At a board meeting in Silicon Valley on Friday, ICANN approved a new top-level domain for porn sites. URLs ending in .xxx will contain sexually oriented adult entertainment content that is verified to be neither fraudulent nor illegal.

Advocates have been attempting to get this approval since 2003, but the movement for the .xxx TLD has bred controversy, as do most conversations around the porn industry.

The new domain names will be registered through the ICM Registry. Already, nearly 230,000 URLs have been reserved. ICM expects the URLs to sell wholesale for around $60 each. Porn site owners won't have to relinquish their .com or other URLs, and .xxx domains won't be mandatory for sites with adult content.

Sales of .xxx domains should begin soon in Q2 2011.

In addition to promising consumers of Internet porn safety from online fraud (including e-mail spoofing, phishing and spam) and child pornography, ICM is also telling webmasters they will see more traffic and higher profits with the new domain, which it says will become a trusted brand for porn connoisseurs.

In addition to the .xxx URLs, ICM is dropping hints about a unique micro-payments platform for porn content on the web. It says the new system will be "safe, secure and anonymous," potentially opening floodgates of new revenue for the porn industry.

ICANN has been seriously considering approving this TLD since last summer.

Image courtesy of Flickr, adrian_wallett.