On April 1st, ICANN signed the Registry Agreement with ICM Registry for .XXX. ICANN General Counsel & Secretary, John Jeffrey followed up on the singing by explaining the delicate nature of the contract with ICM Registry in a blog post.

ICM Registry filed its application for the .XXX domain extension (gTLD) in 2004 and initially had it approved by ICANN in June 2005, only to later have it denied. The triple-x domain name has been a controversial topic in the ICANN community as well as leaders in the adult community for which it is proposed to serve. After seven years of waiting in line, ICM Registry, the registry operator for .XXX, finally made it through the ICANN process.
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The ICANN Board approved the .XXX domain name extension and adopted a new timeline for the New gTLD program last Friday at its regularly scheduled meeting of the ICANN Board held in San Francisco.

ICANN carefully decided to proceed with the execution of the .XXX new domain extension on Friday at its board meeting and published its rationale for doing so along with the adoption of the resolution.

In an effort to push the New gTLD process to the finish line, ICANN also adopted a new working timeline for its new gTLD process. According to the timeline pictured below, ICANN has set its sights on approving the Applicant Guidebook at a special meeting of the ICANN board scheduled for June 20th 2011. Generally, ICANN holds a board meeting following the conclusion of the public meeting, however, this time the organization has scheduled a special board meeting to kick off the 41st ICANN meeting form June 20th – 24th in Singapore. Peter Dengate Thrush, the current Chairman of the ICANN Board, expects a huge party in Singapore for the official kickoff of the New gTLD program.
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ICANN posted a revision of its Proposed Registry Agreement with ICM Registry on its website today for the public to evaluate. ICM Registry, the applicant behind the .xxx top level domain, has been working towards obtaining the TLD since it first applied in 2004 in answer to ICANN’s call for Sponsored New gTLD proposals. The ICANN board rejected previous versions of the Proposed Registry Agreement, but after and independent review panel declared the rejection of the previous proposals as flawed, ICANN began to move forward in negotiating with ICM Registry.
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