The world has a new place to park porn on the world wide web. And according to the Australian Sex Party, the new .XXX domain which was approved by the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Friday, spells the beginning of the end for that organisation and their system of apportioning domain names and numbers.

Sex Party President Fiona Patten, said that ICANN had forced the new domain onto the world’s online adult industry after many years of loud and sustained protest. “Not only have they have ignored advice from us but they have ignored the advice of their own Government Advisory Group (GAC) which included the Australian government”, she said. “Even the religious groups were against this new domain being created. It was probably the first and only time we will ever see sex industry, government and moral’s groups all lining up to agree on internet censorship”

She said that the decision was a huge blow to a free internet and would increase censorship of the net in ways that could not have been imagined a few years ago. “Although we would hope that it never happens, with all adult sites corralled under one .XXX domain it would be an easy thing for the Communications Minister to simply ask all ISP’s in Australian to filter the new domain and all adult material would be denied to adult Australians”, she said. “If adult sites continued to hide under a .com or a .net address it would be a simply matter for the Minister to legislate that all adult sites must trade under the new .XXX domain”.

For the first time, ICANN has also approved content guidelines for a new domain which places them in the position of being de facto regulators of parts of the Internet. “The content that they will accept for .XXX will accommodate a considerable amount of Refused Classification material in Australia which will almost certainly encourage the federal government to look at some sort of filtering arrangement”, she said.

The current political uprisings in the Middle East have relied heavily on the internet and both temporary and permanent websites to gain traction and disseminate information. The necessity for some of these sites to ‘hide’ on the internet and remain inconspicuous is obvious. “If ICANN starts forcing new domains on particular organisations and industries it leaves the path wide open for dictators, theocracies and even democracies to start using those them for censorship and manipulation”, she said. “How long will it be before all media groups will be expected to register under a .med domain or political groups under .pol”, she said?

The US adult industry organisation, the Free Speech Coalition, has vowed to make the new domain unworkable and could be organising an international boycott. The company that has consistently lobbied ICANN to set up the .XXX domain (ICM Registry) is not even an adult industry based company. “In allowing a non adult industry company to set up and profit from this new domain, against 90% of the expert advice they had, ICANN has not had the particular interests of the industry at heart. This is a dangerous precedent. ICM as the registrar of the new domain will also have to monitor the content.”