WASHINGTON — A proposed triple-X Internet domain has come under renewed scrutiny that many pro-family forces hope will spell an end to the idea. The domain, proposed as a virtual red-light district, was given the OK by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in June, but an official from President George W. Bush’s administration has asked for a halt on the plan until its impact is studied more. ICANN agreed to delay the creation of the dot-xxx domain for a month while the idea is reviewed.
The .xxx domain name won ICANN approval some five years after it was first proposed, with the idea that sexually explicit sites would move to the new domain and, in effect, would make filtering these sites easier. But many say this is not the case.
David Burt, public relations manager at Secure Computing Corp., said of the 2.1 million pornography sites his company already filters, each one has approximately 200 pages per site — which translates into 420 million pages of pornography. And the assumption is that porn sites, rather than abandoning their dot-com addresses, would simply add new dot-xxx versions. Already more than 10 percent of all online traffic and 25 percent of all global net searches are for adult content, according to the ICM Registry, a not-for-profit group that originally proposed the .xxx idea and would operate the domain name. (TAB)
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