It was announced late yesterday that ICANN, the organization that looks after the Internet’s naming and such, has decided to go ahead and setup the .xxx top level domain for adult content websites. It is hoped that pornographic and other adult oriented websites will register sites using the new domain so that they can easily be filtered.

And that is exactly why the new domain is useless. Perhaps if pornographic websites were being forced to use the new domain, it would serve some purpose. Without a law or something forcing them, what is the benefit? There is none.

Child-safety advocate Donna Rice Hughes said .xxx won’t help people avoid online porn because sex sites will still be able to hold on to their old .com domain names. A spokeswoman for Playboy Enterprises Inc. said the adult entertainment company had no plans to move any of its Web sites to the new domain.

I suppose approval of the new domain can be seen as a first step towards the ultimate goal of segregating adult content from general websites. However, until the operators of adult sites, of which there are more than 1 million, are forced to use the new domain, it will remain ineffective.

Read: Reuters