Open Letter to ICM--My Personal Opinion!
 

In my First Amendment protected free speech personal opinion, I herewith think/feel that ICM should immediately and permanently:

1. Withdraw their ongoing .xxx submission to ICANN; instead, show a non-profit motive and a helpful concern for children by instead requesting that ICANN quickly approve .kids.

2. Publicly publish on this and other boards, with a copy to ICANN (and Department of Justice?), the names and organizations of any person(s) or entity which they have entered into either a formal or informal or verbal deal/arrangement/understanding/trade/etc concerning .xxx, and reveal the specific and detailed quid pro quid and financial and other aspects of the matter with each person/entity (If ICM agrees to immediatley and without reservation do Item 1 above, this paragraph might be mute?).

3. Provide a notarized letter to the Free Speech Coalition, with emailed and written copies to ICANN as well as this and other similar boards, that if .xxx is approved, ICM and it's personnel/partners/associates/"deal" individuals and entities/etc, whether already publically disclosed or "secret", as individuals as well as organizations and corporate structures, will guarantee, backed by a voluntary and totally unrestricted unlocking of the corporate lawsuit veil and an agreement that the personal assets of all individuals involved are volunteered and available in addition to corporate assets for any future civil lawsuit findings, and herewith agrees that:

a. All present "adult" .com domains and/or .com sites will be grand-fathered indefinitely and have sole and continuing extended total rights, to and from ICM and other/future registries, to register their same .com domain name/site as a .xxx at the pricing discussed in the below paragraph c.

b. Like the free spirit of American and business competition, other registries may also offer .xxx registrations at or below the same price that they now presently offer .com registrations.

c. Since and like present .com adult sites/domains are already "policed" by government authorities, ICM agrees to drop it's proposed oversight, monitoring of content, censorship, and other aspects now being used to justify registration prices for .xxx that exceed .com prices presently offered by other registries. ICM will pledge not to charge more than $10 per .xxx registration.

d. If any future legislation at any level of government in any country is passed that restricts .xxx in any way that .com is not presently affected, or if any ISP/3d Party Billing/etc non-government element imposes rules/regulations/restrictions/etc which in any way limit revenue or operations of .xxx domains/sites, ICM and it's "secret" associates as mentioned in Paragraph 2 above, will immediately become monetarily responsibe to cover all revenue losses and to refund .xxx registration fees, and to financially cover a buy-back of the former .com domain to replace the .xxx domain.

In my personal opinion, if ICM immediately does all of the above, people considering contact with their Senators and Representatives, the Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce, and other law enforcement and government agencies to seek a federal Court TRO against the ICANN decision while insisting upon the conduct of a full and complete Governmental investigation to insure that no criminal/conspiratorial/RICO/IRS/etc regulations or laws have been assailed by ICM or it's "secret" associates, should probably consider backing off; the same for non-U.S. folks affected adversely by .xxx if it is approved.

ICM, are you willing to quickly do the above?

I'm interested in getting feedback from ya's. Opinions?

Should my letter be sent to ICANN (and other/additional government officials now; or, should I hold off a bit to see if/how lawley responds; or, should I not send it; or, have one of you already sent it; or...?

I'm thinking of emailing this to Stuart Lawley, too, just to make certain he has a chance to respond (in case he doesn't have allies monitoring the boards on his behalf).

im not sure how to comment on your letter, but as for Lawley, Im not sure if we should correspond with him

the goal is to "kill" the .xxx domain - so in other words to convince ICANN to reject it


no point in engaging in debates with Mr Lawley if we simply don't want this domain and we still have chances to make ICANN reject .xxx

(thats just my opinion though)

*crickets chirp*

I can hear the crickets.
:1orglaugh

The main reason not to attempt to debate with Mr Lawley is that I suspect you would be wasting your time. He is in the fortunate position of not actually having to debate with anyone: he presents his application and for reasons which probably have little to do with the application itself, ICANN have so far rejected it. Then Lawley addresses the stated concerns and tries again.

In just the same way that Lawley is unlikely to have the slightest interest in protecting minors, but uses that emotive subject as a lever, ICANN don't want to say they gave in to pressure from so-and-so, therefore they rationalize their objections.

In other words, the public debate is a farce, window dressing. It is extremely difficult to avoid the impression that Lawley has someone on the inside at ICANN, someone with enough clout to prevent this issue being put to rest, but not enough to push it through. With the money at stake, I guess Lawley will just keep coming back until/if that changes.

