This is a guest post from Andrew Allemann, author of Domain Name Wire, a blog covering the business and policy of domain names. He has been active in the domain name industry as a buyer, seller, and consultant for over ten years.
A new .xxx top level domain name is coming soon, and a lot of people aren’t happy about it.
On Friday, the Board of Directors of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved entering into a contract with ICM Registry to operate a .xxx top level domain name (TLD). The first domain names bearing the new TLD are expected to hit the web later this year and will sell around $75-$100 each.
Getting .xxx on the web hasn’t been an easy task for ICM Registry. It originally applied for the domain in 2004 and it was essentially approved by ICANN’s board. But then conservative groups such as Family Research Council and Focus on the Family started lobbying governments to halt the new web extension. ICANN ended up canning the idea, leading to an independent review against the non-profit coordinator of internet naming systems.
This opened .xxx back up to discussion in February 2010. Ironically, a group of adult web site owners that are part of adult entertainment trade group Free Speech Coalition joined conservatives in opposition to the new domain.
They worried that governments would try to restrict adult web sites to .xxx and then censor the domain. They also are upset about paying to defensively register their “brand names” in .xxx. Free Speech Coalition organized aprotest with placards reading “No to .XXX” outside the ICANN meeting in San Francisco this past week. They only mustered up a couple dozen people and a homeless guy who had been bumming cigarettes off meeting attendees all week.
If you liked the post you can continue reading from TechCrunch
A new .xxx top level domain name is coming soon, and a lot of people aren’t happy about it.
On Friday, the Board of Directors of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved entering into a contract with ICM Registry to operate a .xxx top level domain name (TLD). The first domain names bearing the new TLD are expected to hit the web later this year and will sell around $75-$100 each.
Getting .xxx on the web hasn’t been an easy task for ICM Registry. It originally applied for the domain in 2004 and it was essentially approved by ICANN’s board. But then conservative groups such as Family Research Council and Focus on the Family started lobbying governments to halt the new web extension. ICANN ended up canning the idea, leading to an independent review against the non-profit coordinator of internet naming systems.
This opened .xxx back up to discussion in February 2010. Ironically, a group of adult web site owners that are part of adult entertainment trade group Free Speech Coalition joined conservatives in opposition to the new domain.
They worried that governments would try to restrict adult web sites to .xxx and then censor the domain. They also are upset about paying to defensively register their “brand names” in .xxx. Free Speech Coalition organized aprotest with placards reading “No to .XXX” outside the ICANN meeting in San Francisco this past week. They only mustered up a couple dozen people and a homeless guy who had been bumming cigarettes off meeting attendees all week.
If you liked the post you can continue reading from TechCrunch
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