‘Internet Corporation’

Since the year 2000 ICM Registry’s proposition of .xxx domain names has been rejected three times by the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In 2007 ICANN, who controls top-level domain names, refused the application yet again stating that the suffix didn’t comply with their documented policy as it wasn’t neutral, fair and objective. The application was also denied partly due to pressure from conservative groups who were discontented with the spread of online pornography according to ICM’s chief executive, Stuart Lawley.

ICANN’s point of view has changed towards this matter however. In a recent statement they declared that they regret ever rejecting the application three years ago, bringing pornographic websites closer to a new .xxx internet address. In more recent developments ICANN’s board held a meeting in Brussels, Belgium, at the beginning of June, 2010, after which their chairman Peter Dengate Thrush came forward saying that they are returning to negotiations with the applicant and that they promise to move swiftly with the standard checks on ICM Registry LLC.

The subject of XXX domain names has been a controversial matter however with both porn businesses and anti-porn crusaders opposing it. Coming from conservative groups it makes perfect sense that they would be against such developments as it will give an official acknowledgement of these sexually explicit content online – even though most of us know that the Internet’s biggest and most competitive industry is without a doubt porn. At the other end of this opposition lie those working in the pornographic industry who brought their worries to the forefront. For one, this will segregate adult websites making it easier for people to censor online searches, but more importantly it will affect their SEO (search engine optimization) greatly, which will ultimately harm their business.

To say that the online porn industry is big would be a huge understatement – it is enormous! There are approximately 370 million pornographic websites currently on the internet and new ones keep popping up by the minute. Recent figures collated by Internet Pornography Statistics found that that while “sex” is the most searched term worldwide, pornography accounts for 25% of all internet searches. This all adds up to more than $3000 being spent per second on Internet pornography. Moreover porn websites has been at the forefront of developing new marketing tactics which online marketers soon form part of their own strategies.

The aim of this new development is to get website authors who operate within the pornographic industry to move from .com or .org domain names over to .xxx domains. It is expected however that not many of these authors will do so as they cannot be forced to move over to the new suffix, meaning that it will mainly be newcomers who make use of the .xxx domains, provided that the trend becomes popular.

The question that many will ask though is why make the change? Parents and business owners will benefit from this move as they will be able to manage such content better by censoring pornographic websites. Although this will definitely weed out a great deal of pornographic content, it won’t stop it, bringing us to the second question as to who will benefit from this. While ICANN sells about 80million .com domains each year at $7 per domain, ICM’s Lawley said that he reckons the new address could easily attract at least 500 000 sites, making it the second biggest sponsored top-level domain name after “.mobi”. These domains will sell at $60 per .xxx site – of which Lawley stated that $10 will be given to child protection initiatives via the non-profit he has created – making ICM an expected $30million revenue per year. In conclusion to the various aspects of this transition it would appear that the ones who would be mostly affected are those in the pornographic industry, and seeing as they are and will probably always remain the leading entity online, it will be interesting to see what happens should ICANN give the official go-ahead for the .xxx domain names.