Complete analysis of the proposed .xxx TLD

["Paul Zapf" <paul.zapf@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Mister Cerf,



I am writing regarding ICM Registry's .xxx TLD application that I gather is
due to be discussed at one of the upcoming ICANN directors meetings. It will
be a long letter but if you would find the time to read it all, I would most
certainly appreciate it.

First of all, I would like to identify myself as an adult webmaster. Please
note that although I do not formally represent the adult webmaster community
(no one does, regardless of whatever claims are made), I feel I represent
the point of view that is shared by the majority of said community. My
letter contains a complete analysis of various crucial aspects of the
proposed new extension - written from the perspective of, amongst others,
the online adult industry.

The previous .xxx domain name agreement has been voted down 9:5 by the ICANN
board on 10th May, 2006, which left the impression with many people – not
only in our industry, that the proposal had officially been rejected. I
remember ICM Registry unofficially demanding an ICANN vote at your May
2006 meeting because they were pursuing a clarification of whether ICANN
will finally accept the .xxx domain extension or not.  After the voting,
which turned against .xxx, I remember ICANN President and CEO Mr Paul Twomey
stating that "the .xxx domain could be revived if a proposal were submitted
to ICANN for its establishment under its regime for registering
generictop-level-domains. It wouldn't have to pass criteria for
sponsored domains."
(citation comes from the article that could previously have been found at
this address few months ago, unfortunately it appears the page has moved:
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,19102360%5E15342%5E%5Enbv%5E15306-15318,00.html<http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,19102360^15342^^nbv^15306-15318,00.html>
)

With the above statements in mind, the natural conclusion for many observers
was that you hereby officially rejected the sponsored .xxx TLD application.

However, shortly after that, ICM Registry started the .xxx domain name
pre-registration (sic!) and also submitted a reconsideration request to
ICANN, especially emphasizing and questioning the role of the Department of
Commerce in the process of rejecting their application.

I am not in a position to judge and comment on the involvement and influence
of the Department of Commerce on the ICANN organisation, but the truth is
that apart from the US Department of Commerce, several members of the
international community also voiced (for example, through GAC) their doubts
about and opposition towards the voluntary .xxx domain name idea. The
sentiment was shared by an abundance of conservative and Christian groups
such as Focus on Family or Family Research Council. These organisations
were very concerned about this proposal - and in fact they are still
strongly voiced against today, regardless of the minor changes that have
been made in the proposed .xxx registry contract since May 2006.

Furthermore, the adult industry has been and still is strongly opposed to
the idea of creating a new .xxx extension. I realise that for several
reasons it may not be the easiest task for ICANN to determine the true
stance of the majority of the adult industry so I'd like to present these
facts in a convenient and convincing way below.



ICM Registry claims to have adult industry support. In greater detail, ICM
Registry particularly makes the claims mentioned below:

1. ICM Registry has received an enormous response after they started the
pre-registration process of the .xxx domain

2. The creation of the new .xxx is broadly and deeply supported by the
online adult entertainment industry



To comment on the first argument:

I don't know the number of .xxx pre-registrations, but I'd like to give ICM
the benefit of the doubt in this particular case. In other words, I believe
they have in fact received many pre-registration requests for  .xxx domains.
However, from a logical point of view, that does not mean in any way that
the adult entertainment industry supports .xxx.

I'm almost certain that the overwhelming majority of these pre-registrations
came from



- Domain name investors or speculators. It's no secret that the domain name
business is booming right now, allowing many people to buy/register domain
names relatively cheap and then reselling them for huge profits. The
professional individuals/companies earning their money with such deals, do
not care about .xxx in particular, neither do they associate themselves
with the adult entertainment industry. Those "domain investors" have been
following the several media reports about the .xxx TLD issue and they
decided to take their chances and pre-register several potentially
very profitable .xxx domains, hoping that they could get lucky and actually
be able to get those domain names, should .xxx be in fact approved by ICANN
one day.

