Back in 1997, if you directed your browser to www.whitehouse.com, instead of landing on former-president Bill Clinton's web home (whitehouse.gov), you would have wound up at a porn site. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), in an effort to make sure that adult websites are easily identifiable, has approved the use of the .xxx domain for adult entertainment websites.
Registry company ICM proposed the domain back in 2004 with idea of selling the domains to adult-content companies. With the approval of the domain, there will be a little Internet nook made for porn sites, creating a virtual red-light district.
It's because of that digital segregation that ICM and ICANN faced stiff opposition from a number of companies in the porn industry like Vivid Entertainment. Opponents said it would make it easy to filter, censor, and ban websites carrying the .xxx domain. That said, the new suffix will not be a mandatory addition for adult entertainment sites.
ICM's chief executive, Stuart Lawley, said of the approval, "For the first time there will be a clearly defined web address for adult entertainment, out of the reach of minors and as free as possible from fraud or malicious computer viruses." He said over 200,000 domain names have already been pre-registered.
So in the future if you go to whitehouse.xxx, you'll know exactly what you're getting.
[via PC World]
