WTF, .XXX is still kicking. Time to post to ICANN again!
 

(georgeK, pardon the additional thread, it was your thread that caught my attention.)

jan 5 posting to ICANN that .XXX is still alive and "public" comment period is open:
http://www.icann.org/announcements/a...nt-05jan07.htm


Cliff Notes: .XXX is still alive and public comments are requested by ICANN. ICM has tried to appease various technical issues brought up by ICANN members, but the overriding thing that ICM cannot demonstrate is that the adult online internet community wants .XXX

Call to action: send an email to: [email protected]

In the body of your email, explain that you are an adult webmaster in the adult online entertainment community and that you don't want .XXX

after that, throw in anything you want about free speech, red light districting, etc, etc... the main point that has to get across in large volumes, is that the adult online entertainment community does not want this.

If everyone can post up, to show a public vote against .XXX, then we can be effective as we were earlier on with the large turnout of votes against .XXX


My post to ICANN this morning.. Mike South was the first to post up.


Dear ICANN members,

Much like with .travel TLD, there is a requirement under ICANN rules that the TLD service the needs of the community for which the TLD was created.

.travel is a closed TLD, where only professionals within the travel organization are allowed to register.

The controversy has been that private individuals wanted to have their own .travel domain, but they are not allowed.


With .XXX, ICM has failed to demonstrate that the adult online internet community wants and supports this .TLD

To the contrary, many more have spoken up against it.

Please refer to http://www.FightTheDotXXX.com for the online public demonstration against .XXX

There were some notable companies in the very beginning that had given support. Fast forward several years and looking at the political climate, almost all have retracted.

Protecting children from the harms of the internet is in the interest of adult webmasters, hence the adult online industry funding of ASACP.org

.XXX will not protect against child pornography as ICM/IFFOR says, that is what law enforcement can do, and the recent issues with registrars shutting down domains due to lack of 2257 documentation has demonstrated that registrars can have influence to the process.

if there is Child Porn on a website, it would seem a report to the registar to have them look at the site and confirm such content, would make it easy for them to shut it down.

While the pedofiles are sick, they are not stupid. They won't register a .XXX name, they will use .COM

If you refer to Appendix S, part 8 of ICM's Revised Proposed Agreement, the first couple entries that pertain to protecting against child pornography are seriously flawed by the obvious observation above.

If .XXX was such a desired TLD like .mobi and .travel, etc.. but the adult online industry has clearly demonstrated that it does not want to be taxed or ruled over by a .XXX TLD.

-brandon "fight the patent"

For those that forgot and didn't pay attention,

ICM wants to charge $75/year for a .XXX domain

And if you think you are going to get the good domains, fa-getaboutit.

ICM (http://www.icmregistry.com/) is going to tell you how to run your business. If .XXX gets approved, you must follow their "best business practices" or else lose your .XXX

There are bills in congress to make .XXX mandatory.

While a law to make .XXX may not ever pass, the same effect of regulation can occur via the private sector in ICM being able to determine if you get to keep your .XXX domain or not.

There is alot of cleanup that can certainly be done in the adult space. There are alot of bad practices out there by affiliates (using CP related words like lolita, etc), but ICM is geared towards protecting children with no real solution other than just saying those words.

*WHEN* you post up to ICANN, please stay on track... keep it at a business level discussion that .XXX does not have your support.

If enough people post up , then the conclusion can be drawn that the "industry" doesn't want it.

If .XXX gets passed, i will be one of the first to congratulate the ICM folks for being able to demonstrate that the adult community must want .XXX, that it wants to be regulated by a third party, and that it wants to be taxed on its domains with a high YEARLY registration fee.

So many didn't speak up last round... your silence is a vote for .XXX no matter what you may feel, think, or say.

This is the dividing line between those who say they are "industry leaders", and those who are looking out for their business more miopically.

You may not care about the rest of the industry since you may seem them as your competitors, but issues like 2257 and obscenity is webmaster-blind, it affects everyone, much like .XXX

So please take the sand out of your ears and speak up about protecting YOUR business. And when enough people selfishly take a stand about their business, it then resembles a group (of cats), that are saying the same thing.