- Selected individuals from the online adult entertainment industry, who -
being aware that almost no one in this industry wants the .xxx domains -
have seen a chance for themselves to pre-register the best names hoping that
no one else does it and then, if .xxx gets established, they will have
assets worth tens of thousands of dollars. In other words, they have put
their individual (perceived) short term interests above the interest of the
community they are working in. I can't directly blame them for that, but I
would like to point out that such people do not intend to switch their
operations from their current ".coms" and ".nets" to .xxx - they merely hope
to make some easy money through reselling domain names, should .xxx be
implemented.

- Companies looking to protect their trademarks and existing brands.
Although such companies hope that ICANN will not approve the .xxx domain
name, they decided to take a pro-active approach and pre-register the .xxx
equivalents of their current brands "just in case", so that:

* no one else does it (e.g. cybersquatters or their competition don't steal
their brand names)

* should .xxx be implemented and in fact made mandatory in the future, they
would be able to use them (special note: ICM Registry claims that it's not
their intention to make .xxx a mandatory TLD for adult content, but
nevertheless such a situation would be in their best interest, since the ICM
proposal is a solely financially motivated one as I will try to prove
further)



Below I'd like to briefly discuss the argument that "several adult
entertainment companies are supporting the .xxx domain name idea" .

To be fair toward ICM, some adult entertainment companies originally showed
their support for the creation of the .xxx extension. The public ICANN
comments forum from almost 3 years ago contains a few messages of people
from the adult industry supporting .xxx.

However, one has to take into consideration that some of these individuals
confusingly voiced their personal opinion while speaking on behalf of the
organisation they stand for. An example is Mr Greg Dumas, who suggested that
the Free Speech Coalition (FSC) are in favour of .xxx, which has never been
the case. In fact, FSC later officially clarified that Mr Dumas was
not allowed to speak on their behalf at that point. A few individuals also
supported the .xxx idea originally but changed their position through the
years.

As of today, the adult webmaster community does not have a list of companies
publicly supporting .xxx.

That's right, no members of the adult webmaster community know any big adult
entertainment companies who supposedly support .xxx.

Not a single company publicly admitted to supporting .xxx in past year. ICM
Registry refuses to disclose to the sponsored community any names of
companies who support ICM's efforts to establish a .xxx domain.

That has recently given rise to major concerns among the adult webmaster
community suggesting that some companies made "behind the scenes" deals with
ICM for direct or indirect monetary gains.

Although no evidence for the above theory can be presented (at least I do
not have access to such "insider details") considering what I said earlier -
namely that no public list of companies openly supporting .xxx is available
- such an assumption has its merits.

To clarify - the obvious reason why no company has publicly admitted to
supporting the .xxx idea is that the proposed .xxx TLD is widely recognised
as something that would have negative impact on the adult industry,
therefore a company publicly supporting .xxx could lose a share of
their business if the sponsored community was made aware of it.

In other words I can't deny or exclude that some influential members of the
adult industry community could be indeed in favour of the voluntary .xxx TLD
(probably just for their direct short term profits - please do not take it
as an official accusation though)  however the overwhelming majority of
webmasters do not support .xxx - and I'd like to emphasize, that not only we
are not in favour of .xxx, we view that as a significant threat to our
businesses. For the abovementioned reasons it is obvious that ICM Registry
has no right to claim to have wide adult industry support - if ICM had such
support indeed, they would be happy to officially present the names of those
who support them. Please note that a few paragraphs earlier I also explained
how the "enormous number" of pre-registrations for the .xxx domain name, can
also not be interpreted as any kind of support towards .xxx from adult
webmasters.

I sincerely hope that my above detailed explanations will allow the ICANN
board of directors to have an in-depth understanding of certain issues,
which - although quite obvious to us - webmasters - may not have been as
obvious to ICANN till this point.



