Quote:
Originally Posted by cherrylula
Ok, VISA/MC is always scary, this I know. But I think it is rather far fetched that this would happen because there is so much money involved. I don't give ICM enough credit to do that either. Or anyone. But who knows.
|
I tend to agree with you, except about the part where "so much money" is involved. ;-)
Our entire industry is a drop in the VISA bucket, and it's a drop that they seem to regard as something of a pain in the ass at times -- hence the "high risk" designation they have saddled us with, the 1% chargeback threshold, their unwillingness to regard the merchant's evidence when there is a dispute between a merchant and a cardholder with respect to a 'fraudulent' charge, etc., etc.
Having said that, I don't think VISA would dump all other adult merchants in favor of working with .XXX alone, until/unless the revenue coming from .XXX adult sites is more on par with non-.XXX adult sites.
Quote:
|
Ok, but aren't there already entire countries like Germany that block all sorts of porn sites? By now some of us target by country anyways, I figure that could be worked around?
|
Germany blocks (some) porn sites that don't adhere to their age verification protocols. Other countries block any and every porn site they identify. Neither of those things is the same as blocking an entire TLD, and from a global/technical infrastructure perspective, that blocking is nowhere near as significant or potentially problematic as a total block on an entire TLD.
Quote:
|
Yeah, douchebags for sure. But business is about making money if the demand is there, right? Porn sites used to be $40+ a month, too.
|
True -- and now the market price for porn sites is generally regarded to be lower than that, which sounds like a good reason to
NOT pay
more for new domain names, to me. ;-)
ICM is offering a product at far higher than its current market value, with no real justification for charging that higher price. The demand for .XXX hasn't even been established yet, and the price is already many, many times the market price for similar products.
Call me crazy, but that doesn't sound like a recipe that should make me want to pay
more for .XXX names; if anything, the 'TLD newcomer' to the market, which is offering properties with no established traffic whatsoever, and properties that will be available in fewer geographic markets than competing domain products, should be priced
lower than those competing products.
Quote:
I've never heard of any adult company being up front, ever. Not when they are holding the money bag. That's no surprise. We're not some sort of union or club. No offense, but "community" is questionable. 
|
Be that as it may, the adult entertainment industry is the intended "sponsoring community," for .XXX -- the "s" in sTLD, as it were. "Sponsoring Community" is the term used in the application/contract approved by ICANN; I didn't choose that term, ICANN did. ;-)
Beyond that, the question of whether any adult company has ever been up front is irrelevant to the question of whether I should buy .XXX domains.
First off, as they have gone to great lengths to point out on many occasions,
ICM is not an adult company.
Second, I'm hard-pressed to think of any adult company that is responsible for operating technical infrastructure that is mission-critical to the function of my business in the way that a group responsible for the management of an entire TLD is.
IMO, there's simply no analogy between ICM's role here and the role of any third-party adult company with respect to the daily operation of our company. As such, the question of whether I trust them with the fine print is more salient than it would be if I were merely trading traffic with them, or merely distributing content through them.
Quote:
Thank you for your constructive input. 
|
You're welcome.