At a recent summit, porn industry leaders and an expert panel held a discussion with .XXX’s Vaughn Liley. The open industry Q and A, to form the industry’s business plans for the new TLD, did not go well.

Big Porn’s take-away illustrates a troubling future where vanity TLDs are nothing more than a frontier for prospectors that look more like copyright trolls than legitimate prospects.

ICANN’s board recently voted to increase the number of Internet domain name endings–generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs)–from the current 22 to a unlimited number of new Top Level Domains. The vanity extensions could range from .apple to .zynga – but right now the very first of the vanity TLDs is getting ready for opening registration day: the porn extension .XXX.

In preparation, .XXX’s ICM Registry is sending their Director of Sales Vaughn Liley to adult conferences, summits and conventions to meet with porn industry leaders and “win hearts and minds.”

According to the ICM Registry website, “.XXX domains will be allocated to applicants on a first-come, first-served basis. Starts December 6, 2011.”

Watch the one-hour video of his appearance on a recent panel along with Connor Young (President and CTO of YNOT Group), Tom Hymes (AVN) and Eric M. Bernstein (Attorney at Law) with questions from a conference room of leading porn webmasters, and I think you’ll agree that the feeling is more of a sinking one, than a soaring one.