What’s in a name? For years, the rulers of the internet (at least domain names) has been toying with the idea of making a new domain extension “xxx” for the porn industry. The board at ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) has already turned down the proposed more than once, but it is on the table once again.
Of course, this is a matter of money for the registrars. They predict they can make $30 million a year by selling the .xxx domain names for $60 and they pledge to donate $10 from each sale to a child-protection non-profit. Besides money for someone else, what are the pluses? If the use of the xxx extension was required, it could remove misleading porn websites like WhiteHouse.com from the web and make child protection software more reliable and easier to use. Does the porn industry support this move? That depends on what side of the coin you look at and on what day.
The negatives to the move that I see is it would be a free-for-all on getting the new names. Some of the “best” .com names would not necessarily be given first dibs on the .xxx names so it would be like the Wild West again on the web. Also, can one government actually force all adult content websites to one type of domain name when the web covers the entire planet?
Read more about the topic on USA Today’s website.
What are your thoughts on the subject?