Porn industry can crack open bubbly after .XXX greenlight

The porn industry can crack open the champagne on Friday, after the board of the international regulatory body for web addresses endorsed the .XXX domain name.

"The green light has been given for the application to move forward," a spokesman for the the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, told AFP as its board met in Brussels.

"The domain name has not yet been approved, but it moves forward under a fast-track process," said Martijn Pakker. "We now go on to developing the .XXX domain name," he underlined.

ICM Registry, a company which registers domain names, applied for the .XXX domain in 2004 as a home for the adult entertainment industry, but saw its application rejected by ICANN in 2007.

That decision was overturned in February by an independent review panel, meaning an estimated 100,000-plus companies who have pre-reserved website names can begin planning for a new future online.

Supporters of the .xxx domain name say that grouping the adult entertainment industry under a single banner will make it easier to police and market porn sites that conform to legal standards across different regulatory regimes.

Those who have opposed it, including ICANN members who had expressed discomfort in the past amid lobbying from conservative groups and church organisations, fear it will accelerate a rush to normalise porn usage.

A host of other new domain names, such as .scot for websites in heavily devolved Scotland, currently restricted to the .co.uk domain name for Britain, were also being debated by board members at ICANN's Brussels conference.

A California-based non-profit corporation, ICANN manages the Domain Name System and Internet Protocol addresses that form the technical backbone of the Web.