from piggybacking on their traffic.

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