WWW- Controversial plans to create the Internet domain .xxx purely for pornography have been dropped just days before they were due to receive approval. Vint Cerf, the chairman of the iternet overseeing organisation ICANN, said yesterday that the issue had been removed from the agenda of an upcoming ICANN Board meeting due to time constraints. He did not give an indication of when it might be reintroduced. The news came as a surprise to everyone, not least Stuart Lawley, the president of .xxx’s sponsoring organisation, ICM Registry, who has spent millions of dollars getting the bid this far. Mr Lawley was due to give a presentation on the domain to the same meeting just minutes after Mr Cerf’s statement. Speculation over the reasons for the abrupt U-turn is rife in the corridors at the conference centre here for an ICANN meeting. Some claim that Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner, personally ordered its removal, although Paul Twomey, the head of ICANN, this morning denied that he had received any communication from her. Others point to the hard-fought campaign by the Christian right in the United States, which may have won the ear of the US administration, which has to approve all ICANN decisions. Whatever the impetus, the issue of .xxx has proved to be one of the most controversial and divisive issues of recent times on the internet. Approval had already been delayed numerous times. First, when Pope John Paul II died, then, after the intervention of the governmental advisory committee (GAC) of ICANN, and finally following pressure from the American Government, which had been hounded by the American Family Association – an organisation with close links to the Bush administration. This time the reason given for the delay was that the GAC wanted to review a 350-page report on the domain by ICANN, released just this week – despite it being completed more than two months ago. With no timetable given for the review, the whole issue may simply have been kicked into the long grass. The idea of the .xxx domain is to provide an area of the internet specifically for pornography that will be self-regulated. Only pornographers will be allowed to apply for an .xxx domain, they will pay a premium and will be expected to sign up to best practice rules and guidelines. An independent panel of experts, including organisations concerned about pornography on the internet, will be entitled to review the guidelines and find workable compromises. The advantage from the consumer’s point of view is that a clear line is drawn in the internet. You know what you can expect if you go to a .xxx domain. If you do want to view pornography, you know where you can find it and you will be far less likely to be ripped-off by unscrupulous owners. From the sex industry’s perspective, they will benefit from a greater number of customers who will feel more comfortable handing over credit card details to a regulated domain. Critics say that the domain will not have any impact on the amount of pornography on the internet, as there is no pressure on the sex industry to get rid of its existing dot.coms and other domains. They also claim that by approving .xxx, there is an implicit approval of the content. Mr Lawley is forthright on both points. Pornography will exist on the internet with or without the .xxx domain he points out, but by providing a specific domain there will be some element of regulation. It also means that internet filters can be more simply applied – parents or employers can simply stop any .xxx domains from appearing. And it means that ongoing efforts against illegal pornography on the Internet can be more focused. As for the issue of existing non-xxx domains, Lawley points out that in the sex industry there are, on average, seven domains that automatically redirect to a single website. Using .xxx will save porn companies extra website costs. Under the .xxx agreement, any website that a .xxx domain points to will have to follow the same guidelines. As a result, he claims, there will be some element of automatic regulation as porn companies try to attract more customers.