The fate of the proposed dot-xxx sponsored Top Level Domain remains unclear after the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ recent meeting in Wellington, New Zealand, but the Free Speech Coalition, a trade group representing the adult entertainment industry, is concerned that mischief is afoot.
“The [FSC] is concerned that provisions detrimental to the adult entertainment community are being considered for inclusion in the contract between ICM Registry and ICANN regarding a proposed [dot-xxx] Top Level Domain,” Communications Director Tom Hymes wrote in a press release dated April 7. “These provisions, if adopted, would be binding upon all [dot-xxx] domains and any website that shares an IP address with such a domain.”
The areas of concern for the FSC stem from a March 20 letter from John M. R. Kneuer, acting assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, to Sharil Tarmizi, chairman of the Government Advisory Committee of ICANN. In the letter, Kneuer asked Tarmizi and his committee to assist the DOC in bringing to the attention of ICANN certain “key commitments offered by ICM Registry to the GAC [that] are not reflected in the provisions of the proposed [dot-xxx] Registry Agreement.” Subsequently, the DOC’s concerns were incorporated in the GAC’s March 28 communiqué to ICANN about the activities of the committee during the Wellington conference.
Noting that “several members of the GAC are emphatically opposed from a public policy perspective to the introduction of a [dot-xxx] sTLD,” the communiqué requests “confirmation from the [ICANN] Board that any contract currently under negotiation between ICANN and ICM Registry would include enforceable provisions covering all of ICM Registry’s commitments….”
The GAC communiqué specifically mentions that ICM Registry should be required to “take appropriate measures to restrict access to illegal and offensive content, support the development of tools and programs to protect vulnerable members of the community, maintain accurate details of registrants and assist law enforcement agencies to identify and contact the owners of particular websites if need be, and act to ensure the protection of intellectual property and trademark rights, personal names, country names, names of historical, cultural, and religious significance, and names of geographic identifiers drawing on best practices in the development of registration and eligibility rules.”
As the FSC points out, there are no specifics as to how or by whom “illegal or offensive content” is to be defined, or in what way the age requirement for actors will differ from those imposed by 2257. It is also unclear what specific personal, country, cultural, historic or religious names will be restricted for use by adult sites, or whether the “additional” WHOIS processes will be more stringent than those required for other sTLDs.
“These few examples are indicative of the vagueness contained in the new language under consideration,” says Hymes, who represented the FSC at the Wellington meeting, where he says his organization and the Eros Association of Australia had “productive discussions” with ICANN Board members and staff, and members of the GAC. “Several GAC members were receptive to our points, and we were pleased to note that some of those points were reflected in the final communiqué issued by GAC at the conclusion of the ICANN meeting.”
Nevertheless, Hymes says the FSC remains opposed to dot-xxx, not least because it considers the provisions proposed by the GAC and the DOC troubling.
“The Free Speech Coalition has long opposed the establishment of a dot-xxx Top Level Domain because of its potential to serve as an easy censorship tool,” Hymes says. “The current contract talks, together with the Baucus-Pryor bill, show that FSC's concerns were well-founded all along. ICM Registry’s hope to establish and operate a voluntary dot-xxx TLD free from government interference appears to be a dangerous pipe dream, now more than ever before.”
The Baucus-Pryor bill seeks to mandate a dot-xxx space in which all adult Internet content produced in the U.S. would be located.
ICM Registry Chairman and President Stuart Lawley denies any of the provisions are being considered for inclusion in the agreement between his company and ICANN.
“It appears that the FSC is either misinformed or confused,” Lawley wrote in an email to AVN Online. “First, ICM has proposed an entirely voluntary top-level domain for responsible adult webmasters, and [is] committed to maintaining its voluntary, self-regulatory character. Our views on the legislation recently introduced in the Senate [by Democrats Max Baucus of Montana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas] reflect this, and have been posted on the ICM website for some time. Second, the communication referenced by FSC is the communiqué from the ICANN [GAC] to the ICANN Board. It does not reflect ICM/ICANN agreements. ICM’s commitments are contained in publicly posted documents and are quite straightforward.”
With respect to the FSC’s most recent concerns, Lawley says, “Registrants in any TLD are required to comply with law. The determination about what content is illegal is made by the legislature and courts in the country in which you operate—not ICM. ICM has publicly stated that child pornography will not be tolerated on the TLD. Sites that appear or are alleged to contain child pornography will be referred to and handled by ASACP, exactly the same as any other suspected case in .com. U.S. law already obligates adult content producers to collect and maintain documentation demonstrating that the actor is an adult. There will be nothing in the ICM contract on this subject.”
“ICANN currently obligates all registrars to collect and maintain accurate and up-to-date
WHOIS data,” Lawley continues. “ICANN currently obligates all registry operators, including the registry operator for dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org - to enforce this obligation and to ensure that the data is publicly available. In addition, all sTLD registry operators authenticate registrants to ensure that they are members of the community—in this case, members of the adult entertainment community. ICM will provide access to that information to as required by ICANN rules and applicable law.
“ICM is going to comply with the WIPO 2 rules on intellectual property, which was a condition of the application and all new TLDs are to comply with,” he concludes.
The FSC continues a letter-writing campaign it initiated in an attempt to halt the approval of dot-xxx in any form.