This is coming down to the end (again), and if there is not a public showing against .XXX, then it is a public showing FOR .XXX


Fight the soapbox!

good that you caught it already, I thought I was the only one of the guys who paid huge attention to this issue in the past, to notice that it re-appeared again :disgust

It would be good if Xbiz and AVN covered this issue again

I will definitely write to ICANN again or post those comments but perhaps someone could summarize what exact changes their new proposed agreement contains....

I mean, regardless what changes there are - we should oppose it again - but it wouldn' harm to know what exactly the ICM guys changed in their new proposal

Actually, it was georgeK's post, and then i saw Mike South was the first to post up (i just confirmed the ICANN response to my posting to the board).


Fight the duplicate threads!

Like i wrote in first post above, their changes were to appease various country members.. example like muslim.xxx would never be allowed to be registered (not confirmed, but thats one potential appeasement)

Their new proposal is more technical in nature, because they can shown ICANN many years ago, they they had "community" support, so it was forward movement to the details of how the registry would be runned.

What all webmasters need to challenge is the root of this, that the adult online entertainment industry does not support it. Some may have done so back in 2000, but fast forward 6 years, and 2257 issues, and its a different world.

Fight the apathy!

I know FightThisPatent, I wokoe up and looked at the AP storied and this one made it to the top 5 most important headlines today on excite.com

http://apnews.excite.com/article/200...D8MFRGF80.html


the funny thing is 99% of the public think we are creaming our pants for it. Wish you big sponsors with a big budget would buy some TV time and let people know we hope XXX dies.

ASACP has released a self-labelling tag at: http://www.rtalabel.org/

labelling laws are not that far from being on the books. You can use ICRA, but it is more involved.

ASACP's RTA label is just saying the content is restricted to adults, no classifications other than the binary bit of for adults only.

I strongly encourage websites, especially affiliates, to use the ASACP RTA label.


Fight the PSA!

all that is needed is for .XXX to finally just go away.

No public PR is needed.. their votes don't matter, even though ICM went to all the religious and conservative groups to get their support for .XXX but those people aren't in the adult community, and their support only shows that .XXX is a device to regulate.

What is needed is the private PR, the ringing of the bell within the adult industry to get posting to the ICANN board.

Public opinion is so fickle... the also think that .XXX is a good thing.. and in the abstract it can be, but the devil is in the details, and that's where the average joe public won't see.

So instead of engagig them in that discussion, far more productive to just get the public stances posted.


Fight the .XXX!

business week has their post up:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/tech/D8MFRGF80.htm


Fight the copy/paste!

I live 20 minutes away from ICM here in florida, I can go have a word for em if you want ;)


but seriously, I use ASACP label, mostly out of fear that I would be accused of doing nothing, but at the same time I think I'm just setting myself up to be filtered and targeted for prosecution in the same manner as .xxx would.

"The use of the proposed ".xxx" domain name would remain voluntary"

So what's the point?

i will concede the point that labeling your site with ICRA or RTA, could get your site filtered/blocked by companies.. that is actually the whole point of labelling.

If corporations don't want their employees to be looking at porn, they are allowed to block.

if parents don't want their kids to see porn, they should be given tools to block,

if adults don;t want to see porn, they should be able to block it,.

The argument is made that labeling makes it easier for them to block. absolutely, but there are blacklists of porn sites already, put together by third party companies that are used in various firewalls and proxy servers.

Labeling doesn't target you for prosecution, you are saying you have adult "legal" content, nothing more.

If anything, i see it as a better defense in court, when you can say you did label, and that it was the paren'ts fault for not implementing technology that would have blocked access to your site.

.XXX is requiring labeling for their TOS. Congress has bills in process to require mandatory labeling. Rather than be forced to label, i think its better to self-label. But in the end, the smaller group that does it, will be overshadowed by the websites that throw up hardcore porn right on first viewing, do SEO trickery, bad marketing, etc.

Those websites become the poster child for conservatives, and negates any positive, pro-active things that other webmasters are doing.

THis is why some in the adult biz support .XXX, and its mandatory requirement, because it will be the only way to "clean things up" as Stuary Lawley (ceo of ICM) says all the time.

