For X-Rated, a Domain of Their Own
By MIGUEL HELFT
SAN FRANCISCO — What if the Web held a sex party and no one showed up?
That’s what could happen now that the agency governing the Internet address system all but approved the creation of a new red-light district on the Web. The problem is that some of the biggest names in online pornography prefer not to be in that neighborhood.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on Friday agreed to move forward on a long-standing proposal from a Florida company to create a specialized dot-xxx suffix for adult entertainment Web sites. But the plan upset much of the adult entertainment industry. It joined hands with religious groups in lobbying against it, arguing that the new domains would lead to regulation and marginalization.
The alliance “made for strange bedfellows, for sure,” said Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a trade association representing more than 1,000 adult entertainment businesses. The company sponsoring the dot-xxx domain, the ICM Registry, said it had a vision of a red-light district in cyberspace that was a clean, well-lighted place, free of spam, viruses and credit card thieves. Content would be clearly labeled as adult and the whole neighborhood would be easy to block. Anyone offended by pornography could simply stay out.
“It is good for everybody,” said Stuart Lawley, the chairman and chief executive of ICM. “It is a win for the consumer of adult content. They will know that the dot-xxx sites will operate by certain standards.”
That did not satisfy religious groups that opposed the dot-xxx domains, fearing they would make pornography even more prevalent online. And Ms. Duke said that “there is no support from our community” for the plan.
Her organization’s members, which include big industry names like Hustler and Adam & Eve, were concerned that the board overseeing the dot-xxx domain could engage in censorship and thaA New Suffix for X-Rated Web Sites - NYTimes.com
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