Porn domain not in ICANN comfort zone

Stan Beer
Thursday, 11 May 2006 17:51

Your IT - Home IT

The porn industry is not going to get its own .xxx top level domain, after the long running proposal was voted down by a majority of the board members of internet regulator, the Internet Coorporation for Asigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The proposal, which has been six years in the making from US-based internet company ICM Registry, was voted down by a margin of 9 to 5 by the 14 member ICANN board.

Ironically, the proposal was opposed not only by members of conservative groups but also representatives of the porn industry itself, who maintained that the domain may have the effect of limiting their speech through its policy guidelines.

On the other hand, conservatives and anti-porn campaigners argued that the domain would just serve to legitimize porn and would not place any obligations on purveyors of porn to refrain from sending malware to visitors because they could just keep their .com domains as well.

The views of the board members who voted for and against the proposal will be published later this month.