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news (or not so new) about the .XXX issue
Doubts Over Internet Porn Domain .XXX
March 3rd, 2007 under Industry News.
The resurrected proposal to open an internet domain reserved for porn web sites
is looking less likely to succeed, with ICANN?s board of directors last week
expressing ?serious doubts? about it.
A majority of ICANN?s directors are concerned that .xxx may not be wanted by the
adult entertainment industry it would purport to serve, according to minutes of
a February 12 ICANN board meeting published Friday.
A Florida-based company, ICM Registry Inc, has been fighting for approval to
launch .xxx for almost seven years. It has faced substantial opposition from
religious groups and some international governments, as well as influential
figures in the adult industry.
ICANN, the Internet Corp for Assigned Names and Numbers, has powers granted by
the US government to decide which top-level domains should be on the internet,
and who should operate them. Its board has the power to approve or reject
new domains.
Its board agreed last Monday that ?a majority of the board has serious concerns about
whether the proposed .xxx domain has the support of a clearly-defined sponsored community
as per the criteria for sponsored TLDs?.
In other words, most of the board are still not convinced that the adult entertainment
industry actually wants the .xxx domain.
During the Monday meeting, only three ICANN directors indicated they had no serious
concerns on this count. Eight others said they did, while ICANN president Paul Twomey
fence-sat.
The .xxx domain is being proposed as a ?sponsored top-level domain? or sTLD, an ICANN
invention designed to differentiate restricted, gated communities from open ?generic?
TLDs like .com and .info.
Sponsored TLDs approved to date include .mobi, which had substantial backing from the
mobile telephony industry, and .jobs, which had some support from human resources
organizations.
To get to run an sTLD, you need to show you have a community which supports you, and
ICM?s problem is that there is substantial opposition to .xxx within the adult webmaster
community.
The .xxx proposal was buried, believed dead, last year, but was resurrected last month
and opened once more for public discussion.
According to ICANN?s minutes, of the 88 adult webmasters that contacted ICANN during a
recent public comment period, only 23 were in favor of the domain.
That?s a 26% approval rating, pretty low but still higher than the 16% portion of favorable
comments received overall during the comment period. Most respondents were those opposed
to pornography in general and see .xxx as an endorsement of the industry.
ICANN received over 600 comments, and an additional 55,000 emails of objection sent
via a form email organized by a religious group. It has received over 200,000 such
emails since the current phase of the .xxx application began.
However, while it was arguably the religious right that caused ICANN to shelve ICM?s
proposal last year, it is now adult webmasters themselves that are the main barrier
to .xxx.
At X-Biz Hollywood, a recent adult industry conference held in Los Angeles, most
participants appeared to believe that .xxx is a bad idea, according to on-site reports.
During an X-Biz panel discussion, a request for applause by all those who did not
support .xxx caused ?a protracted standing ovation, in which the vast majority of
the audience participated?, according to Ynot.com, an adult industry news service.
ICM president Stuart Lawley?s response, according to Ynot and previous interviews
with Computer Business Review, is that this opposition is largely California-based,
and that he has had over 1,500 letters of support from the adult industry in 71
countries.
A key concern from the porn business is that while ICM?s .xxx would be voluntary,
there would almost certainly be moves from legislatures in the US and elsewhere for
.xxx to be mandatory, so pornography can be more easily filtered from the view of
minors. ICM has committed to fight such moves with its own money, and believes that
any legislation making .xxx mandatory would be unconstitutional in the US under the
First Amendment. The firm has retained noted civil liberties lawyer Robert Corn-Revere
to argue this point. The adult industry can determine the future of .xxx by making
it plain to ICCAN that they do not want and will not use .XXX. Many people feel it
would in effect create a ghetto section to the internet and this is clearly something
that would not be good for the adult industry.
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