             I feel a short comment on an upcoming adult entertainment
industry trade show would be in place as well. The "Xbiz" conference will be
held Feb. 7-8, 2007 and features an agenda item "The proposed .XXX TLD: A
Dialogue with ICM Registry". Should the ICANN board not have been made
already aware of the true stance of the online adult entertainment industry
towards the proposed TLD, I'd imagine that such an event could be viewed by
the ICANN board as evidence that the adult industry does indeed support the
proposed .xxx TLD. However, please bear in mind that the presence of this
item on their agenda by no means constitutes an endorsement of this issue by
the adult webmaster community. Furthermore, I predict a vocal opposition
towards the ICM registry's proposal to be heard at the seminar.

Please refer to the links below for recent .xxx TLD related opinions of key
industry individuals who are preparing this seminar.



ICANN public forum post by Mr Brandon Shalton, the .xxx TLD panel moderator
- http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-icm-agreement/msg00001.html

ICANN public forum post by Mr Stephen Yagielowicz, Xbiz writer, leading
adult industry journalist -
http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-icm-agreement/msg00555.html

ICANN public forum post by Mr Tom Hymes, formerly the Director of the Free
Speech Coalition, now part of the Xbiz team -
http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-icm-agreement/msg00003.html



I decided to put special emphasis on it, to make certain that any
misunderstandings regarding the issues described above, can be avoided from
now on.

For instance, in the past it came to my attention that the new ICANN board
member, Mr Kieren McCarthy, formulated such opinion regarding the adult
industry stance towards .xxx.

"As for the porn industry. The porn industry was doing what it always does
in these situations - watch carefully and turn with the tide. In fact, ICM
Registry had a lot of people - perhaps it's fair to say, most people in the
adult industry agreeing with .xxx. It was only at the very end when the case
started turning against .xxx because of US lobby pressure that Flynt decided
to come down against it." (please refer to this link for Mr McCarthy's
comments - http://www.circleid.com/posts/another_view_icann_doc_agreement/ .
On a side note, Mr McCarthy also claims on that page that Stuart Lawley from
ICM Registry "tends to give straightforward answers to questions".
Unfortunately, as I explained above, Mr Lawley does not meet that
description. If he would in fact give straightforward answers to questions,
he'd be willing to share the list of adult companies who support .xxx)

With all respect and sympathy for Mr McCarthy's accomplishments and his
enthusiasm, considering all the facts I mentioned, I have to state that such
opinions are not only grossly misguided, but also hurting the adult
industry.



After having established that the adult industry does not want the .xxx
domain, I will now present the main reasons against the .xxx domain from our
point of view.



- First of all, it forms an additional expense. As articulated before,
several companies would register their .xxx domain name, with no intentions
of ever using them. When a medium-sized adult entertainment company owns,
say, 30 domain names, the yearly cost to maintain their .xxx equivalents
would be about $2100 (assuming the cost of an .xxx domain name would be
about $70, as reported). This may not sound much to an outside observer who
associates the adult industry with easy money and frivolous spending, but
it's still an significant cost, and most importantly, a cost not serving any
purpose whatsoever, apart from filling ICM Registry's pockets.* *

- There could be several legal battles among companies feeling that they
have a right to own a certain .xxx domain. For example, it occurs quite
often that several adult domain names with different extensions have
different owners. I'm referring to popular adult keyword combinations, which
have different owners in the .com, .net, .info, .fr or .co.uk extension. It
is a quite likely scenario that such companies would have heavy legal
disputes among themselves for their .xxx equivalent and ICM would be put in
a difficult position to arbitrate (ICM claims that they have prepared proper
procedures for such cases though - but how effective such procedures would
be - we can only guess at this point).

