Feds Urge Delay for '.xxx' Domain

Associated Press

03:18 PM Aug. 16, 2005 PT

NEW YORK -- Acknowledging "unprecedented" opposition, the U.S. government has asked the internet's key oversight agency to delay approval of a new ".xxx" domain name designed as a virtual red-light district.

Michael D. Gallagher, assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, stopped short of urging its rejection, but he called on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to "ensure the best interests of the internet community as a whole are fully considered."

The department received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails expressing concerns about the impact of pornography on families and children and objecting to setting aside a domain suffix for it, he said.

"The volume of correspondence opposed to creation of a .xxx TLD (domain name) is unprecedented," Gallagher wrote to Vinton Cerf, ICANN's chairman.

Gallagher said ICANN should take more time to evaluate those concerns.

Approval of the domain name had been expected as early as Tuesday, five years after it was first proposed and two months after ICANN gave it a tentative OK. Gallagher's letter was sent last week and made public Monday.


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