And to some extent, he is right.. .self-regulation isn't working.. look at how many aren't even compliance with the 12+ year old 2257 law.. and that is already a law.



Fight the tangent!

you can also ask Jason why he needs this domain :winkwink:

fucking-around-and-business-discussion/675191-guess-owns-domain-name-myass-com.html

ICM to make money, and then hope the goverment takes notice and decides to force us all there with a new law so ICM makes more money, and then later down the road ISP's in different countries, colleges and OS's can just block all of us with a simple line of code. :thumbsup

AVN posted up their story this morning:

http://www.avnonline.com/index.php?P...tent_ID=281502


According to the article and Lawley, the fee will be $60/year.

here is an interesting/troubling excerpt:

"In addition, the new agreement adds some new considerations. Of particular note is that IFFOR, not the adult industry at large, is now the sponsoring community. Under the contract, ICM is required to provide to ICANN advance notice of any proposed change in IFFOR, and ICANN may disapprove any change. ICM also must provide to ICANN a copy of the contract between it and IFFOR and address any of ICANN?s concerns about the contract prior to launch of the sTLD."


Sneaky, sneaky twist. Since IFFOR wants .XXX and it considers themselves to be the community, then they have consituency.

Have they found this loophole in ICANN rules?!??!

This is ridiculous. .travel and other TLDs are good examples of defining community.

The upside to having .XXX, is that the government should then do away with all obscenity prosecutions as long as the website was in .XXX

I think many adult companies would accept that safe-harbour clause in return for the porn tax and regulations.

I want to sponsor .SUCK TLD, and the community group will be defined by those keyboard surfer warriors who have nothing better to do with their time than to flame everywhere they go. This would give websites a chance to express how they feel about companies and websites. I would start with dotXXX.SUCKS



Fight the sarcasm!

the agreement says ICANN will get 1 dollar and a minimum of $90,000 per year from the ICM Registry

I wonder how much is that compared to the current ICANN budget

LOL, jason hendeles company owns myass.com

http://whois.domaintools.com/myass.com

Funny find!


Fight the myass.xxx!

yes, I forgot to say the other reason why I label is cause I beleive that no one should stumble on my site if they don't want to, and I want parents to be able to filter my site out so their kids don't see it.

But in the same basket as .xxx just makes it easier for us to be completely filtered out on the ISP and other large entities levels.. it's a double edged sword.

now you'll jump down my throat when I say this, but .XXX would have worked if it was put in place in 95 or there on, and ICANN enforced it internationally from the beginning. OR I suppose any mandatory labeling system from the start. But now that we are all over on every TLD, it's just a big clusterfuck if they try it.

the point is to get it approved as being voluntary, then get governments to make it mandatory, and then the maybe modest 50,000 - 100,000 .xxx domain registrations could shoot up to millions of registrations at $60/domain per year

That's the point.


Fight the .$$$!

not at all, all opinions are respected by me.

in the abstract, i think .XXX could be a good thing, given that it provides a safe harbour, didn't cost $60/year and had adult industry oversight, rather than a bunch of prudes overseeing it. I told jason 3-4 years ago, make it like $3-4/year to start and then ramp it up over time. They wanted the quick profit obviously.

There are lots of bad business practices that go on, but so many are just outside the US.. so only a mandatory use of .XXX would ever be effective... so until thenm, it's swiss cheese coverage..

which is why they start out as "voluntary".. and secretly work towards mandatory.

Fight the but wait, there's more!

Don't be a sheep -
it's called a stepping stone... make it sound not-so-bad to pacify the populace then once they have accepted it, change it :)

Happens all the time in politics. Policies are easy to be approved, near impossible to be removed.

well, for this one time, please be like sheep and follow us to post up against .XXX and take a public stand (see first post).

after that, shed the fluffy hair and go back to making money.


Fight the baaaaaaa!

it would take alot of ISPs to filter.. and even if they did, consumers would go to other internet providers that gave them access to porn.

It would have to be a major conspiracy with AOL, Earthlink, MSN, Verizon, Bell South, Comcast, Adelphia, etc to unilaterally filter on RTA or ICRA. I can see those companies offering it as a service to families.. that's fair game.

