The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) an Internet organization that governs domain names announced it rejected a proposal to create a domain name for the adult entertainment industry. The board of the body, rejected on Wednesday the proposal for the new domain name suffix, called dot-xxx, by a 9-5 vote.

The Wall Street Journal reported that  board’s rejection was based in part on questions about whether the adult entertainment industry supported such a domain name suffix. It also cited “public policy concerns.”

The porn suffix has provoked a global debate, involving conservative religious groups, child protection advocates, US First Amendment lawyers and others about how and whether a XXX domain name would address concerns about internet pornography, an industry with an estimated annual revenue of up to $5 billion.

The proposal has also rised questions about the role of the U.S. government in managing the Internet.

ICANN, a private, nonprofit entity based in Marina del Rey, Calif., operates under a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Commerce. In August, the department wrote to tho Internet organization about emails and letters it had received opposing the idea. The government body expressed concerns about the effect of pornography on children and families. As a Result ICANN postponed a vote on the matter then and at subsequent meetings.

In a its front-page article Wednesday, May 10, 2006, The Wall Street Journal described internal U.S. government communication about the matter.

The move attracted the discontent of other nations who saw it as evidence of U.S. influence over the global network. They argued that the United States was politicizing decisions normally determined by technical criteria.

The EU, South Africa, Iran and other countries, have said that the Internet is a global resource and no one country should have more control over it than others. The matter plays into broader concerns about Internet fragmentation, where countries develop their systems out of disenchantment with the ICANN managed Internet.

The ICANN vote likely will be seen by critics as evidence of the influence commerce has over the Internet, reports WSJ.com.

“Dot-XXX isn’t the best idea in the world,” says Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of Internet governance at Oxford University. “But a virtue of going ahead with it would have been a signal to ICANN’s constituencies around the world that it is not just an arm of the U.S. government.”

ICM Registry Inc., the company behind the XXX domains idea had proposed porn suffix as a way to protect children from online pornography, by making it easier to filter adult content from those who use the XXX domains. The company figured to make millions of dollars from fees generated from Web sites registering under the XXX domain, which it proposed to sell at $60/per domain name.