jayeff

There need not be a secret deal, nor anything which would not stand up under public scrutiny. But even if there were, isn't this situation a lot like Acacia and Zango, where businesses knowingly pursue activities which are indefensible by any normal standards, but see a profit which will more than cover legal costs arising from that pursuit?

Acacia for example, made more than $20 million profit from the first major case they "lost". You can be sure they did not embark on subsequent claims with any more sincerity nor because they were expecting to win. They simply pursued a strategy which they expected to pay off, regardless of the outcome. Similarly the people behind Zango and other scumware companies would surely prefer not to get the occasional $$$million slap on the wrist, but likely both anticipate them and factor them in as an operating cost.

Being appointed as the registrar of an adult TLD would be like being given a license to print money for many years to come, because the adult industry has neither the sense nor the organization to boycott this TLD if it is instituted. On the contrary, we shall be falling over ourselves to register domains, even if, right now, they are intrinsically worthless. The investment needed to pursue this application is tiny by comparison with the potential rewards and if the TLD is established, the income will be more than enough to fund defence against an occasional claim of misconduct or whatever.

And although both times I have been among the first to register my objections by sending in an email, at its most basic a TLD for adult domains is both logical and consistent with ICANN strategy. They have created and are creating TLD's for much smaller industries. It is also likely that if we were not haunted by the specter of one day being raped by high costs while being herded into a red-light district and then perhaps shut off entirely, we might not give a damn whether .XXX came to pass or not.

From an observer's point of view, it is an interesting situation, because you could argue that neither the legitimacy some are claiming this TLD will give porn, nor the objections from adult webmasters based on the potential for censorship, are factors ICANN need or even should consider. Were it not for the political pressure already on them for other reasons, I doubt ICANN would be concerned about the former and I cannot imagine they take webmasters' views seriously at all, since in the larger scale of things we have zero influence.

Which was the basis for my earlier post about the pointlessness of debate. ICM is in this for the money, thus any response to the XXX vs KIDS question will be a templated one. ICANN are between a rock and a hard place, under pressure to reject an application for reasons which aren't directly connected to factors they would usually consider. They have to be aware that if they do reject a legitimate application through fear of political fallout, they could find themselves on the wrong end of some expensive litigation. They therefore have to express a rejection in terms which are consistent with their "charter" and that gets harder each time ICM come back with a claim modified to cover their previous objections.

We can argue that XXX has nothing to do with closing porn off to minors and that is true both because of what we suspect is ICM's motivation and because most parents don't bother to install the filters which already exist. But profit motive is what business is all about, so that shouldn't offend ICANN. Truth be told, any one of us would swap places with ICM, given the opportunity. Nor is ICANN responsible for irresponsible parents. An identifiable TLD could make filtering easier.

Except that this is being presented as a voluntary TLD and were that to continue to be the case, its impact would be marginal. Because surfers tend to assume .COM domains and some webmasters like "sexy" domain names, porn will remain spread across most of the other TLD's. Goodbye filtering. That reality is why many of us suspect that once .XXX exists, it is only a matter of time before we are forced into it. Some ICANN members may even recognize the validity of these concerns, but anti-censorship is no more part of their legitimate agenda than censorship should be.

In short, although this is being played out in public, the decisions are being made behind closed doors based on other factors entirely. That doesn't mean we should not register our objections, if only because if ICANN again decides it wants a way to refuse the application, it will need to justify that refusal. Who knows who may provide the points on which they could hang that refusal...