from www.watoday.com.au – Plans to introduce a “.xxx” domain for adult internet sites “scares the hell” out of Western Australia’s leading adult entertainment entrepreneur.

While supporters of the plan believe it would create an online red-light district where porn sites can set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers, the porn industry claims every site with the .xxx suffix could be blocked by government web filters in the future.

Also, other porn sites would be extremely reluctant to give up their .com addresses in favour of moving to an .xxx “ghetto”, according to Australian Sex Party convener Fiona Patten.

AdultShop.com boss Malcolm Day told WAtoday.com.au from Sydney this morning that while he supported the censoring of adult material online – which would prevent children from accessing it – he agreed with the wider industry the .xxx suffix would give the government another weapon to block legitimate porn websites.

“I am very concerned and fearful of censoring adult material that should be made available for adults,” he said. “It scares the hell out of me.

Mr Day said Australian censorship laws governing porn were a bit of a “wish-wash” in Australia, adding the laws “are certainly conflicting” across some jurisdictions.

“There are a lot of inconsistencies in censorship,” he said.

“If they had the .xxx suffix then they got blocked, that’s a real concern.”

He said if adult websites weren’t allowed to have .com domains and only register under the .xxx address, then “many governments (across the world) would try to block them”.

Under Australian law, the only adult material that can be hosted online in Australia is R-rated pornography, which Mr Day said equated to just “boobs and bums”.