Was ICANN right to reject the plans to have a .xxx domain on the Internet for porn? Several people think so, and not just the Christian Right in the US. But what a lot of people don't know is that many of the objections were down to the nature of the plan itself, not because it was feared the move would encourage people to look at porn more. There were objections right across the board, with the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Brazil and Australia making it clear they thought the plan unworkable. But why?

Mostly, this had to do with the notion that a .xxx domain for porn would be easier for parents to block access to, so that children could not see anything they should not on the Net. But that argument is flawed; porn sites would likely buy .xxx names, but would want to continue to operate under their original .com sites as well. This is, of course, because using a .xxx domain name was voluntary. And the sad fact is, there’s plenty of sick crap out there, and offering porn sites the ability to use a .xxx domain was not and is not going to change that. There were other things that put porn site runners off too - protection of intellectual property rights and customer privacy, accurate labelling and meta-tagging and so forth.

Should the .xxx domain have gone ahead? What do you think? Could the plan have worked given time?