.XXX Domain Approved For Porn Sites

SAN FRANCISCO — You've heard of ".com" and ".org." Joining them soon will be their bawdy cousin: ".xxx."

On Friday, the board of directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the Internet's naming system, approved the creation of a red-light district online for pornographic websites. It follows a decade-long battle over such a name.

The uproar over the idea has brought together unlikely bedfellows.

Religious groups argue that giving adult websites their own corner of the Internet legitimizes the content.

Pornographers worry it will ghettoize their sites. Although it's meant to be voluntary, they fear governments could try to mandate the domain's use, so that pornographic content is more easily blocked.

Diane Duke, executive director of the adult entertainment industry's Free Speech Coalition, said in a statement that ICANN has "disregarded overwhelming outpouring of opposition from the adult entertainment industry – the supposed sponsorship community" and dismissed the "interests of free speech on the Internet."

Supporters have maintained that approving the domain is in keeping with the principle of openness that has fueled the Internet's growth.

While the idea of ".xxx" has provoked a philosophical debate, for the U.S. company that submitted the application for the domain, the issue is little more than a matter of dollars and cents.

ICM Registry and its CEO, Stuart Lawley, who has led the fight for ICANN's approval of ".xxx," stand to profit handsomely from the rollout of ".xxx" websites – because he will be in charge of collecting fees for the use of the new domains.

Lawley plans to charge registrars $60 per year for the domain names. He estimates that he could sell as many as 500,000 by the time he rolls them out this summer.

"This was always going to be a very lucrative arrangement," he said in an interview Friday.

Lawley's prices have been a critical issue for opponents to his plan, since domain names typically sell for a fraction of what Lawley plans to charge. They often sell for $10 or less.

ICANN had repeatedly rejected Lawley's application since 2000, under pressure from Christian groups and governments unhappy with the spread of online porn. Lawley has pitched the suffix as a way for parents to more easily block access to the content. He argues it will be easier for Web filtering software to block ".xxx" sites since they are clearly labeled as porn.

Comments

[Jerry Barry]

10:27 PM on 03/30/2011

Mel Brooks; "everyone does it"

[2crudedudes]

05:42 PM on 03/29/2011

As always, money trumps all.

[Concerned Kids]

05:08 PM on 03/22/2011

Porn is evil no two ways about it. Sex on the other hand is not evil and in fact can be holy! What do I mean?? http://porn-problem.blogspot.com/

[Nebbers]

05:54 PM on 03/22/2011

Based on what evidence? Show us some studies that demonstrate how looking at pictures of videos of naked people and/or people having sex is harmful to a person.

If you're referring to the nature of the porn industry, that's a different issue altogether. Yes, many pornography companies treat women poorly. That doesn't make the medium as a whole evil. There is pornography out there that is a pretty good representation of a normal, healthy sexual relationship and is done more tastefully than most hardcore porn is.

Some people are bothered or offended in some way by pornographic material. That's fine -- don't look at it if it bothers you. Don't try to make everyone else conform to your convictions, though. Plenty of normal, happy, healthy people like to enjoy pornography from time to time and have no issues with guilt because of it.

Of course, I'm probably giving you more credit than you deserve as you're most likely not interested in thinking through this stuff logically. Your mind has been made up for you and you're probably just looking for some free advertising for your blog.

If that's the case, take your religious propaganda elsewhere.

[Ipadroid nterface]

02:17 PM on 03/21/2011

We all know XXX= sex sex sex = 666. This clearly has to do with the worship of Satin and the Mark of the Beast....Duh

[Nebbers]

08:53 PM on 03/22/2011

Saw this beer once... it was called "668: The Neighbor of the Beast." I love it.

[PenguinLinux]

11:15 AM on 03/21/2011

/me adds *.xxx to his route's configuration

[ZombyWoof]

11:10 AM on 03/21/2011

“Religious groups argue that giving adult websites their own corner of the Internet legitimizes the content.”

First of all we seem to have forgotten that porn played a huge role in establishing the popularity of the internet as it did with video tape and DVDs.

Also the main defining characteristic of obscenity, as defined by law, is that it is at odds with community standards. Except for certain extreme examples, the prevalence and acceptance of pornography shows that it has clearly reached a point where that is no longer the case.

[PenguinLinux]

11:18 AM on 03/21/2011

"Also the main defining characteri­stic of obscenity, as defined by law, is that it is at odds with community standards."

So I say the bible is po.r..nography. After all, isn't incest "at odds with community standards" and that book has it in it. Same goes for murder and being at odds with the community. I mean the book starts with brother ki.lling brother (Cain vs Abel) and ends with a mu.r.der with a guy ha.n.g.ing on a cross.

[dmsdzinr]

07:41 AM on 03/21/2011

IF ALL porno sites were required to have this domain extension and ONLY this extension, it would be so easy to block these sites from children. The porno industry will fight this tooth & nail.

[ZombyWoof]

11:13 AM on 03/21/2011

Most porn sites voluntarily participate in nanny watch dog programs because that’s a headache they don’t need or want. The fear is that the government will pass laws to block the xxx domain in total.

[dmsdzinr]

11:21 AM on 03/21/2011

Well, I personally don't want the government nor anyone else, for that matter, to be dictating what GROWNUPS should or shouldn't be going in the privacy of their own lives! As long as what you are doing does NOT hurt another human our government should STAY OUT of IT!

[PenguinLinux]

11:21 AM on 03/21/2011

Not true. You can easily go to a website via its' IP. Going to any one of these will take you to google's website.....

http://74.125.225.18
http://74.125.225.20
http://74.125.225.16
http://74.125.225.19

Yeah, blocking *.xxx would be easy to do, but that doesn't mean you block p.o.rn 100%. You can run all your PCs through content filtering / content management systems, but those can be circumvented as well too. Nothing is 100%.

