Adult Internet Industry Rallies Against New Domains

By Richard Gibson
Dec 12 2010

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced this week that they have delayed installation of the anticipated .xxx domain extensions for the adult entertainment industry.

For the past several years ICANN has said that they will install the new domain extension to group all adult entertainment sites under one common domain. During the early days of such discussions the adult industry praised the move but now they are rallying against it.

ICANN announced that they would make the move to the new domain extension mandatory for all adult sites. This has created a wave of controversy in the industry because the new .xxx domains will be six times the cost of a standard .com domain address.

If the resolution is passed then the adult entertainment industry will be forced to spend millions to move their sites to new domain names. Along with the protests by the industry leaders, the federal government has issued their own protest. They believe that the new domains will make it easier for the underage users to find and exploit the sites content.

There are some who have supported the issue. Their hopes are to move the sites to a dark alley of the internet away from the eyes of young people. Furthermore, they are hoping that search engines will start to block access to the sites through search results which would be made easier using the new domain extensions.

ICANN announced that they have postponed final talks on the issue until February 2011.