.xxx goes down

There will be no Internet suffix reserved exclusively for sexually explicit content. A proposed .xxx domain got a "no" vote today from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The nine-to-five vote by the ICANN board brings to a close a six-year effort by ICM Registry to create and operate the domain. According to ICM, a porn-specific domain would produce a clearly identifiable area of the Internet for purveyors of adult content, and would therefore make it easier to prevent kids from inadvertently accessing that material.

Having a porn domain, ICM has argued, also would help the multibillion-dollar adult industry put an end to some of the major problems plaguing the Internet, including porn-related spam.

The vote was a 180 degree reversal for the ICANN board, which had given the proposal preliminary approval in June 2005. However, ICANN postponed making a final decision last August after U.S. government officials voiced opposition to the plan. Another vote, scheduled for December, was deferred once again.

The U.S. government's reaction to the plan created the perception that the process has become politicized and had many critics questioning ICANN's independence as a neutral, nonpolitical oversight body.

Frankly, as I wrote last summer, this debate really wasn't even worth having in the first place.

Frankly, for reasons having nothing to do with the objections of the religious right, ICANN really might as well not bother with introducing .xxx to the World Wide Web.

Not only will porn sites continue to use .com, .net or whatever other suffixes they might be using, but .xxx is likely to be co-opted by non-porn sites hoping to boost their search engine profiles. This would render the adult content domain suffix practically useless.

I can appreciate the concerns about ICANN's independece, but politics aside, this result is just as well.