Faced with opposition from conservative groups and some pornography Web sites, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers voted to reject a proposal to create a red-light district on the Internet, an Associated Press report said.
ICANN's decision Wednesday reversed its preliminary approval last June to create a ".xxx" domain name for voluntary use by the adult entertainment industry, the report said.
ICANN had postponed making a final decision in August after the government stepped in just days before a scheduled meeting to underscore objections it had received, an intervention that had led some ICANN critics to question the organization's independence, the report said.
"The board was certainly very conscious of that (the controversy) "&brkbar; but the heart of the decision today was not driven by a political consideration," ICANN chief executive Paul Twomey was quoted as saying.
He said the decision largely came down to whether the creation of ".xxx" might put ICANN in a difficult position of having to enforce all of the world's laws governing pornography, including ones that might require porn sites to use the domain, according to the report.
ICANN's rejection of ".xxx" in a 9-5 vote ended, for now, a six-year-old effort by Jupiter, Florida-based ICM Registry Inc. to establish a domain for the porn industry, the report said.