On May 10, board members of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group responsible for managing the Internet domain name system, voted 9-5 against creation of an “.xxx” domain.

Socially conservative groups like the Family Research Council, which opposed the new domain on grounds that it would “validate” pornography and make it even more accessible, were ecstatic. “This would have been a land grab for pornographers, and ICANN did absolutely the right thing,” said FRC Vice President Charmaine Yoest in an interview with Bloomberg.

Ironically, those same conservatives found themselves in bed (so to speak) with the Free Speech Coalition, a porn industry trade group that also opposed the “.xxx” domain, fearing it would facilitate government censorship. Yet ICANN’s major objection to the proposal had little to do with pornography or censorship, instead hinging on worries that ICANN would be trapped into enforcing the world’s varying obscenity laws — even though it has never been responsible for the regulation of Internet content.

Welcome to the strange and tentative world of Internet regulation.

The moral wrangling of conservatives and the porn industry has obscured the basic facts of the proposed “.xxx” domain. For starters, the reason for creating the domain is not pornography — but cold, hard cash.

ICM Registry LLD, the Internet company that has been pushing for the “.xxx” domain since 2000, argues that the new domain will protect Internet users from unethical business practices and make it easier for individuals to avoid adult content if they wish. Nevermind that the “.xxx” domain would be administered by — surprise! — ICM Registry, which would control the lucrative registration rights to the new domain.

And while ICM would require “.xxx” registrants to follow a commendable set of business codes designed to protect consumers from illegal material and malicious marketing scripts, it also stands to make a nifty profit from the registration of new sites — which some Internet junkies claim might be as much as $75 per registered address per year.

With the debate about porn stripped away, it’s easier to see that ICANN’s rejection of the new domain has fairly weak justifications.

ICANN claims it shot down the proposal because it feared the organization would end up “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.”

But ICANN is in charge of assigning IP addresses and the domain names associated with those addresses.

The company does not enforce laws regarding content, instead leaving legal disputes to individual sites or domain registry operators. ICM’s “.xxx” proposal even went out of its way to address this concern, specifically noting that ICANN’s legal obligations would be limited to enforcing the organization’s contract with ICM Registry, and not enforcing agreements between ICM and its registrants, or between registrants and legal entities.

Why all the hubbub, then?

It’s an unfortunate case of a simple administrative decision being overshadowed by a socially charged issue — an issue that is particularly sensitive to a constituency with substantial sway in the U.S. government.

In June 2005, as ICANN agreed to enter negotiations with ICM Registry about the new domain, the U.S. Department of Commerce was indifferent, with internal memos claiming the department had no role in the “internal governance or day-to-day regulation of [ICANN].”

In the following months, however, conservative groups sent over 6,000 e-mails to the department, arguing that a new porn-only domain would be harmful to families and children. After receiving memos from the department expressing concern about the issue, ICANN tabled the vote on the “.xxx” domain until 2006.

Fast-forward to the present.

Following ICANN’s “no” vote two weeks ago, ICM Registry submitted a 172-page appeal to the organization, alleging that it had misinterpreted input from foreign governments, ignored its own standards for creating sponsored, top-level domains, and bowed to pressure from the Department of Commerce to reject the proposal.

By and large, these allegations appear to be well-supported. Of the foreign-input documents ICANN has made public, none express substantive opposition to the “.xxx” domain. And ICANN has had no legal qualms about creating content-specific domains in the past, establishing “.aero” and “.museum” sponsored domains in 2001 for the aerospace and museum industries, respectively.

Furthermore, the Wall Street Journal reviewed an internal memo from the Department of Commerce (unambiguously titled “United States Control of the Domain Name System”) that confirms the department’s new stance on the issue.

“If the international community decides to develop an .xxx domain for adult material,” the memo states, “it will not go on the Top Level Domain (TLD) registry if the U.S. does not wish for that to happen.”

If that doesn’t imply undue influence, what does?

And so it goes: A straightforward decision about whether to create a sponsored, top-level domain is hijacked by a handful of concerned but misguided citizens.

The tragedy is that even if the debate were about pornography, the arguments of both conservatives and the porn industry against the “.xxx” domain would be shaky at best.

The pornography industry’s contention that the “.xxx” domain would cause the “ghettoization” of porn Web sites overlooks the voluntary nature of the new domain. ICM Registry’s proposal does not require porn sites to purchase “.xxx” addresses or surrender existing addresses in other domains. If pornographers want to keep their “.com” Web sites, they can.

Similarly, the Family Research Council’s claim that an “.xxx” domain would make pornography easier to access is also poorly reasoned. Public libraries and wary parents could easily configure Internet filters to screen out all sites with the “.xxx” suffix. Try doing that with “.com” or “.net” addresses.

As for the argument that an “.xxx” domain would “legitimize” porn, let’s not overlook the fact that the American porn industry makes an estimated $12 billion annually. For reference, that’s more than all professional baseball, football and basketball franchises make combined. Perhaps America has a new pastime.

Both the porn industry and social conservatives have valid concerns. The right of consenting adults to access whatever information they choose must be safeguarded; and parents should have the ability to protect their children as they see fit. The reconciliation of these two ideas can only be accomplished with fair and earnest input from both sides.

But ICANN, an international-based organization charged with managing IP addresses, is hardly the forum for an argument about American social principles.

Sadly, the current debate overshadows good ideas that address the concerns of the porn industry and conservatives alike, such as the creation of a child-friendly “.kids” domain. Hopefully we can refocus the debate on solutions like this, instead of wasting our time defending the hard lines.