There is no economic reasons for them to do so.. porn sells internet access.


But, say some anti-porn hacker launches massive DDOS attack on the .XXX Domain Name servers.. blamo, no way to reach .XXX websites.



Fight the taxing of the onramp to the internet!

Will send my letter in

It takes a few hours to be posted, mine just got posted:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-icm...ent/index.html

you get an email confirmation after you email to ICANN to approve your emailing address.. and then a little bit more time before it goes live.

Mike South and myself are posted on the board now.


Fight the tom delays!

Bad dream. Must wake up.

I have submitted my 2 cents and now I shall pretend the site doesn't exist... such things are usually too embarassing to track.

Seriously, every time we get the chance to stand up and defend ourselves we prove why we are such easy targets and deserve every bit of crap which comes our way. I really hope that this time a few more people take 5 minutes away from whoring their sigs and send in a comment.

Why do companies who make tens of millions of dollars a year do not step up to the plate ?

Why time and time again (with the exception of a few with Acacia) do companies either roll over and take it or just ignore it?

Even GFY for example. Why not one week that there is no one skining this board, do a anti .xxx campaign skin. Then Everyone whould know about it at least. Threads like this are going to get missed by a lot of people. Oh wait, wasn't Lensman a supporter of .xxx ? If so, I guess that idea wouldn't happen. :1orglaugh

why is it that only myself and FTP have made a comment to ICAAN....come on and get off your fucking lazy asses...

and why wont Jason Hendales and Stuart Lawley crawl back into whatever hole they crawled out of, god I wish these two grifters would go away

Brandon,

You may want to bump or repost this on monday morning. You'll attract a lot more responses than on a Saturday IMO. Good pickup, going to email in my support against it.

Thanks Brandon :)

I am not worried about .XXX....there will be enough support to shut that guy Stuart down....what cracks me up, is this guy knows nothing about our business and comes in to try and not only take money from us, but in the end try to ruin our industry.

I have said it before and i will say it again:
FUCK .XXX


At the time most did not know about .xxx , but more do now, and the fact that Larry Flynt came in with a strong anti .xxx letter, and other giant video companies came out against it...along with some major online groups.....i dont think think .xxx has a chance in hell of getting thru..i think this is a last chance grasp at what he thought he had locked down a few years ago....it will be fun to step on this and squash it so its dead dead dead........


Las Vegas baby...the "big show" is around the corner and now i know what i will be reminding everyone to do when i see them face to face....sneaky under handed business people like the owners of .xxx...i will find great pleasure in seeing this snuffed out.....


As i said before and i will say it again, we need to have a group or at least be together as one giant group, online adult industry...this way we dont have this kind of shit to have to deal with...it could be dealt with on a much higher level....

Its over .XXX give it up....nobody wants you.....go away and try and steal money from another industry!:321GFY

I will be drafting our letter this weekend.
Don't these fuckheads ever stop?

and sent

Once again I have made my opposition known at ICANN.

I am waiting for the confirmation email so my letter will be posted on the forum.

If everyone who posts on GFY were to post at ICANN then this issue may finally be put to rest permanently.

Amen Mike!

FUCK .XXX

This feels like every other privately financed and governmentally enforced "we're from the government and we're here to help" clusterfuck from smoking bans and seatbelt laws to hurricane Katrina.

This initiative has been set up from day one to put our entire industry into a easily-controlled box, effectively handing over every decent domain and all the decisions and resulting literal and political power to a small group of power elite. It would eliminate the ability for the little guy to ever make a difference or a dime again.

Fight the jack booted thugs, Fight .XXX!

posts to icann board are starting to flow in.

Fight the trickle!

... fucking useless piece of shit cocksucking fucks.

*mumble, grumble*

not only from us though

:Oh crap

Only reason there's a push for .XXX is to make more money, it won't prevent any type of content being displayed. Sure, it would make some people's lives easier but it would disrupt a far greater number of peoples' lives and businesses; maybe that's what they're hoping for though..

It would be better to simply make it so you can get a ticket / fine for not properly labeling a website such as the type of content involved. And then make it mandatory for all browsers to prevent the page loading if an adult-related tag or whatever level of filtering is wanted.

