During its meeting today, the Board of Directors of the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) voted not to endorse the creation of a new top level Internet domain (TLD) reserved for sexually-oriented content, dubbed ".xxx".
The Board's action was prompted by a request approximately three months ago from Jason Hendeles of ICM Registry, a Canadian company which seeks to create the new TLD and to govern its application.
Since Hendeles' presentation to the Board, the concept has been a hot topic of discussion in all areas of the adult industry, from Webmasters to cabaret owners to video producers, and several industry veterans have weighed in both in support and against the concept.
Adult video magnates LFP, Inc., Vivid and Private Media Group have all sent letters of support to Hendeles, as have nearly a dozen Internet companies.
Meanwhile, past FSC president Lenny Friedlander and former FSC Board treasurer Al Bloom e-mailed Board members and others strongly advising against the position.
The matter was also discussed at a general meeting of the Coalition in late August, where Hendeles and attorneys Greg Piccionelli and Lawrence Walters presented their arguments for the domain, while attorney J.D. Obenberger spoke against it.
ICM Registry's Jason Hendeles, whose company is preparing an application for the .xxx domain to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was disappointed but not discouraged, telling AVN.com he believes the FSC "didn't really have enough time to consider what's going on here.
"But I think, in general, that they don't get it," Hendeles continued. "They don't really understand what we're doing. We'd been introduced to them by a mix of Internet players, but they weren't really our prime candidates to be involved with the application, because they're generally not an organization that represents the Internet…Our application is put forward to represent adult Webmasters who understand what we're doing and how important it is."
Hendeles said the .xxx application wouldn’t be sent to ICANN until the Internet governing body releases its next request for proposals within the next few weeks. But the application itself isn't finalized yet, either. "Until we have the (request for proposals), we don't know what the complete application will look like or what the structure is yet."
But he said the .xxx proposal has resounded with a majority of adult Internet companies to whom ICM has reached out. "The adult industry is really having a tough time right now," he said. "There are all these different companies focused on all these different things, like obscenity issues and patent issues, and there's also a lot of apathy in the industry. And I think what our application has been successful at doing is pulling together, really, a majority of the volume of Internet companies in the adult industry. Our application was being prepared long before we spoke to the FSC. And it will be submitted regardless. In the end, our constituency is the adult Internet which supports it."
In refusing Hendeles' offer of a seat on the .xxx governing board, as well as cash incentives for each URL registered under the TLD, in exchange for FSC's support of the .xxx concept, the Board voted separately not to send a letter of endorsement of the .xxx concept irrespective of who was proposing it. The Board also said that it would release a formal position paper on the issue in the very near future.
