ICANN has delayed its ruling on the proposed .xxx internet porn domain until this summer.

At a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, the ICANN board voted to push a decision to its next get-together in Brussels this June, while giving its CEO and chief counsel two weeks to prepare recommendations on how to proceed with the .xxx proposal. These recommendations will then be open to comment for 45 days.

The last rejection came in 2007, but in recent weeks, an independent panel of judges ruled that the organization was wrong to do so. The 2007 rejection was not consistent with the application of neutral, objective, and fair documented policy, the panel said.

The ICANN board is not obliged to follow the panel's decision, and in a blog post following the decision, ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom made a point of saying that it was not unanimous and that there was ample public opposition to the .xxx proposal.

Under the proposal, porn sites would not be required to use the .xxx domain, and if they did use it, they could continue use other domains as well.

ICANN'S top legal official told its board of directors that the panel will likely approve the sponsored top-level domain when it is put up for vote.

ICANN general counsel John Jeffrey told the board it will likely vote to approve .XXX subject to due diligence on ICM Registry's financial and technical capabilities.

The .XXX proposal has many in the online adult industry worried that it would amount to the creation of a red light district on the Internet.

Diane Duke, the Free Speech Coalition's executive director, said ICM's initiative could end up setting policies that harm its businesses. Duke is in Brussels to lobby against .XXX.

But ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley, in a letter on his company's website, has remained optimistic over the possibility of .XXX coming into fruition.

While most Internet extensions are used for just about everything you can imagine, .XXX will be focused on providing an online home for those members of the adult industry who wish to self-identify and responsibly self-regulate, he said in the letter. We are excited about the idea — and we know you will be too.

In March, ICANN delayed a vote on ICM's proposal to sell .XXX domain names and directed its general counsel and chief executive to seek public comment. ICANN received thousands of entries from adult companies and other stakeholders, as well as the general public. Most posted items against the implementation of .XXX.

Update: .XXX approved

26th June 2010. Based on article from guardian.co.uk

The internet could soon have its own red light district after the .xxx suffix was approved – though pornography companies are not keen to use it.

Icann, the organisation which determines what top-level domains (TLDs) such as .com or .uk can be added to the internet announced today that it will begin the process of registering .xxx by making checks on ICM Registry, the company that wants to run the domain and sell registrations.

It marks the closing stages of a 10-year battle by ICM Registry, now run by the British internet entrepreneur Stuart Lawley, to get the .xxx domain set up so that legal pornography sites can be found in a single grouping.

But many pornography companies are unhappy with the idea of a dedicated space online because they expect that as soon as .xxx is implemented, conservative members of the US Congress will lobby to make any sex-related website re-register there and remove itself from other domains such as .com or .org.

That would mean that sex sites could be more easily filtered out from web searches, and lower their revenues. Free speech advocates also worry that sites about topics seen by US conservatives as controversial, such as homosexuality, might also be forced to use the .xxx suffix.

The proposed .xxx domain is so controversial that ICANN over the years has had to create new processes, policies, and appeals procedures just to handle the various flavours of outcry.

That has happened again this week, due to an unprecedented decision by ICANN to formally disagree with the opposition to .xxx coming from its Governmental Advisory Committee.

The GAC is a collection of civil servants who represent dozens of world governments. Its advice is given considerable weight under ICANN's consensus-driven decision-making rules.

By saying it intends to enter into a registry agreement with ICM Registry for .xxx, ICANN has – for the first time in its 12-year history – formally put the GAC on notice that it intends to reject its advice.

This means that the ICANN board and the GAC will have to meet face-to-face to thrash out their differences at a meeting scheduled for February 2011.

Sex domain .xxx has been given final approval by the internet governance organisation Icann

The move to create a top level .xxx domain ends a 10-year battle over the virtual red-light district. Icann gave initial approval last year, but carried out further consultation checks over the application.

It is now poised to sign an agreement with the ICM Registry, which is backing the domain, to make .xxx a reality.

