US Accused of Interference After XXX Porn Domain Rejected

Digital Journal — After Internet regulators threw out the idea of having all pornography sites on the internet end with the .xxx suffix, the U.S. is now receiving a barrage of criticism from the international community. Yesterday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) rejected the .xxx domain in a 9-5 vote. Exact details on how each board member voted will be released later this month. The discussion began after ICM Registry Inc., a Florida-based company, proposed the name and argued the special domain would help clean up the industry and force websites to adhere to rules banning malicious programming and spam. A formal decision to create the domain was delayed in 2005 after Washington was criticized for influencing the decision of the regulatory board set up to evaluate the situation.

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Anti-porn advocates were fiercely opposed to the special strip on the web, saying an .xxx domain would help legitimize adult websites. They also lashed out at regulators saying porn sites would also be able to keep their .com addresses, making porn more accessible to web surfers. Porn sites, on the other hand, were also against the .xxx idea with fears it would lead to eventual censorship. ICANN regulators rejected the idea of creating a .xxx domain because it could force the organization to regulate the porn industry — a difficult task with so many different laws around the world. The European Union has accused the United States again of political intervention over the decision. "We see here a clear case of political interference in ICANN," a spokesman for Viviane Reding, the EU information society commissioner, told Reuters. "It's a worrying development that the US administration has interfered in this process." ICANN chairman Paul Twomey (from Australia) said the accusations were "completely ill-founded and ignorant.” He said other countries such as the UK, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and Brazil also complained about the porno domain.