In spite of the overwhelmingly negative response from the public to the possible creation of a .XXX domain, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) appears to be poised to go ahead with its creation.
According to Reuters news agency, “ICANN’s board have argued that in order to maintain neutrality in dealing with domain name assignations, it should create .xxx and allow websites with sexually explicit content to start using the suffix on a voluntary basis.” The ICANN board had been meeting this last week with the .XXX domain creation at the top of its agenda.
In a UFI blog post from May, we reported on some of the reasons why the creation of a .XXX domain would not solve the current problem of the internet being overwhelmed with pornography. Many people have been deceived by the misinformation circulated by those who would benefit from the .XXX domain creation. For additional information, take a look at this well-written explanation by Patrick Trueman, chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Criminal Division, Washington, DC.
Here’s some statistics on pornography you may not be aware of:
• More than $3,000 is spent on Internet porn every second.
• “Sex” is the number one search term in the world and accounts for 25 percent of all internet searches.
• There are an estimated 370 million porn websites on the internet which means that the proposed .XXX domain could become even larger than the internet domain .com
ICANN is expected to make a formal announcement of its decision sometime today. It appears that the world is going to be subjected to the consequences of a severely misguided decision on the part of ICANN and porn purveyors are going to be celebrating tonight.