Cyberspace sex gets red light
2006-03-31 08:16
Wellington - A proposal to create a dot-XXX address for pornographic sites on the World Wide Web was shelved by ICANN, the international body that manages the internet, at a board meeting in Wellington on Friday.
The vote followed days of lobbying and talks on the issue, including a claim that religious conservatives in the United States had put pressure on Washington's department of commerce regarding new web addresses.
The board passed a resolution referring the proposal from Canada's ICM registry, which sought to manage the dot-XXX address, back to ICANN executives for improvements.
These improvemements were to include more stringent business standards for sites in the domain and specific protections for children.
ICM Registry argued that setting up the red-light zone in cyberspace would make it easier to filter out adult websites so that they could not be seen accidentally accessed, or seen by children. It would also enable spam and virus content to be controlled.
- SAPA