Good letter, but highly doubt any of the requests will be honored.

I'm kinda hoping that he'll be concerned enough about the impact of possible investigations and court actions upon not only ICM/himself, but also possibly involving some of the individuals/entities in the so-called "secret" deals, and might ask ICANN to postpone or withdraw his application; as the first response to this same posted letter said at the board/forum that is four-letters and starts with a "Y" and ends with a "T" mentioned the hope that there will be ....

Quote "a .xxx doomsday legal strategy to enjoin them from operating this TLD in the unlikely event that ICANN approves it." Unquote.

IMHO, ICM could drastically and negatively alter the present adult Internet world as we know it, and we ALL need to realize that it could take us down, possibly including "secret" deal folks!!!

Dave,
That's a good letter, and someone should listen to what the industry has to day, but I'm afraid it's going to fall on deaf ears because greed is the main factor here.

3a I think should be a given.

Unless WE tell ICANN, I doubt ICM will trumphet our Paragraph 3a positions.

Should we all copy and send the letter asking for ICANN to consider the contents a "Special Situation" matter?

What a mess this could end up being. I wouldn't be surprised to see this in court for years and years!

At least you gave it a try.

good point that this debate is a farce, but we don't know it for sure

but from my understanding the current round of new .tld application ends soon (later this year)

a few extensions like .jobs, .travel or .mobi were already added (on a side-note, ever seen a .jobs site? ) and now they concentrate mostly on .xxx

There's also a .post application which is less advanced than .xxx from what it seems... and they gave .post a deadline till June 30 2007. Probably .xxx has a similar deadline, so till then they have to either finally accept it or oficially reject it. And then the current round gets closed and in hm.... 6-18 months (thats my guessing though) ICANN will announce that they start accepting the applications again. So probably again about 10 companies will submit applications to ICANN hoping their useless proposals will get accepted.. and ICM may do it then again.... or they will finally lose interest if ICANN rejects them this time for good.

http://icann.org/announcements/announcement-04jan07.htm

I commend you my friend for all your efforts regarding the xxx situation.

although some may feel that this letter may fall on deaf ears, the truth is that not acting at all has more of a dramatic effect. There is the old saying, that your either part of the problem or part of the solution. Thank you for being part of the solution by acting in some way to raise a voice stating our displeasure in such a eloquent way

Email Sent to ICM's Stuart Lawley!
 

I just emailed Stuart Lawley inviting him to respond to the opinions and Comments made in my letter.

Dave

e-mailed ICANN as well?

Not yet, but my email to Mr Lawley said the following:

...."I'm also considering the routing of my thread posts to ICANN and others, so you might want to post your responses in the next day or two so that they might also be shown in the event I decide to forward the threads to other parties?"

I will send it to ICANN on Wed (I have notes all over my place to remind me to do it--getting old and forgetful is not fun).

Are you or anyone else thinking of forwarding it to the individual members of ICANN, too; and, perhaps, the Dept of Commerce, DOJ, FBI, etc????

I would bet dollars to donuts they will not take your letter seriously.

Who do you mean by "they", Tony---ICM/Lawley? Or, ICANN; or, whichever other place it gets sent? Or, ALL of the preceeding:-)).

It's just my opinion, but if I was in a "secret" deal with anyone to get .xxx approved so that I'd get special favors or financial gain, I'd be starting to be concerned that an "Enjoinment" order and other court cases and possible conspiracy allegations might be getting pursued in a very public way if .xxx is approved and some of ya's choose to make noise!!!!

Not sure if you emailed Lawley the link to GFY threads (I hope not)

If 3a is not accepted, this can turn into a huge mess for everyone.

There need not be a secret deal, nor anything which would not stand up under public scrutiny. But even if there were, isn't this situation a lot like Acacia and Zango, where businesses knowingly pursue activities which are indefensible by any normal standards, but see a profit which will more than cover legal costs arising from that pursuit?

Acacia for example, made more than $20 million profit from the first major case they "lost". You can be sure they did not embark on subsequent claims with any more sincerity nor because they were expecting to win. They simply pursued a strategy which they expected to pay off, regardless of the outcome. Similarly the people behind Zango and other scumware companies would surely prefer not to get the occasional $$$million slap on the wrist, but likely both anticipate them and factor them in as an operating cost.

