The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will meet in Portugal from March 26-30, and it may vote on the dot-xxx sponsored Top-Level Domain at that time.
Whether or not it does, the adult industry trade organization Free Speech Coalition will be there to ensure its constituents' concerns are heard. The FSC is categorically opposed to dot-xxx, according to Executive Director Diane Duke.
"The FSC, with the generous support of our membership and some key sponsors, is sending me and our board chair Jeffrey Douglas to the ICANN meeting in Lisbon to ensure that the industry has a presence at this critical meeting," she said.
The FSC believes dot-xxx is a bad idea because "it 'ghettoizes' the industry, making adult entertainment an easy target for anti-industry extremists and government intrusion," Duke said. "It will add unnecessarily to the cost of doing business. At $60 per URL per year, the cost to a member could reach tens of thousands of dollars annually. Many in the adult entertainment industry will purchase and park addresses, realizing no benefit from this added expense. Finally, there will be countless battles for names, and the resulting arbitration will be costly."
Duke said she believes if a dot-xxx sTLD becomes available, it is likely the United States and other countries will try to make its use mandatory and subject it to root-level filtering that effectively could eliminate much of the adult content currently available on the Web.
"The dot-xxx option could enable the industry's enemies to convert even a voluntary dot-xxx domain use into an effectively mandatory requirement by pressuring private parties, such as credit card processors, to require dot-xxx use and compliance," she said. "In this way, ICM [Registry, the domain-registrar hopeful], through unchecked rule-making, could 'back door' all the governmental regulations that we have beaten back. If that happens, the industry would not have its most potent weapon, the First Amendment, to challenge ICM, because ICM is not a governmental entity."
Although the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution applies to all actions by governmental bodies, it does not apply to actions by private groups or corporations. According to the pending registrar agreement between ICM and ICANN, ICM would establish a not-for-profit dot-xxx governing body tasked with establishing rules with which all dot-xxx domains and the domains in any other space to which they they resolve must comply.
For its part, ICM Registry seems more determined than ever to obtain approval of the proposed sTLD. President and Chief Executive Officer Stuart Lawley earlier this week sent a memorandum to the ICANN board of directors asserting his company's compliance with the sponsorship criteria set forward by ICANN. In the memo, dated March 13, Lawley claimed ICM has gone "well beyond what was reasonably required in reference to its application."
The memo arose after ICANN board members, during a Feb. 12 meeting, raised "serious concerns" about an apparent lack of dot-xxx support among the group the sTLD is designed to serve. According to ICM, recent polling suggests only 20 percent of the so-called "sponsoring community" (adult entertainment providers) opposes dot-xxx, but ICANN board members have said they perceive a much larger and growing anti-dot-xxx sentiment among the adult industry and the public at large.
Among the public outcry is opinion from 33 "pro-decency" organizations, whose members feel the dot-xxx domain is "intended to promote legalization of obscenity." Their statements to ICANN warn that a porn-only domain likely will lead to a growth in the number of pornographic websites on the Internet, will not protect children or society from "the harmful effects of pornography," and will be used as an excuse not to enforce obscenity laws.
Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media—a national, interfaith organization established in 1962 "to combat obscenity and uphold decency standards in the media"—spoke for many in the pro-decency camp when he said he believes Lawley supports legalization of obscenity because "he is against any regulation of speech unless it's child pornography.
"I must confess that I am not trying to educate the porn community," Peters told AVNOnline.com. "They have a lot more money and contacts than I do. I struggled with the triple-X thing. At first I had mixed emotions about it."
However, in time, Peters and other strong conservative voices banded together to lead a significant opposition movement.
Although he is aware there is some irony in pornographers and religious conservatives sharing a viewpoint, Peters said he believes pro-decency groups and the adult industry oppose dot-xxx for different reasons.
"[The adult industry] oppose[s] it for the fear that it will become mandatory," he said. "You know, one of the ridiculous things about the [American way] is that people can come to the same conclusion for different reasons."
Regardless of opposition, ICM forges ahead in pursuit of its goal. The company set out to demonstrate support for the proposed sTLD by indicating 76,723 dot-xxx website names have been "pre-reserved" since June 1, 2005. In addition, ICM contends, 1,217 adult webmasters from more than 70 countries have registered on ICM's site saying they support dot-xxx and wish to register one or more names, and nearly 300 additional webmasters have requested information about dot-xxx registration from ICM since June 1, 2005—but the company consistently has declined to make any of its backup documentation public.
ICANN recently launched a public-participation website for its upcoming meeting in Lisbon. The site is accessible to all and will remain available for future meetings. According to ICANN, the site is designed to provide greater interaction between the governing body, its constituencies, and the wider Internet community, and it employs the latest online tools to that end.
The participation site will contain a single Web page for each meeting that takes place in Lisbon, and all relevant information for each meeting will be made accessible immediately, ICANN noted.
