'.XXX' Domain Advances; Critics Doubt Cleaner Web

By Jennifer Riley, Christian Post Reporter Monday, June 28, 2010

After rejecting the ".xxx" domain application thrice in the past, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided Friday to allow pornography to have its own top-level domain.

Pornography sites will have the option to move from the .com to .xxx domain by early 2011, or sooner, according to ICM Registry, the group that proposed the .xxx domain.

Although arguments have been made that creating a domain specifically for porn will help clean up the Web, critics are doubtful it will have much positive effect. Moving to the .xxx domain is voluntary, critics point out, which means that .com sites will not be porn free.

And some companies can now maintain both a .com and .xxx domain address.

"[E]ven if soft porn sites like Playboy or Penthouse chose to convert their primary domain to XXX, each would still own the dot-Com and dot-Net equivalents and redirect them to the dot-XXX domain to ensure that the user reaches their site no matter what he/she enters in the web browser," explained Craig Gross, founder of XXXChurch.com.

The .xxx domain would be a great idea if it was mandatory to move all porn sites over to it, Gross noted.

"This is not the case though," he wrote on the XXXChurch.com website. "Now, what will happen is just more porn."

Morality in Media, which was founded to combat obscenity in the media, came to a similar conclusion.

The group's president, Robert Peters, said the .xxx domain will not succeed in protecting children from online exposure to hardcore porn because first and foremost it is a voluntary system. Maintaining sites within both domains is advantageous to commercial pornographers.

Peters also highlighted that many online porn providers are opposed to the .xxx domain because they fear government regulation and are concerned with having their sites easily blocked by parents, employers and governments.

"What the world needs now is not a safe and profitable haven for pornographers but rather a concerted effort to protect children, families and communities from pornographers," said Peters.

ICM Registry said it already has 110,000 pre-reservations for .xxx domain and expects the number to increase with ICANN's formal approval of their application.

ICANN had rejected similar proposals for creating a .xxx domain in 2006 and 2007. In 2000, the .xxx domain was among those rejected by ICANN out of a long list submitted by ICM.

The .xxx sites will not go live until after ICANN conducts a "due diligence" study of ICM's business and operational plans for the domain.