- Now a careful reader of my letter will ask himself "why would there be
legal battles for the .xxx domain names if the demand for them would be
minimal?" This leads us to another reason why the adult industry is against
.xxx - we feel it could be used as a tool of censorship. If a .xxx extension
gets created, we are almost certain that there will be legislators trying to
force all adult content on the internet into the ".xxx ghetto". We do
understand that such proposed bills could perhaps be ruled as
unconstitutional. We are aware that even if such regulations were in fact
implemented in the US, that would still not cover the rest of the world, at
least not until some global co-operation on a high level, involving ICANN,
would make it possible. But we know that such proposed restrictions could
create lots of attention and would require lots of legal disputes, and we
feel that no one's energy would be spent efficiently on such battles. Yes,
we are aware of a document presented by ICM Registry, claiming that they do
not only have no intentions of lobbying for a mandatory .xxx domain, they
feel that such a regulation would be impossible and they have set aside a
special budget that would allow them to fight such regulations if they were
indeed proposed. However, as I hopefully have presented already, the
overwhelming majority of the adult industry lacks trust in ICM. Since ICM's
.xxx TLD proposal is a completely money-driven idea, we should be able to
deduct that if .xxx was indeed made a mandatory extension for displaying
adult content (whether only in the US or globally), this would very
significantly increase ICM's profits. With that in mind, we don't want the
voluntary .xxx domain - we would not use it as a main TLD for our websites,
we would feel threatened by its existence and - as I will try to present
now, the .xxx domain name wouldn't accomplish ICM's apparent goals anyway
(other than their financial goals).

After having established that the adult industry not only does not support
.xxx, but is essentially strongly opposed to it, let us take a closer look
at the goals that ICM has for the .xxx domain.

ICM claims to have certain concrete objectives which they feel that the
.xxx TLD will accomplish.

On the homepage of ICM we can read the following:



"What Are the Benefits of the .xxx TLD

- For willing adult consumers of adult entertainment, the Best Business
Practices incorporated into the .xxx registration agreement will bring a
greater degree of confidence and certainty to their online experience"



Regarding customers' confidence - I do not feel this is an issue of ICM. As
far as I know, ICM Registry has no current links to the adult industry
(other than Mr Jason Hendeles being for some reason an owner of one adult
"dot com" domain name, which is not in use, to be fair)

Furthermore, customers already trust many adult websites and are already
accustomed to buying adult entertainment on .com domains. If they weren't,
the online adult entertainment industry wouldn't gross billions per year.
Consequently an attempt by ICM to get even more confidence from web users by
offering them a voluntary .xxx TLD should not be treated as a serious
attempt to offer any kind of added value neither to web users nor to website
owners (especially if you consider that most of the "best business
practices" that can be found on ICM's homepage are already adhered by the
serious adult website operators).



-"For adult entertainment providers, identifying themselves as compliant
with a comprehensive set of Best Business Practices is expected to provide
more predictable revenue streams, greater customer retention and fewer
complaints as regulators and others will see adult entertainment providers
take a proactive and responsible approach to their web presence"



I feel like this argument is similar to the first one. It is ironic that the
ICM Registry pretends to be adding a certain new level of security,
confidence or revenue increasing abilities to the adult entertainment
industry by offering us the .xxx TLD, ignoring the fact that the
overwhelming majority of the adult industry does not want the .xxx TLD. It
can be deducted that the adult industry does not perceive the abovementioned
"advantages" of having an .xxx TLD as real or significant.



-"In addition, the introduction of .xxx creates a credible, self-regulated
forum for all stakeholders to discuss and actively respond to concerns about
online adult entertainment."



This arguments is flawed for two main reason.

First, such self-regulating forums for the adult entertainment industry do
exist already. Bodies regulating certain vital aspects of the online adult
entertainment scene are for example the Free Speech Coalition and ASACP (on
a side note - please note that although ASACP originally supported the .xxx
TLD idea in 2004, they have already withdrawn their support. Regarding the
FSC - the issue is as clear as it can be - the FSC never supported the .xxx
TLD and it voices their opposition each time such opportunity exists). Also,
the occasional adult trade shows as well as heavily populated
webmaster message boards are a good place for discussions about
self-regulation and various other industry-related topics.