Supporters say the domain will make it easier to filter out inappropriate content. But many pornographers worry that the move could ghettoise their content. Religious groups have argued that giving pornography sites their own domain legitimises the content.

ICM said last year that it had more than 110,000 pre-reservations for .xxx domains.

Update: Contracted

3rd April 2011. See article from business.avn.com

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number on Friday finalized its contract with ICM Registry to run the .XXX sponsored top-level domain. The announcement was made on the ICANN blog in a post by ICANN general counsel John Jeffrey.

The .XXX domain has finally opened for business.

Following approval from ICANN, a US quango, the new pornography-only suffix has been added to the Domain Name System.

The first registered addresses, porn.xxx, sex.xxx and xxx.xxx are being used to promote sales of .xxx domain names.

A trade organisation, the Free Speech Coalition, said that it will make it easier for governments to block access to pornography websites and has called on pornographers to boycott .xxx. Saudi Arabia and India have already said they want to block all the new addresses.

The first tranche of addresses, which will allow brands to buy their trademarks, will reportedly go on sale in November.

Once other high-value keywords have been auctioned off, .xxx addresses are expected to cost around $70, seven times as much as a typical .com address.

News that the first hard-core porn .xxx domain has gone live caused US nutters of Morality in Media to call for an investigation of ICM Registry, the company behind the .xxx domain, for possible violations of federal laws prohibiting distribution of hard-core internet pornography.

Title 18 United States Code Sections 1462 and 1465 prohibit distribution of hardcore, obscene Internet pornography. Yet, isn't that the purpose of the .xxx domain? asked Patrick A. Trueman, President of Morality in Media. He continued:

Further, Title 18 U.S.C. Section 2 prohibits aiding and abetting a federal crime and title 18 U.S.C. 371 prohibits a conspiracy to commit a federal crime. The U. S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, should review the activities of ICM Registry in relation to these federal criminal laws immediately.

Will Attorney General Holder stand by and watch this pandemic of harm continue to spiral when he has laws at his disposal that can be enforced against this destructive material? We take this opportunity to urge him to vigorously enforce federal obscenity laws against major online commercial distributors of hard-core adult pornography and those who aid and abet its distribution.

If Attorney General Holder won't investigate ICM Registry now, we will press the next attorney general to do so. This issue will never go away for ICM Registry or for Internet pornographers who attempt to hide their criminal activities behind the .xxx domain.

But of course in reality the .XXX domain may specialise in: hardcore, Internet pornography, but this certainly does not necessarily mean it is: hardcore, obscene Internet pornography.

After more than a decade of debate, rejections and legal challenges, the Internet's governing body began accepting applications for .xxx websites from the adult entertainment industry on Tuesday, 8th November 2011.

The so-called landrush phase signifies the true launch of .xxx websites.

ICM Registry had already began accepting some .xxx applications from trademarked companies looking to use a .xxx address and those seeking to prevent their company from appearing on a .xxx website on September 7.

Adult entertainment producers without trademarks can apply for .xxx website names for the next 17 days, with their general availability following on December 6.

The chief executive of ICM Registry, Stuart Lawley, said his company had received 80,000 applications in this early phase. Presumably most of these were defensive, to prevent other people from creating an xxx variant of an existing website, so won't actually become websites in their own right.

Two of the internet's biggest pornography firms are suing the net's address regulator, Icann, over its introduction of the .xxx suffix.

Manwin Licensing, which runs websites for Playboy, and Digital Playground have filed lawsuits against Icann and ICM Registry, which is running the new top-level domain name, .xxx

The firms claimed that the decision to create .xxx had been flawed and that ICM had abused its position.

Manwin issued a press release alongside the lawsuit claiming that ICM was charging annual registration fees of about $60 per address. It claimed that was 10 times the fee charged for other comparable top-level domain names. It said costs mounted up because website owners had to register mis-spelt versions of their addresses to prevent cybersquatters exploiting them.

Manwin has also filed papers with Icann complaining that the body never sought competitive bids for the .xxx registry, and failed to conduct proper economic studies to support its creation.