
Porn sites closer to .xxx Web address
An online red-light district won a long battle on Friday to set up a new .xxx Internet address after the global Internet oversight agency said it made mistakes in rejecting it three years ago.
The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, says it will now start the process of registering ".xxx" by making checks on ICM Registry LLC, the company that wants to run it.
ICM's founder Stuart Lawley says he thinks the new address could easily attract at least 500,000 sites, making it after ".mobi" the second biggest sponsored top-level domain name, or TLD, the name for Web address suffixes such as .com or .org.
Lawley expects to make $30 million a year in revenue by selling each .xxx site for $60, and pledges to donate $10 from each sale to child protection initiatives via a nonprofit he has set up, the International Foundation for Online Responsibility, or IFFOR. He already has 110,000 reservations, he says, and could get .xxx up and running within six to nine months after ICANN checks that ICM has the financial means and technical know-how to run it. "I think we could do a million or more. There are several million adult TLDs already out there," he told the AP before the ICANN board meeting.
Lawley also says he will make it easy for Web blocking software to filter out ".xxx" sites by requiring them to carry a machine-readable metatag marking them clearly as porn. "It will promote more labeled content," he 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." Skeptics note that porn sites would likely keep existing ".com" storefronts to allow their businesses to be found more easily. ICANN has rejected the ".xxx" domain three times since ICM first proposed it in 2000, but an outside panel earlier this year criticized the board's latest rejection in 2007, saying it did not deal fairly with the application. That prompted ICANN to reopen the bid.
The board of the nonprofit company that controls Internet addresses acknowledged Friday that its refusal to accept ".xxx" was "not consistent with the application of neutral, objective and fair documented policy." It agreed to swiftly re-examine the ".xxx" application.
It is the first time that ICANN has been effectively forced to review a decision. ICANN says it is only obliged to follow the law of California, where it is based, but the panel examining its behavior treated the company as if it were subject to international law since its power over Internet addresses has put it in charge of a public good.

'We can do big things,' Schumer says as Senate approves aid
- Senate passage of the sweeping relief bill Saturday puts President Joe Biden’s top priority closer to becoming law and shows Schumer, in his first big test as majority leader, can unify the ever-so-slim Democratic majority and deliver the votes.

Dozens rally before ex-officer put on trial in Floyd's death

Oral Covid treatment yields promising trial data: Drugmakers
- "At a time where there is unmet need for antiviral treatments against SARS-CoV-2, we are encouraged by these preliminary data," said Wendy Painter, chief medical officer of the US firm, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.

Swiss police fire tear gas on demonstrators at feminist rally

‘Scores from Myanmar trying to flee to India’

Covid-19 pandemic: WHO warns against letting guard down

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan wins trust vote

Mutated Covid-19 variants responsible for spike in cases across Europe
- Europe recorded 1 million new COVID-19 cases last week, an increase of 9% from the previous week and a reversal that ended a six-week decline in new infections, WHO said Thursday.

Taliban kill 7 Afghan soldiers in northern Balkh

US Senate passes Biden's $1.9 trillion Covid-19 bill on party-line vote

Swedish police break up coronavirus demonstration in Stockholm

Donald Trump demands three Republican groups stop raising money off his name

Body of 'Everything will be OK' protester exhumed in Myanmar

Twitter's Jack Dorsey auctions first ever tweet as digital memorabilia

Bye, Bismarck: 144 US cities could lose status as metro areas
- Statisticians say the change in designations has been a long time coming, given that the US population has more than doubled since 1950.