“XXX” to designate red-light web sites

Marina Del Ray – Pornographic Web sites and their legions of fans will soon have their very own corner of cyberspace.

The domain name extension “xxx” has been approved by the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organisation responsible for approving decisions about domain extensions.

ICANN is currently hammering out details surrounding the use of the “xxx” domain extension with the ICM Registry, which handles the technical aspects of meting out Internet addresses.

The move represents a turnaround by ICANN, which had previously opposed the implementation of the “xxx” domain extension, which would be used at the end of Internet addresses instead of the typical “.com.”

ICANN now believes that the extension can help to protect children and youths from accidentally accessing pornographic Web sites. (dpa)