A report today in an adult industry blog, talks about ICM Registry the applicant for the .xxx extension that at one time was approved by ICANN only to be later derailed the US Commerce Department.
ICM Registry, has appealed the whole matter to the International Centre for Dispute Resolution and a decision is due sometime this year.
If the dispute resolution panel rules for ICM Registry, the decision would be certain to cause pandemonium with the online adult industry.
“Whatever the arbitrators decide will be binding on ICANN,” said Stuart Lawley, head of ICM.
ICM Registry briefs submitted by Washington, D.C., law firm Crowell & Moring in late January contend that ICANN’s decision to nix .XXX were arbitrary.
ICM Registry is asking for the arbitration panel to rule in favor of its application to serve as .XXX registry operator because it met criteria set forth in a December 2000 request for proposal.
ICM Registry claims that ICANN acted inconsistently with its own articles of incorporation and bylaws.
“This discriminatory treatment was not justified by any substantial reasonable cause,” according to a brief on the merits of the case “There is nothing in the ICANN articles and bylaws that would allow ICANN to treat ICM differently because certain elements asserted that the ICM proposal was controversial.
“Moreover, the reasons that ICANN cited as the basis for its denial of ICM’s application were false and pretextual — a mere cover for ICANN’s bowing to undue political pressure.”
Many in the adult community worry that a .xxx extension would create a way for government to regulate adult content.
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I hope that .xxx IS approved; then I will know for sure which TLD to avoid, and Google and other search engines could curtail .xxx from being directed to schools and libraries. Parents could easily block .xxx from their computers. Get all the nastiness off the other TLDs.
I thoroughly dislike the porn industry and would to see it thoroughly relegated to its own creepy corner of the web, just like Nevada has regulated prostitution.
Those porn mongers who LOVE to invade non-porn forums with their automated scripts, spreading their nasty wares should be severely punished and fined. Forums should have the option of blocking any site that ends in .xxx, and anyone caught placing hard core porn on .com and other TLDs should have their sites shut down and domains confiscated.
Hard core porn demeans and objectifies women. In addition, porn encourages human trafficking–which is NOT limited to just Asia and Eastern Europe–and child porn.
Those of you guys who think porn is something to embrace as a business model, just think about your own daughters starring on these sites and in “adult” films.
Just remember, these exploited women are someone’s daughters.
Someday, they may be YOUR teen daughters.
Yeah, I say regulate the hell out of the “adult” industry.
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MS
Interesting to note your position, but realize that it was actually the anti-porn lobby including groups like the American Family Association, that went to US government complaining about the approval of the .xxx extension by ICANN, which made the US government stop the extension from going into effect.
It will just be a another extension which no one really takes seriously.
@MS …I thoroughly dislike people who believe that they have the right to dictate what consenting adults may or may not do…and would like to see them relegated to there own own creepy corner of the world…freedom-loving places like afganistan or hell!
Religion has caused more heart-ache and bloodshed (millions of lives lost) than porn ever has…I say regulate the hell out of the “religion” industry.
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Well, I’m not fond of organized religion, either, and fully agree that much bloodshed, in the name of religion, has been shed by those who buck the system.
😉
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Damn…trust me to take on the only non-religious anti-porn person on the web :).
I do truly believe that porn is a good thing. It is a barometer of a whole multitude of freedoms. A liberal attitude towards porn can also possibly be taken as a liberal attitude towards sex.
This has serious implications for society…
The teenage pregnancy rate in the Netherlands for instance is substantially lower than in the UK (which has some crazy obscenity laws) or the USA, which has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the developed world.
The Dutch also have a higher average age at first intercourse…despite readily available porn (I know having visited a number of times 🙂 ).
And in Scandinavia…
“In 1969 Denmark lifted all restrictions on pornography, and sex crimes declined. For example, between 1965 and 1982 sex crimes against children went from 30 per 100,000 to about 5 per 100,000. Similar evidence was found for rape rates.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1986869.stm ) [note:the anti-porn folk tend to dispute these stats.]
You cannot prevent consenting adults from doing what they want to do. You can make it illegal, but this simply drives the activity underground, where it is easy pickings for organized crime (as in the case of drugs or prostitution). Trying to ban something which cannot be banned simply ends up giving criminals more resources to do really bad things.