shit it seems like Im the person best educated on this issue
I guess I could get an PhD in it
It has been discussed in a previous threads recently. It seems like the number of 1217 was mentioned as the number of webmasters who filled in some form on ICM's website... The default option was "I support .xxx - I want to register a .xxx domain" or something like that as far as i remember it correctly.
This allows ICM to twist the facts for obvious reasons - and it is also obvious that many people selected that option, without being aware that their inquiry to ICM counts as a voice of support for .xxx. Not to mention, that from what i know, several people who are against .xxx also emailed ICM asking them about the possible registration of .xxx domains. That was just a business decision of being pro-active and getting the facts about .xxx straight from the source. It is also obvious that those people - when they emailed ICM, they didn't write "hi, i hate .xxx so much that I can't sleep at night because of it, but i want to make sure if it goes live, how do I regster it"... They just expressed interest in learning the facts how .xxx will/would be registered.
let's not add more confusion to this - the pre-registration was possible at ICM's website and it started shortly after ICANN rejected .xxx (!!) in May last year.
Yes, I have no problems believing that many people registered there to pre-register names, but most of them were probably clueless idiots, or n00bs, or domainers... or also serious business owners who hate .xxx but they were pre-registering their com equivaalents just in case....
I would even go as far and say that the .xxx pre-registration process on ICM's website was a fake one, because its purpose was only to get some numbers to be able to show them to ICANN. In my opinion, should .xxx be really approved then the pre-registration process would start again, so the reason for the pre-registration process while .xxx was rejected was just to make the impression to ICANN that there's a huge demand for .xxx