Make penalty for not properly labeling a fine, make penalty for not paying fine (after a good period of time) being losing the domain..

Matt

polish quoted this first;

Firstly, she contradicts herself with what she means to say.

Secondly, advertise directly to children? WHAT?

Thirdly, what are these adults she talks about searching for that porn sites are coming up? [That would be the search engine's problem then by the way...]

Pulling the protect my children from porn card is still lame. If she has filter software then her child AND HERSELF would NOT be exposed to any adult content.

I do believe filter software should be free / a publically paid for service --- not by a tax on just adult sites, that wouldn't be fair, but an internet tax of sorts.

Also I think search engines are seeming to get away without much blame. I would think Google should release an adult content filter through their Toolbar or something.

Matt

not really, Im completely against it. The web doesn't need any new drastic measures or forms of censorship...

IMO seeing beheading or hanging videos on youtube has a worse effect on childrean than accidently finding porn

or many many other things could be more harmful too, and yet you see only people trying to remove porn from the web

ah well, shit, why are we debating this again? It has been debated for past 2 or even 3 years.. We agree .XXX is bad, no reason to debate it again (other than to keep this thread at the top). We should act, not debate.

I will send some comments soon to ICANN as wel..

Fight: No problemo.....they should lock the prior threads, and point folks to this thread only.

What was interesting is that the US Trademark office actually allowed some registered trademarks on domains with .xxx in them, with applicants arguing that it's not generic because ICANN decided not to go ahead with .xxx! Now they're first in line to grab those names in the sunrise/landrush. See lesbian.xxx as one example (Elite Family LLC is behind several of the applications/registrations):

http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?r...entry=78643765

If one prints out all the "TDR" records associated with that application, they mention on page 7 of 9 of one of the documents that "ICANN has recently made the decision not to allow creation of a .xxx top level domain."

The actual domain name that the "TM" is used is on lesbiandotxxx.com (as are many of the other TMs they registered, for _____dotxxx.com).

Also, XPays owns a registered TM for "XXX", see:

http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?r...entry=78127349

for "DISSEMINATION OF ADVERTISING OF THE GOODS AND SERVICES OF OTHERS VIA A GLOBAL COMPUTER NETWORK."

Good points.

Matt

Confirmation received. Comments should be available soon.

yup, many have done that, including sex.com with sex.xxx

If .XXX gets approved, it won't be smooth sailing, there will surely be lawsuits filed from domain owners who are fighting to see who gets the .xxx equivalent.

ex: somesexsite.com, somesexite.dk, somesexsite.co.uk, somesexsite.jp who gets the .xxx ?

There may be other procedural lawsuits filed for injunctions, etc. It is going to be an interesting for those involved if .XXX gets approved.



Fight the watching!

I think most companies are ignorant, don't care enough, don't care at all etc

last time when we fighted .xxx in May 2006, it were about 10 individuals who raised awarness here and kept all the threads about it on top of GFY which resulted in a few hundred emails from GFY sent to ICANN, which was already some kind of achievement

I wonder if we can do it again though...

My letter has been posted.

ya, but i think it was the 60,000+ emails from religious/convervative groups along with the US government opposition that spoke the loudest over 600+ emails messages from webmasters.

Lawley has stated that over 1,000 adult webmasters have sent support for .XXX

Let's take that for face value, that 1,000 emails were forwarded to ICANN.. what does that say to our 600 in opposition? It says there is community support.


In looking at the AVN article and the part i pulled out of in my earlier post, that what ICANN seems to have accepted is that the adult online industry is not the sponsorship community... it is broader to include non-adult parties, therefore a majority consensus from adult is not needed to prove constituency.

This is quite bizarre because it means anyone who thinks there should be .XXX is the sponsorship community.

It also appears that the changes that ICM has provided to ICANN appeases concerns of ICANN/GAC members, that they are not looking at the issue of adult community, but rather if ICM's plans for the registries satisfies other issues that are more technical, and less abstract.

I do fear that ICM has done all it is required to do for the TLD application that ICANN will approve it.

At that point, that;s when the can of worms gets opened up... it will certainly be interesting to see the landscape after the .XXX approval.


Fight the stay tuned!