Comments overwhelmingly opposed to .xxx. But that doesn’t answer the question about what ICANN should do.
I decided to check in on the .XXX comment period today to see how the comments were coming in. This is what I saw:
Thanks to an effort by Focus on the Family, there are over 13 pages of comment titles for the current comment period. Many of them are form submissions with the same title and same content.
So how much should these comments from “MITTENS1120” and “eagleswings07” weigh in on ICANN’s decision on granting ICM registry .xxx? Most of the comments just say porn is bad, and don’t actually answer the question ICANN posed about its options going forward. Few of them add value.
The truth is, few people from both the general public and the adult entertainment industry are in favor of .xxx. Most of the loud people are against it.
But the issue here isn’t about porn any more. It’s about a mistake that ICANN made. You can argue if the mistake was “approving” .xxx to begin with or withdrawing that approval later, but one of these decisions was wrong.
What if ICANN doesn’t let ICM Registry have .xxx now? The .xxx domain will surely be released in the new TLD round by someone. And ICANN will have a lawsuit to contend with.
Tomn Hymes says
Sorry to break this to you, but for most of us working in adult entertainment, the issue remains this fraudulent attempt to extort money from us without any good reason to do so other than to line the pockets of ICM Registry.
That it matters so little to you that “few people from both the general public and the adult entertainment industry are in favor of .xxx” says more about you than ICANN’s process.
ICANN made a mistake, alright. They didn’t have a proper process in play to assess the legitimacy of claims made by sTLD applicants. Still, the original evaluators did find problems with ICM’s sponsorship claims, and said so. ICANN could have killed it there, but instead decided to generously allow ICM time to support its claims. That ICANN is now being faulted because ICM has never been able to successfully do that is absurd.
Yes, .XXX will probably one day exist, but hopefully it will exist as a gTLD and not as an sTLD power grab. But ICM Registry doesn’t want a gTLD. They want the policy setting power that comes with the sTLD.
Now what does that tell you about their intentions with respect to this industry? Everything anyone needs to know to vote no.