ICANN APPROVES .XXX DOMAIN

The controversial step to approve .xxx domain names has today been taken by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), paving the way for a whole slew of new addresses suffixed by the famous triplicate x.

Opposition to it was proffered by both conservative groups opposed to pornography and adult entertainment companies fearing they'd be more easily compartmentalized and potentially blocked by overzealous governments. Moreover, every popular adult website at present will pretty much be forced to buy its .xxx version, which, for an industry famous for its frugality, will be an understandably tough pill to swallow.

A further meeting is scheduled by ICANN for June 20th to discuss opening up all possible domain name suffixes to registration, pending the validation of a set of guidelines for approval. That's looking quite likely to be passed too, as the AFP sagely notes that there's a celebratory party scheduled for two days after the event. URLs are about to get a lot more varied, it seems

WIKILEAKS MOVES TO SWITZERLAND; CHANGES DOMAIN NAME

After being ousted by Amazon’s Web Services, the controversial site WikiLeaks has run into another snafu, this time with its DNS provider, EveryDns.net. Via a statement, EveryDns stated that due to “interference issues” that are affecting the service of others, the company has ceased resolving wikileaks.org; the service was provided to WikiLeaks for free. In response to the DNS shutdown, WikiLeaks tweeted the following message:

WIKILEAKS: Free speech has a number: http://88.80.13.160

In a subsequent tweet, the company then announced that it had moved to Switzerland; the site’s new domain name is now wikileaks.ch.

A very vocal opponent of the WikiLeaks cable publishings has been the Independent Senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman. The Senator has introduced legislation, dubbed the SHIELD (Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination) Act, that would make it illegal to publish information “concerning the human intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government” or information relating to “a classified source or informant.” We have to wonder where Sen. Lieberman’s legislation was when CIA operative Valerie Plame was outed. No word on when the new legislation will hit the Senate floor.

Meanwhile, Amazon has released a statement stating that the reason for its removal of WikiLeaks’ data from its AWS servers was not a result of denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks or government pressure, but rather the fact that the site did not operate within Amazon’s terms of service. [BGR]

US GOVERNMENT SEIZES DOMAINS; DUBIOUS WARRANT CLAIMS

US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may have crossed a line -- in the midst of nabbing counterfeiters this weekend, the government organization seized the domains of a torrent meta-tracker and a trio of music sites. Today, the picture above is the only thing you'll see if you go to Torrent-Finder.com, RapGodFathers.com, Dajaz1.com or OnSmash.com, as the ICANN domain registration for the four are now in the ICE's possession, presumably on suspicion of piracy. If you ask the original domain owners however, they'll vehemently refute such allegations -- the torrent site reportedly didn't even distribute torrents themselves, merely cross-referenced other sites that do, and a RapGodFathers representative told TorrentFreak that it had complied with all DMCA takedown notifications. Apparently the websites and servers themselves are still intact, and it's only the URLs at stake, as two of the four websites are already up and running at domains ending in .info. We have to admit, this particular brand of domain squatting could be an intriguing business model. Expect "seized domains" to be tacked onto the laundry list of "Valuable Items You Too Can Buy at Government Auction!" any day now. [Engadget]