After yesterday’s report on how pornographic websites are to be assigned a .xxx domain, InternetSafety.com has announced that the new policy will actually double the avenues available to access adult content online and fail to provide the claimed filtering benefits.

Under the ICANN guidelines, sites with adult content are not required to purchase a domain ending in .xxx or to abandon their existing .com addresses. Therefore, existing adult sites will be able to purchase .xxx versions of their domains and simply use the new address to point traffic to their existing .com site, effectively doubling their presence on the Internet.

For that reason, simply blocking the .xxx domain will not prevent access to porn sites. In addition, since non-porn sites will also be permitted to register the .xxx domain, the whole-domain blocking strategy will likely lead to unnecessary filtering.

According to Internet Filter Review, there are 4.2 million pornography websites containing 420 million pages of material, drawing 75 million unique visitors every month, and accounting for 12% of all online destinations. A full 25% of all search engine requests are pornography-related, nearly 43% of all Internet users view porn, and 10% of adults admit to an Internet porn addiction.