Online Porn Gets New .XXX Domain, The Use: “it’s strictly voluntary”

Published on June 25, 2010 by QueenGossip   ·   1 Comment

Pornography is closer to having its own official Internet domain. After previous rejections, the Net’s governing body has initially approved .xxx for sites with adult content.

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, gave its conditional blessing today at a conference in Brussels. Final approval is expected in October; the new domains will appear early next year.

The company backing the domain, ICM Registry, said in a statement it would now work with ICANN:

“to complete the expedited due diligence on our technical and financial qualifications and to finalize the contract to run .xxx.” The registrar said the new top-level domain would make it easier to filter out inappropriate content. ICM said it already has 110,000 pre-reservations for .xxx domains, which would cost $60 a year to register.

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CNET notes, porn sites would not be compelled to adopt .xxx; it’s strictly voluntary.

ICM Registry, a domain name company with no ties to the pornographic industry, first registered its intention to create a domain tag for adult websites in March 2004 – an application that was initially approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Friday.

The time line charts the dispute from the original proposal for the .xxx domain tag, through political pressure from a number of governments and the religious right, to its ultimate resolution.

1998

As the popularity of the internet grows, Icann is mandated by the US Department of Commerce as a not-for-profit organisation to formalise the administration of domain names. Previously, administration was done on an ad-hoc, voluntary basis, mostly by computer science academics.

June 2005

ICANN approves the plans by ICM Registry for a new .xxx domain. ICANN and ICM Registry enter into contract negotiations about how the new domain tag will be run technically and commercially.

August 2005

Countries led by the US, and including the UK, Australia and Canada, under pressure from the religious right, raise last-minute objections to the approval of a new .xxx internet domain for pornographic websites. ICANN delays its decision.

March 2006

ICANN votes to delay voting on plans for .xxx for a second time. Internet law experts claim the delay could lead to the fragmentation of the internet as unrest grows outside the US over its slow progress towards introducing domain names in languages other than English.

May 2006

A spokesman for the EU’s information society and media commissioner, Viviane Reding, accuses ICANN of being swayed by political interference after the board rejects plans for a .xxx domain. “We see here a clear case of political interference in Icann,” the spokesman said. “It’s a worrying development that the US administration has interfered in this process.” Icann chairman, Paul Twomey, rejects the accusation as “completely ill-founded and ignorant”.

June 2008

ICM Registry files a claim at the International Centre for Dispute Resolution disputing ICANN’s decision on the basis that it failed to follow its established process, improperly established new criteria in its assessment and failed to engage in good-faith negotiations with ICM Registry.

February 2010

The Independent International Centre for Dispute Resolution found that Icann’s handling of ICM Registry’s application to run .xxx domains violated ICANN’s bylaws and articles of incorporation, as well as international and California law.

June 2010

ICANN gives its initial approval for .xxx domains to be administered on the internet at a conference in Brussels.

Tags: domain names, ICANN, internet