ICANN approves .XXX red-light district for the Internet

Sun Mar 27 03:05:35 UTC 2011

The determining question was did the application satisfy the 2004 
criteria?

The .cat application was the best application in the 2004 round, 
according to the evaluators, and the .xxx application was the next 
ranked application.

So the point in the 2004 cycle where .xxx could have been prevented, 
assuming for the sake of argument that one held that as a goal, was in 
the admission criteria for the 2004 round. Had that criteria been 
extended by an additional requirement such as the sponsor's mission 
must have been to provide a name space for a linguistic or cultural 
purpose, the .xxx application, however technically competent, would 
have failed under the 2004 admissions criteria.

Each time the issue has been before the Board, I've spoken to the 
issue -- the application met the stated criteria. There are no valid 
unstated criteria.

A related problem was the subject of a recent blog post, 
http://crookedtimber.org/2011/03/19/the-hollowing-out-of-icann-must-be-stopped/

There are very few at ICANN now who were involved in the 2004 round, 
let alone the 2000 round, and so little in the way of corporate memory 
exists.

Eric

On 3/26/11 10:30 PM, Stefan Fouant wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Eric Brunner-Williams [mailto:brunner at nic-naa.net]
>> Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2011 7:24 PM
>>
>> ICM retained competent counsel for the ICANN issue advocacy. I expect
>> Stuart will retain competent counsel for the follow-on issues.
>
> Yes, it is certain that Stuart will retain competent counsel for all
> follow-on issues, I mean, the guy bragged to Bloomberg that ICM is set to
> make at least $200 million a year through these registrations (believe me,
> if I were in his position, I'd have the best lawyers money could buy).  That
> doesn't even touch the $3-4 Billion in porn transactions ICM is hoping to
> process and get a cut of once they launch their payment processing service.
>
> What changed ICANN's mind between the ruling in 2007 and the ruling in 2010?
> ICM brings in an independent arbitrator and ICANN agrees to go along with
> the findings, yet for the life of me I can't find any majority who believe
> this was necessary.  The ACLU objects because of censorship issues.  Family
> and religious groups oppose because they believe .xxx legitimizes porn.
> Heck, even the porn industry itself opposes because it will increase
> operating costs and open the industry to more regulation.
>
> I can't seem to find anyone that would benefit from this, with the exception
> of Stuart and ICM's shareholders.
>
> Stefan Fouant
>
>
>
>