02 Apr 2007
ICANN leaders voted against the creation of a dedicated ".xxx" suffix for pornsites

On Friday, the Internet policy-making board put the brakes on a virtual red light district that many in the adult industry lobbied so hard to nix.

The final vote was 9 to 5 in support of a resolution that rejected the ICM application, with one board member, ICANN President and CEO Dr. Paul Twomey, abstaining.

At ICANN’s public forum Thursday, Free Speech Coalition Chairman Jeffrey Douglas said that the plan would have meant there would be an Internet "ghettoization."

"Having a wall around that community means there will be a restriction of access. Once .XXX is established, they will lose access," Douglas said. "These are concerns that need to have been addressed, can’t be addressed under the current format," he said.

Although the domain name's use by online adult sites would have been voluntary, the proposal touched on issues of access and freedom of speech, with many in the adult-entertainment industry worried that its creation would make government regulation tempting.

ICANN rejected .XXX proposals twice in the last seven years — once in 2004 and last May — but ICM lobbied hard for the registry, discussing the latest version during three closed-door meetings this year.

ICM pledged to donate $10 of the proposed annual fee of $60 for a .XXX domain name to child-protection groups and to require users of .XXX to label their content.

One of the board’s concerns, which were raised at the last ICANN meeting, was that ICM doesn’t have the strong support of the adult webmaster community.

But ICM set out to demonstrate the support of the sponsored community by stating 76,723 .XXX adult website names have been pre-reserved since June 1, 2006.

ICM also said that 1,217 adult webmasters from more than 70 countries have registered on ICM’s site saying that they support .XXX and wish to register a name.