BBC News is reporting that ICANN is once again considering the addition of the .xxx Top Level Domain (TLD)
A plan to create an internet domain specifically for adult websites will be resurrected three years after it was rejected by internet regulators.
The net's governing body Icann will reconsider the .xxx scheme on 12 March.
The idea for a .xxx domain was first proposed in 2001 and was approved by Icann four years later.
In 2007, Icann overturned its original decision to allow .xxx domains to be sold amidst a firestorm of protest from conservative groups, predominately in the US, which opposed the plan on moral grounds as reported by
The Guardian“The U.S. has pulled out of its agreement with ICANN, the international organization that makes decisions about the Internet — and that greatly concerns one pro-family attorney . . . ‘There have been some [U.S.] values that had been imposed on the organization that runs the Internet,’ says Pat Trueman, [special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund]. ‘For example, a few years back the Bush administration weighed in heavily to say that it would not allow a .xxx domain — a pornography domain — to be added to the Internet.’”
In ICM Registry,
LLC v. ICANN, (ICDR, Feb. 19, 2010), the Panel, in a 2-1 decision, concluded in part:
The volte face in the position of the United States Government ... appeared to have been stimulated by a cascade of protests by American domestic organizations such as the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family. Thousands of email messages of identical text poured into the Department of Commerce demanding that .XXX be stopped.... [W]hile officials of the Department of Commerce concerned with Internet questions earlier did not oppose and indeed apparently favored ICANN’s approval of the application of ICM, the Department of Commerce was galvanized into opposition by the generated torrent of negative demands, and by representations by leading figures of the so-called “religious right”, such as Jim Dobson, who had influential access to high level officials of the U.S. Administration.]
The volte face in the position of the United States Government ... appeared to have been stimulated by a cascade of protests by American domestic organizations such as the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family. Thousands of email messages of identical text poured into the Department of Commerce demanding that .XXX be stopped.... [W]hile officials of the Department of Commerce concerned with Internet questions earlier did not oppose and indeed apparently favored ICANN’s approval of the application of ICM, the Department of Commerce was galvanized into opposition by the generated torrent of negative demands, and by representations by leading figures of the so-called “religious right”, such as Jim Dobson, who had influential access to high level officials of the U.S. Administration.
ICANN Once Again Considering .xxx Top Level Domain (TLD) for Adult Website