After nearly 5 years of approvals and rejections, the ,xxx domain, excusively for porn has been approved by ICANN (Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers). Shortly after the approval, Indian government expressed its intention to seek a ban of the pornographic domain. This move by Indian government will place it in the league of Indonesia and Middle East governments in protecting the moral integrity of its citizen.
Previously, Indonesia and Islamic states in Middle East are planning to ban .xxx domains once they are made available. Because of this, the move for separate domain for pornographic faced issues from Internet freedom seekers (most of them are porn website owners and some dedicated users of porn), as they felt that such move would undermine the freedoms that Internet stands for.
The Indian Ministry of IT responded to .xxx domain with the following statement
“India, along with many other countries from the Middle East and Indonesia, opposed the grant of the domain in the first place, and we would proceed to block the whole domain, as it goes against the IT Act and Indian laws.”
India which is considered as the original peddler of adult content, has laws which makes distribution of adult content as illegal, but do not have any credible deterrent for sexual abuse of children. The Indian Ministry of IT hopes this new .xxx domain will help them in banning or controlling pornographic websites. Ironically, According to Indian Penal Code, viewing pornographic content is not a crime, but distributing such content is considered as crime and India hopes that this new .xxx domain will help them to block the porn distribution channels.
While this new .domain will make easier for conservative Islamic states, Indonesia and Indian governments to block the porn distribution channels, The existing .com domains will still be active and the people in these countries could still visit those sites and banning thos sites would be counter-productive, if not impossible.
