"Last week, someone had sent over a document purporting to be from the Commerce Department advocating that ICANN's new open top level domain plan include a "government veto," that would let various government agencies seek to block a particular TLD. We didn't write about it at the time, because I couldn't confirm that it was real, and the whole thing seemed so ridiculous and short-sighted I didn't think that it could have really come out of the Commerce Department. Lesson learned: never underestimate the Commerce Department's ability to make really bad decisions. It appears that it's now been confirmed that the Commerce Department really does want veto power for any government <http://paidcontent.org/article/419-will-governments-get-to-veto-new-web-doma...> over a particular TLD. The reports suggest that there's concern about TLD's like ".gay" which some countries may not like, and some of the fear is driven by the .xxx debacle <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100222/0253398249.shtml>, when ICANN initially approved <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050601/185234.shtml> a .xxx domain, thinking it would be a "redlight district" for porn, but then after public outcry, the US government pressured ICANN to change its mind. This was especially funny because no one seemed sure whether or not .xxx was good or bad <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060329/1124240.shtml> for kids. There were some people who thought .xxx would be "good" for kids by creating an area that was easy to rope off and keep kids out of. Others argued that .xxx was bad because it admitted that porn existed (or something like that). " Prosegue qui: <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110208/01163013003/us-govt-interest-domai...> Ciao, Paolo