An anti-porn group is opposing a series of porn-related suffixes that could potentially be added to the Internet's top-level domains, including .porn, .sex and .adult.
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which assigns top-level domains to sites worldwide, announced on Wednesday a list of domains that have been applied for that could be added to the existing list that includes “.com” and “.gov.” But the Morality in Media organization is petitioning to reject the request to introduce the porn-related domains, arguing that it will encourage more pornography on the web.
Morality in Media wants supporters to ask President Obama and Congress to also oppose the domains. Since last night, 1,000 people have already signed the petition.
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"America is already suffering an untreated pandemic of harm from pornography and we need less, not more, pornography," Morality in Media said in a press release.
ICANN approved adult website domain .xxx in 2011, following ten years of opposition from the U.S. government.
“People remember that the .xxx domain was supposed to solve the Internet’s porn problem,” said Patrick Trueman, president of Morality in Media. “The .xxx domain advocates said pornography companies would leave the .com domain and relocate on .xxx, making the rest of the Internet porn-free. Instead, many just opened up additional sites on the .XXX domain, making pornography more available on the Internet.”
ICANN also revealed a list of company-related domain requests, such as .Apple and .Google, to more generic ones, including .lol, .pizza and .poker.
Google applied for more than 100 domains, including .lol, .youtube, .map, .car, .cloud, .dad, .mom, .dot and .fun. Meanwhile, Amazon put in 70 applications, such as .Amazon, .app, .author, .coupon, .book and .shop.
Do you think the porn-related suffixes would help make the .com domain more porn-free or are separate domains for porn unnecessary? Let us know your opinion in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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