Fergus Cassidy

Sex symbol

THE flag which flies high above Amsterdam's municipal building consists of three Xs. Historians believe that the St Andrew's crosses represent the dangers which have traditionally threatened the city: flood, fire and pestilence.

Dictionary definitions of the latter mention the bubonic plague but the word can also be defined as "anything that is hurtful to the morals".

As the doors and windows of Amsterdam's red light district open for another evening's business, being part of a city with XXX on its coat of arms is more ironic than historic.

Amsterdam was one of the first cities in Europe to remove its finger from the dyke holding back the tide of pornography. The experiment accepted porn, acknowledged the futility of banning it and tried to isolate it to one area of the city. It's one of the reasons why the place is so well-known. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

So courtesy of a strange twist of history, it is only fitting that three XXXs may soon become the official symbol for pornography on the internet. If all goes to plan, a similar experiment in isolating porn should get underway by the end of this year.

Icann, the organisation that oversees the global domain name system, has agreed in principle to support the setting up of .xxx as another global domain name and it will join other top-level domain names such as .com, .net and .org.

A non-profit Canadian corporation called the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR) has been chosen as the sponsor of .xxx, and describes itself "as the result of a four-year outreach campaign to educate and mobilise the responsible online adult-entertainment industry".

IFFOR recommended using .xxx over others such as .sex, .adult and .porn because it believes these lack "broad geographic recognition and were perceived to be primarily Anglo-Saxon". Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

"The proposed .xxx string clearly and unequivocally conveys to the internet user that the site contains adult material of a sexual nature".

Over the past seven years there have been many attempts to introduce such a top-level domain name. No agreement could be reached until now. What's different about this effort is the agreement between privacy groups, child protection and safety organisations and the porn industry, though it has been tacit in some of those cases.

Like other businesses, porn never fully believed the internet was here to stay. But it didn't take long to move from not giving a xxxx to wanting a .xxx.

According to Larry Flynt, who launched Hustler magazine over 30 years ago, the internet is having a dramatic effect on the porn industry. "In the 1980s, publishing was 80% of my business. Now it's about 20%... I don't think people anticipated how the internet was going to revolutionise the way we disseminate information... That's one of the reasons Penthouse filed for bankruptcy. They were relying totally on publishing."

Al Goldstein, founder of Screw magazine, which also went bankrupt, described magazine publishers as "elephants going to the bone cemetery to die. The delivery system has changed and we have to change with if we want to survive".

For those in the right place, the future may be even more lucrative than the past. Flynt remarked last year that when he "went into this business in the 1970s it was a $600m a year business. Today it's an $11bn a year business."

It has been estimated that online porn records double-digit growth every year and the number of adult websites has grown by 1800% over the last six years. Reports indicate porn accounts for over 10% of all online traffic and over 25% of internet search queries relate to sex.

Opponents of .xxx have attacked Icann for overlooking more deserving sectors. Others point out that existing .com porn sites won't move to .xxx if given a choice. But one of the most remarkable things about .xxx is the support received from child safety advocates and organisations.

Parry Aftab, a worldwide leader in online safety and education, said that "creating the .xxx top-level domain gives parents a valuable tool to protect their children from inappropriate content on the internet. It isn't a complete solution but it is a very important step in the right direction".

The main tool will be the ability of ISPs, employers parents and others to easily block the .xxx domain from reaching web browsers. This not being a complete solution lies in the reality that it is up to porn sites to choose whether they want to move to .xxx. Nobody will force them.

The United States is proud of its First Amendment rights but frequently misjudges them as a worldwide litmus test when it comes to free speech and expression. A separate .xxx domain is designed to not infringe on those rights. However, other countries might see otherwise.

A question marks hangs over whether .xxx will be allowed to maintain its voluntary nature. Legally forcing sites with sexually-related content onto .xxx would be a nightmare because of the multitudinous global interpretation of what is sexually-related material. As a US Supreme Court judge once remarked: "It may be difficult to define, but I know what porn is when I see it".

Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union said that there were "nations all over the world that will undoubtedly try to force websites into .xxx or to block sites in it if they somehow view as offensive".

That could include Ireland, where according to the .ie registrar an Irish domain name "must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality".

A new .xxx could provide a convenient and less troublesome way of keeping "offensive" material out of the .ie domain space, which can then remain as pure as the driven snow.