As if it needed any help, pornography is set to become even easier to find on the web as the global Internet oversight agency is taking steps towards allowing a new .xxx internet address.
The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said it made mistakes when it rejected a company's bid to set up the .xxx registry three years ago. It will now review the company's bid.
ICANN has long resisted the creation of the .xxx address, which could be used instead of other domain names such as .com or .ca.
The company which wants to start up the online red-light district, ICM Registry LLC, says the new address could garner at least 500,000 sites.
Company founder Stuart Lawley expects to make $30 million a year in revenue for selling each .xxx site for $60 and has pledged to donate $10 from each sale to a child protection nonprofit he has set up, the International Foundation for Online Responsibility.
ICM says it has 110,000 reservations for .xxx sites and could be running within six to nine months.
"I think we could do a million or more. There are several million adult (top-level domain names) already out there," Lawley told The Associated Press.
The company also said the .xxx address will make it easier for web blocking software to filter out pornography sites.
"It will promote more labeled content," Lawley said. "People who want to find it know where it is and people who don't see it or want to keep it away from their kids can use mechanisms to do so."
There are an estimated 370 million porn websites on the Internet.
Figures from Internet Pornography Statistics suggest more than $3,000 is spent on online porn every second. "Sex" is the most searched word on the web.
With files from The Associated Press
