The adult entertainment industry occupies a large place on the
Internet, and some of these sites can be difficult to identify. For
nearly ten years, consumer advocacy and child protection groups
have been pressing for the creation of distinct domain names
reserved exclusively for adult entertainment. On March 18, 2011, in
response to this pressure, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers) decided to allow the creation of domain
names ending in .xxx.
Because they are more easily identifiable, sites using the .xxx
extension will be better able to target their intended public and
will also be more easily blocked by parental control and corporate
Internet monitoring software. ICANN has approved an organization
called the ICM to monitor the granting of .xxx domain names and an
organization called IFFOR to oversee development of the standards
that future .xxx websites must meet.
