ICANN approved a new domain specifically for pornography sites on the internet in Silicon Valley yesterday. Eight years after the request for its approval, the .xxx domain will now be available for purchase at around $60. Over 230,000 URLs have been reserved which means, yes, 230,000 new adult-content sites will be making their way onto the World Wide Web shortly. Any content on these sites cannot be fraudulent or illegal.

Does the addition of .xxx encourage pornographic material? I'm sure very shortly it's going to be very easy to type in the URL "se.xxx" and come up with...well...you know. The good news is it will now be a lot easier to block porn on the internet via parental controls or even just your own settings. All you'd have to do is block domains ending with .xxx and you should be set -- for the most part. There's already plenty of pornography websites that don't use this domain.

Sales of .xxx domains will begin in Q2 2011, so we should see these websites launch around then.