ICANN has approved the formation of the .XXX domain, the board of the organization said Friday.

ICANN has approved the formation of the .XXX domain, the board of the organization said Friday.

The board said it will allow its general counsel to execute a registry agreement with ICM, who will oversee the new domain. According to Peter Dengate Thrush, a New Zealand lawyer and chairman of ICANN, nine ICANN board members voted for the resolution, and three against, with four abstentions.

"I think 9 to 3 is pretty good," Thrush said, in an interview.

The proposal will be executed in the same form as was submitted in August 2010, the board said. The formal .XXX resolution proposal drew over 700 comments, the ICANN board said at its 40th meeting in San Francisco. ICANN also .

The proposal will carve out a portion of the Internet that will be set aside for the adult entertainment industry, allowing a virtual red-light district that the adult industry has said will result in discriminatory financial burdens to register new domains.

The addition of the new .XXX domain was strongly protested by the adult entertainment industry Thursday. Diane Duke, the executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, which represents the adult industry, said Thursday that the FSC would encourage the industry to boycott the new domains. After the vote on Friday, she reiterated that plan, saying that the FSC would work with its membership over the next few weeks to educate them on what concerns the FSC has on new .XXX domain, with litigation as an option.

Members gave different reasons for voting for or against the resolution, citing political, procedural or cultural reasons for voting for or against it.

A variety of positions

In 2007, the board voted against the .XXX domain, and then an independent review panel overturned it. That placed the board in an untenable situation, said Rita Rodin Johnston, a partner in Skadden Arps' Intellectual Property and Technology group, and an ICANN board member.

"The reason I think the situation is between a rock and hard place is because this is the clear lose-lose for our board," Johnston said. "If we vote in favor, we are seen to ignore comments of community participants including the GAC. If we vote against, we do not honor the findings of an independent process that we have set up to review our decisions."

However, Johnston voted for the approval of the .XXX domain contract, and did so, she said, "to respect our processes".

One board member said that .XXX would encourage filtering, and therefore censorship. "I believe that the creation of .XXX would mark the first instance of an action by this board that may directly encourage such filtering, posing a risk to the security and stability of the DNS," said George Sadowsky, an American computer scientist and board member who opposed the resolution. "In my judgment, the board should not be taking actions that encourage filtering or blocking of a domain at the top level. Further, I believe that the filtering of so-called offensive material can provide a convenient excuse for political regimes interested in an intent on limiting civic rights and freedom of speech."

The board also noted that it was not able to reach a mutually acceptable solution with the Governmental Advisory Committee (the GAC) which represents the governments of the world. The board overturned the recommendations of the GAC and reached its own decision, a rationale that one board member said was justification enough to vote against the resolution.

"Many governments are now waking up to the reality of the need for them to get more involved in what ICANN is doing for the greater good of the global Internet community," said Katim Touray, an independent development consultant based in Gambia, and a member of the ICANN board who also voted against it. "And so it is for this very reason that I think that for ICANN to, on this matter, put aside the advice of the GAC and its members would, I think, be unconstructive and, in the end, poisonous to the atmosphere that we need to build and a positive one at that, between ICANN and the GAC and the rest of the governments of -- and the governments of the world."

Chairman explains ICANN's reasoning

According to Thrush, the GAC did not specifically recommend not to go ahead with the resolution. "There was no GAC advice that said do not do this," Thrush said in an interview following the meetings. "The GAC advice centered on, if you do this, be careful of the following things."

Thrush also said that "several governments were strongly opposed" to the resolution, but which governments were opposed were not stated; neither was why. "There was no governmental advisory position that was clear and unambiguous," Thrush said. "To my personal opinion, that was not a clear direction not to do something."

Thrush said the board weighed several arguments. Did ICM's application meet the set of criteria set out originally in 2004? It did, Thrush said. Then there were arguments of whether it was good for the Internet, the community, and ICANN. "In each of these, we came down in favor of the applicant," Thrush said.

The board also considered the issue of whether the .XXX domain could be blocked, or whether it would fork or fragment the root - in the latter argument, some had said that governments might pull out of the Internet altogether, depriving their citizens of the .XXX domain as well as the Web at all. "That argument was kind of hysterical," Thrush said.

The final argument was one of content: would creating a .XXX domain for the adult industry force ICANN to dictate which content should be contained in it?

"The answer to that is yes, yes, it does," Thrush said. "But it's an issue of contract performance."

ICANN already has contracts in place that requires ICANN to step in and determine which museums should be in .museum, for example, Thrush said. ICANN has a similar arrangement with .pro, for professional organizations. "So the level of involvement, the kind of involvement, doesn't change," he said. "It's just a different kind of subject matter."

Following the meetings Thursday, which concluded at 6:30 PM, ICANN's board deliberated until 1 AM, Thrush said.

ICM preps the .XXX process

Since last year, ICM has allowed site owners of .com adult Web sites to pre-register their .XXX sites without paying any fees, giving preference to those sites that are already pre-registered with a dot-com domain, such as sex.com, for example.

ICM's FAQ claims that it will charge $60/domain, but that an independent IFFOR non-profit council will charge an additional $10 per domain. Over 213,000 domains have been pre-reserved, ICM said.

The .XXX domain names will only be available to the adult entertainment industry, ICM said in a statement Friday. The contract will require anyone registering a .XXX domain to complete an application process endorsed and overseen by the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR).

"ICANN's decision to give .XXX final approval is a landmark moment for the internet," Stuart Lawley, the chief executive of ICM, said in a statement. "For the first time there will be a clearly defined web address for adult entertainment, out of the reach of minors and as free as possible from fraud or malicious computer viruses.

"We believe consumers will be more prepared to make purchases on .XXX sites, safe in the knowledge their payments will be secure," Lawley added. "Tens of thousands of adult entertainment website owners recognize the business benefits of .XXX and have already applied to pre-reserve over 200,000 .XXX domains."

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 4:00 PM with additional comments from Thrush.