An anti-porn group is opposing a series of porn-related suffixes that could potentially be added to the Internet’s top-level domains, including .porn, .sex and .adult.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which assigns top-level domains to sites worldwide, announced on Wednesday a list of domains that have been applied for that could be added to the existing list that includes “.com” and “.gov.” But the Morality in Media organization is petitioning to reject the request to introduce the porn-related domains, arguing that it will encourage more pornography on the web.
Morality in Media wants supporters to ask President Obama and Congress to oppose the domains. Since last night, 1,000 people have already signed the petition.
“America is already suffering an untreated pandemic of harm from pornography and we need less, not more, pornography,” Morality in Media said in a press release.
ICANN approved adult website domain .xxx in 2011, following years of opposition from the U.S. government. The ICM Registry, which sponsors the .xxx top-level domain for the adult community, is also behind the request for .porn, .sex and .adult.
The fight against the .xxx domain began nearly 10 years ago under the premise that porn sites needed their own space on the Internet.
“The ICM Registry was first unable to get most of the porn industry on their side because they thought it would require them to give up their profitable .com sites and move to .xxx,” Dawn Hawkins, executive director of Morality in Media, told Mashable.
ICANN voted down the creation of .xxx twice over the 10 years and then on the third try — after lots of press attention — it was approved.
“We were told it would solve the problem of porn on the Internet because those sites would move there,” Hawkins said. “But .com was a cash cow for porn companies and they would not move to .xxx. Not one major site has since moved to .xxx.”
ICM Registry believes that adding new adult industry-centric top-level domains would help “clean” up the .com world over time.
“This would prevent a greater explosion of adult sites in the .com world and would protects kids, schools and others from accessing the new adult top-level domains if restrictions are set up,” said Stuart Lawley, CEO of the ICM Registry. “But the opposition doesn’t want to accept the facts that pornography is legal and some of it is protected by the First Amendment.”
ICANN also revealed a list of company-related domain requests, such as .Apple and .Google, to more generic ones, including .lol, .pizza and .poker.
Google applied for more than 100 domains, including .lol, .youtube, .map, .car, .cloud, .dad, .mom, .dot and .fun. Meanwhile, Amazon put in 70 applications, such as .Amazon, .app, .author, .coupon, .book and .shop.
