ICANN(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) the organization responsible for oversight Internet decided not to give adult websites their own “.xxx” domain extension/TLD, for the third time in a row. I was surprised by this decision honestly, since that could have enabled authorities to regulate Internet pornography more easily.

The 9-5 vote decision by ICANN’s board came nearly seven years after the proposal was first floated by ICM Registry LLC. The most possible cause for this 3rd time denial was religious group’s fear for so called encouraging porno by giving the industry it’s own tld.

I truly don’t understand how many billions of dollar technology and research go down every year on the web for filtering porno, parental guidance etc, where this .xxx TLD could have simply isolated those content. It is easy to guard something, when you know where it is :P.

It is 100% certain that ICANN will no longer hear the proposal but that does not mean that an entirely new application could be drawn up and offered for consideration.

Nearly all of the board members who voted against approving the domain said they were concerned about the possibility that ICANN could find itself in the content regulation business if the domain name was approved. Funny thing board member Steve Goldstein said before the vote-

My decision turned on one point and one point only,……The last point in our board’s resolution that under the revised agreement that we, ICANN, would be forced to assume ongoing management and oversight roles regarding the content and that is inconsistent with ICANN’s technical mandate.

“inconsistent with ICANN’s technical mandate”, hell why not change the mandate to cope up the needs of the present, instead of hanging on to old mandate that prohibit further development. Those who visits adult sites today, they will visit it even tomorrow. I never heard anyone didn’t visit a adult site, just because he couldn’t find it (What the hell those search engine for!). So the idea of .xxx increase popularity of adult content is just merely stupid. For a network administrator/Parent it is hell lot of easier to lock access to a certain TLD rather than excluding one by one sites. In my thought ICANN is protecting the interest of adult industry, since this .xxx TLD would have blocked people stumble onto adult sites, while searching for something else. Naturally the adult sites will have less revenue/traffic than as usual.

You want to protect your child for porno, you need Content labeling websites marked as adult. Putting a banner “Adult content, if you are 10 enter or leave” and also a hot brunet wearing merely nothing doesn’t actually do anything. People have to know which site is adult before landing on the page, .xxx TLD was the easiest means to identify that. So here goes death of an easy solution, for some bureaucratic ass who want’s to hold on to relic ideas.

News Source: USA Today