A new internet domain designed to house pornographic content has been approved by the body responsible for internet addresses. The proposal had been opposed by governments and many pornography companies.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the creation of a dot-xxx domain last week, going against the advice of its Government Advisory Committee (GAC), the body created to alert ICANN to the view of governments.
The controversial plan put forward by the company that will operate the domain, ICM Registry, was first proposed in 2000 and had previously been rejected by ICANN. It will now go ahead and ICM chief executive Stuart Lawley has said that domain names will be on sale from June of this year.
It will be open only to companies involved in the business of pornography and its backers claim that it will help to ensure that children are not exposed to unsuitable content.
Opponents have argued, though, that pornography will still appear on sites located at addresses at other domains, such as dot-com, and that pornography companies will have to pay to register their names at new addresses for little benefit.
The plan was previously rejected because ICANN said that it did not have the support of the industry, or a 'sponsorship community', required for the creation of that kind of new domain.
The Free Speech Coalition (FSC), a trade group for the pornography industry, said that the scheme still did not have the support of the industry.
"We are disappointed but we are not surprised by the ICANN Board’s decision," said FSC executive director Diane Duke. "[ICANN has] disregarded overwhelming outpouring of opposition from the adult entertainment industry – the supposed sponsorship community – dismissing the interests of free speech on the Internet."
"The [ICANN] Board has carefully considered comments from the community and the GAC in making this decision, in furtherance of ICANN's mission," said minutes of the meeting at which ICANN approved the plan.
The GAC had said that some countries would block the dot-xxx domain, and that this would cause problems for the internet's central systems. It also said that it believed that ICM still did not meet the sponsorship criteria for the setting up of such a domain.
"The Board's decision differs from some of the GAC advice received. This decision is a result of careful consideration, and the Board approached the matter of differing with GAC advice with care and concern, working hard to understand the advice and to what the application of advice in this instance would lead," said an explanation from the Board.
"The Issue of governments (or any other entity) blocking or filtering access to a specific TLD Is not unique to the issue of the .XXX sTLD," it said. "Such blocking and filtering exists today. While we agree that blocking of TLDs is generally undesirable, if some blocking of the .XXX sTLD does occur there's no evidence the result will be different from the blocking that already occurs."
Subject: Online home for pornography passed by ICANN amid opposition 
Sat Mar 26, 2011 5:19 pm
Yes I did think that would be your responce.