Being appointed as the registrar of an adult TLD would be like being given a license to print money for many years to come, because the adult industry has neither the sense nor the organization to boycott this TLD if it is instituted. On the contrary, we shall be falling over ourselves to register domains, even if, right now, they are intrinsically worthless. The investment needed to pursue this application is tiny by comparison with the potential rewards and if the TLD is established, the income will be more than enough to fund defence against an occasional claim of misconduct or whatever.

And although both times I have been among the first to register my objections by sending in an email, at its most basic a TLD for adult domains is both logical and consistent with ICANN strategy. They have created and are creating TLD's for much smaller industries. It is also likely that if we were not haunted by the specter of one day being raped by high costs while being herded into a red-light district and then perhaps shut off entirely, we might not give a damn whether .XXX came to pass or not.

From an observer's point of view, it is an interesting situation, because you could argue that neither the legitimacy some are claiming this TLD will give porn, nor the objections from adult webmasters based on the potential for censorship, are factors ICANN need or even should consider. Were it not for the political pressure already on them for other reasons, I doubt ICANN would be concerned about the former and I cannot imagine they take webmasters' views seriously at all, since in the larger scale of things we have zero influence.

Which was the basis for my earlier post about the pointlessness of debate. ICM is in this for the money, thus any response to the XXX vs KIDS question will be a templated one. ICANN are between a rock and a hard place, under pressure to reject an application for reasons which aren't directly connected to factors they would usually consider. They have to be aware that if they do reject a legitimate application through fear of political fallout, they could find themselves on the wrong end of some expensive litigation. They therefore have to express a rejection in terms which are consistent with their "charter" and that gets harder each time ICM come back with a claim modified to cover their previous objections.

We can argue that XXX has nothing to do with closing porn off to minors and that is true both because of what we suspect is ICM's motivation and because most parents don't bother to install the filters which already exist. But profit motive is what business is all about, so that shouldn't offend ICANN. Truth be told, any one of us would swap places with ICM, given the opportunity. Nor is ICANN responsible for irresponsible parents. An identifiable TLD could make filtering easier.

Except that this is being presented as a voluntary TLD and were that to continue to be the case, its impact would be marginal. Because surfers tend to assume .COM domains and some webmasters like "sexy" domain names, porn will remain spread across most of the other TLD's. Goodbye filtering. That reality is why many of us suspect that once .XXX exists, it is only a matter of time before we are forced into it. Some ICANN members may even recognize the validity of these concerns, but anti-censorship is no more part of their legitimate agenda than censorship should be.

In short, although this is being played out in public, the decisions are being made behind closed doors based on other factors entirely. That doesn't mean we should not register our objections, if only because if ICANN again decides it wants a way to refuse the application, it will need to justify that refusal. Who knows who may provide the points on which they could hang that refusal...

any update?

Still no response to my invite to ICM's Stuart Lawley to post one here:-(.

Tonight or tomorrow, I will file my letter with ICANN, and possibly some other governmental entities.

Just finished my letter and will send it out after I go for some lunch to digest this.

Hey Dave, I have tried to look you up on ICQ, but there are a few Dave Cummings. Can you hit me up at 292 356 077

i wanted to ask you something :)

Im going to grab a bite to eat and will look for your message when I return, that is if you get in touch with me...thanks

I meant ICM and the ghouls hiding in the shadows.lol Mr Cummings are you going to Cybernext in the summer? I hope so I would like to get to shake your hand. There are so few with your level of integrity in our industry. We need more guys like you.

you mean you sent him a link to this threadand invited him to post on GFY... or you emailed him privately, without referring to GFY in any way?

I'm not sure if Im following what you mean :)

Icq
 

I'm so old that I don't have a cell phone, or ICQ; but my email is daveATdave cummingsDOTcom if ya wanna email me directly.

Dave
www.davecummings.com

Tampa
 

Yes, I plan to be in Tampa for CyberNet, and look forward to meeting you:-)

Dave

Here Mr Cummings :
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives..._computer.html
http://www.gojitterbug.com/

Great to hear :)

I told him he could either email me directly and I would do a copy/paste onto appropriate threads at the various boards, or he could post directly and publicly onto them (I imagine he has associates who routinely forward all the .xxx related postings to him from all the boards, not just GFY, possibly even this one--so, he's probably already seen my letter as well as everybody's posts in every .xxx thread in the past; he's smart, so I bet he's arranged things so that he's seen everything already).

It's starting to look like he's too busy to respond while he's traveling, so I'm gonna post my letter (my second letter this go-around).