[dmsdzinr]

11:28 AM on 03/21/2011

Nobody was talking ABSOLUTES in my post. In life, NOTHING is FOOL PROOF!
Yet every little bit helps.

[Alien Nation]

11:49 AM on 03/21/2011

How do you access them when multiple domains are bound to a single IP though, that's the case with 90% of the internet.

[Amalek]

03:21 AM on 03/21/2011

Sounds like a scam to me. 

I personally would not mind a .XXX email account, but I am afraid my friends parents might block it.

[MauroP]

01:16 AM on 03/21/2011

ICM Registry is the one profiting off this scam. Such a large-scale move should instead be governed and managed by it's own industry somehow.

[hagagaga]

12:45 AM on 03/21/2011

Minors are always going to have porn. It's unrealistic to think that there's a way of stopping that.

[PenguinLinux]

11:23 AM on 03/21/2011

They not only HAVE it, they CREATE it. "Sexting" anyone????? Quick...take away their iPhone... yeah...right. Like that will ever happen. better take away the TSA body scanners, digitial and film cameras, etc etc etc.

[Nebbers]

10:14 PM on 03/21/2011

Many parents would rather delude themselves into thinking we can censor and ban our way out of all of our problems than deal with the problem as a parent. It's just too much work to actually care about your kid.

Besides, a guy who's just hit puberty doesn't even need pornography to "take care of" himself. That copy of 'Glamor' that mom has lying around will suffice.

[extreme eugene]

11:00 PM on 03/20/2011

I imagine it would be easier for parents to block access to a porno domain. It should have been done long ago. As a parent myself I didn't like how easy it is for a 1st grader can type in a 3 or 4 letter word and have 1000,000 hits on a search engine,all porn0! Does common sense ever prevail in the congresses?

[Nebbers]

11:14 PM on 03/20/2011

No, it wouldn't. Sites are not required to register with a .xxx domain; they can still use .com as always. All that this does is allows someone to make a lot of money for doing nothing other than thinking this scheme up.

[rbryanh]

11:43 PM on 03/20/2011

Every major world religion does its best to ensure that common sense will never, ever prevail when sex is mentioned.

After all, it sense were involved, then hypocritical politicians, religious fascists, and parents who are apparently ashamed of how they produced their children would be required to demonstrate just how it is that sexual imagery can harm anyone of any age before proposing that we limit access to it in any way.

[rmarie]

04:45 AM on 03/21/2011

I'm with you on some points, BUT there is a huge difference between my son seeing an artistic, non-sexual nude image, and a pic of some broad getting stuck in all her holes. Sorry, but no child should be exposed to that, and certainly not on a regular basis.

That said, I know he'll be able to access the latter one day, but I'll do what I can to keep him from it while he's a minor. Porn doesn't promote a healthy image of women at all, and kids can't distinguish the fantasy from reality.

[rbryanh]

10:58 PM on 03/20/2011

I never cease to be amazed by the quantity and scope of resources Americans waste on shame.

[Nebbers]

10:26 PM on 03/21/2011

Clearly it's working out well for us, since everything we're trying to shame people away from continues to become more and more commonplace.

The anti-porn crusaders are as delusional as the drug war supporters.

[rbryanh]

02:31 PM on 03/22/2011

But shouldn't we pause to consider the many reputable university studies that have conclusively proved that children's heads explode when they're exposed to sexual imagery?

[Nebbers]

10:54 PM on 03/20/2011

For those saying we need better ways to protect our children from pornography:

How about you try doing your job as a parent instead of trying to legislate morality through the government? Have an actual relationship with your kids and maybe you'll have some idea what's going on with them. If you're worried about your 8 year old finding porn, I have to ask, what's your 8 year old doing spending enough time alone on the Internet to do so? Ever heard of supervision and passwords?

And if we're talking about kids who have already hit puberty, give it up. They're going to find what they're after one way or another and there is nothing wrong with sexuality. Rather than attempting a ridiculously impossible task like "protecting" them from sex and nudity, maybe try explaining that porn isn't the same as real sex and explain what a healthy sexual relationship entails.

Or, we could keep pretending that abstinence-only education, banning condoms, believing that nobody's having sex as a teenager and hoping kids won't find out about sex until they're 18 is the solution. That way, they won't have a clue when they give in to the temptation and curiosity about sex and have no protection or preparedness, and we'll get some more Bristol Palins.

[burnseason]

01:58 AM on 03/21/2011

very well stated. i salute your comment.

[PenguinLinux]

11:49 AM on 03/21/2011

Now stop that, you....making sense like that. You mean it's not the job of religions, governments, companies, or anyone and everyone else, EXCEPT the parents....to properly raise their children? Expecting people to be actual parents and not just schluff them off to daycare, boarding school, nanny, grandma, or society-at-large is kinda old school thinking isn't it? Good job. Keep that up. Hopefully people will step away from Facebook long enough to read your wise words.

[Raw Ron]

10:48 PM on 03/20/2011

The real opposition to this is from verisign, there fear it will pull a huge money maker from the .com extension.
To be honest, they are right.

The preregistration for these are going to be huge AND EXPENSIVE IF YOU WANT A GOOD ONE. The registry will probaly set up enrollment for auctions on all the good names.
So if anyone thinks they will luck out and get a good .xxx should be ready to spend some money.

[PenguinLinux]

11:50 AM on 03/21/2011

I bet se.xxx gets registered first. followed by hotse.xxx, iwantse.xxx and thousands of variants.