Is The Deck Being Stacked at the ICANN .xxx Comments Link?

* To: xxx-revised-icm-agreement@xxxxxxxxx
* Subject: Creating the new .xxx TLD is NOT supported by the Adult Industry
* From: Simon at ExtremePorn <webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
* Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2010 06:53:39 -0400

I've been actively involved in creating and managing adult entertainment websites for over 13 years. In this time I've made thousands of contacts within the adult industry and actively communicate with several hundred adult website owners on a regular basis. Although between us we own many thousands of adult domain names, in discussing this new proposed .xxx TLD, I have yet to find anyone interested in owning a domain using the .xxx TLD *except* as a way to protect the branding of adult domains they already own.

By this I mean that there are, of course, adult domain owners who would not want someone else owning the .xxx version of a .com website domain they already own and have spent many years and a lot of money to promote and establish. This proposed new .xxx TLD is, in fact, a generally hated idea to almost all webmasters who have spent years investing in .com domains to build commercial adult websites.

The establishment of this new TLD would force current .com domain owners to invest more money in buying .xxx versions of their domains just to protect them from those who would try to profit by misleading consumers into believing they are dealing with the owners of the original .com website when they are instead doing business with a completely different owner--potentially an owner whose only business is to steal business from those who have worked hard to build a real business using .com domains.

I hope those who are in charge of approving or denying the creation of this new proposed .xxx TLD will understand that most of those who have signed up to pre-register a .xxx domain are doing so to protect infringement on their own .com domains. And that aside from those being coerced and extorted into having to do this to protect what they already own, there are those shady operators who are trying to pre-register .xxx domains in order to attempt to infringe on .com domains/websites which they do not own. None of these pre-registrations should be viewed as any real indication of independent interest in the creation of the new .xxx TLD.

For these reasons I'm writing today to protest the establishment of this new TLD which is absolutely *not* needed or wanted by the vast majority of those actually involved in the adult industry.

Simon Stern
Adult Website Owner/Operator