.XXX Could Mean $$$

By Gabriel Perna: Subscribe to Gabriel's RSS feed

June 25, 2010 4:00 PM EDT

The notion that sex sells will be put to the test as the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) took another step towards adopting the .XXX top-level domain.

US based ICM Registry is behind the deal that could bring .XXX as the domain suffix to countless porn sites across the web. There are an estimated 370 million adult sites with revenue that reaches $3,000 a second, according to the organization Internet Pornography Statistics.

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While ICANN's decision doesn't mean .XXX domain names will be appearing on the Internet immediately, they are expected to do so as soon as ICANN completes its due diligence of ICM Registry and the two sides finalize a draft registry agreement.

"It's been a long time coming, but I'm excited about the fact that .xxx will soon become a reality. This is great news," ICM Registry Chairman Stuart Lawley said in a statement.

If ICM Registry said if it passes due diligence, the .XXX domain names could start going live as early as the beginning of 2011. With 110,000 .XXX domain names already pre-registered, at $60 a domain, ICM stands to make a sizeable profit from this deal. Lawley said up to one million porn sites could potentially register for the .XXX domain name.

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Lawley said he also made a commitment to protecting children from porn sites through donations to the International Foundation for Online Responsibility, which will make policy for the .XXX domain.

For the past several years dating back to 2004, ICM Registry has applied for the .XXX to be a top-level domain for a community of sites. In 2007, the ICANN board rejected the .XXX domain name as it failed to meet the criteria for top level domain names. However, ICM commissioned an independent review, and ICANN changed its position.

ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said, "The board reached a carefully considered decision, paying close attention to the findings of the Independent Review Panel, and to the extensive public comment on our proposed action."

"Today's decision is a validation of ICANN's transparency and accountability," said Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer of ICANN.

This is the first time ICANN reviewed and altered a prior decision.

ICANN also announced it has approved a set of Chinese language internationalized domain names. This means Chinese language users will soon be able to access the Internet using Chinese characters.

"One fifth of the world speaks Chinese and that means we just increased the potential online accessibility for roughly a billion people," Beckstrom said.

This article is copyrighted by International Business Times, the business news leader