Second, since the .xxx TLD has marginal adult industry support (if any) -
such forum to "discuss concerns about online adult entertainment" would have
no real impact on any industry issues anyway.



- And finally, "for individuals or families wishing to avoid adult content,
the machine - readable labels will allow easy and reliable filtering."



This is a strong argument and I feel it deserves proper attention.

Basically this argument is not connected with the adult industry's
direct interests anymore, it is related to a safe web surfing experience of
users who do not wish to see adult related websites.

Although I am a member of the adult industry, I can share this sentiment -
people who do not wish to see adult related websites, should not stumble
upon them accidentally.



However, we have to keep in mind that there are already several filtering
mechanisms available:

- browser-based filtering methods  - e.g. Microsoft's Internet Explorer
contains such useful feature

- safe web surfing programs like NetNanny

- and - especially - voluntary labelling systems such as ICRA or
RTAlabel.org which are used already by many responsible adult website
operators.



Considering that ICM's proposed .xxx TLD would be (and assuming it would
remain) voluntary, it's easy to see that it would not offer any kind of
solution or protection that isn't already freely available.

The illustrative situation in which a minor accidentally stumbles upon adult
content while searching the internet for information relevant to his/her
homework, would not be solved by introducing the .xxx TLD.



Attempts to make the web a more children-safe place should focus on

- eliminating e-mail spam (proper laws do already exist but they are not
world-wide, neither are they easy to enforce)

- eliminating search engine spam (since the search engine algorithms are not
perfect - quite often web users who search for something completely
different, suddenly find themselves on porn sites. Special note at this
point - obviously the webmasters who engage in such deceiving behaviour, are
not part of the responsible adult webmaster community, neither do they
represent the majority of us - but unfortunately they do give us a bad name)

- banning the use of misleading domain names (proper laws are already in
place, they were designated especially for the most famous cybersquatter Mr
John Zuccarini who was redirecting visitors from misspelled children related
domains - to porn sites).



Yet again, none of the abovementioned problems will be solved by the .xxx
TLD (neither is ICANN the appropriate organisation to deal with such
issues). In worst individual cases the .xxx TLD could even make the matter
worse.

Please refer to the following post from the ICANN forum (
http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-icm-agreement/msg00466.html)



"As a parent I support the XXX concept. It will provide much needed
protection for my children."


Such opinions show the unfortunate lack of understanding of the .xxx issue
and they even put certain families at risk of a false sense of security -
less web-savvy parents could be under the impression that by blocking the
.xxx domains on their computers, they are eliminating the risk of adult
content exposure of their children.


   In other words, the .xxx could theoretically only serve its
implied purpose if it was a mandatory domain - that means all website
operators worldwide who display adult content would be forced to use the
.xxx TLD.

But that would not only be unconstitutional in many countries, it would be
also totally unenforceable, not to mention it would create a ton of
questions of how to define an adult website – should only subscription-based
porn sites be restricted to such .xxx TLD , or would the resctiction also
apply to non-nude erotic sites, or for instance blogs discussing various
issues related to sexuality?

Another thing would be - why restrict only adult content to a separate TLD?
What about websites showing violent videos, potentially harmful to minors,
or sites spreading racial hate?

Personally I feel that the internet is based on values such as variety or
freedom of speech which are totally opposed to any kind of censorship
attempts.



   In summary, there are no advantages of having the .xxx TLD. The .xxx TLD
would not serve anyone, it would only create potential problems. I tend to
believe that no responsible person who has had the chance to gather enough
information regarding the proposed domain, could point out any real
advantages of it. In other words, although the proposed .xxx TLD may
sound worthy of support to a random observer,  a more in-depth look into
these arguments leads us to the conclusion that they have no real weight
behind them.



   I believe I have brought up all the important points already when it
comes to the key issue whether the .xxx TLD deserves anyone's support or
not. Thank you very much for taking the time to read my letter. Although I
in no way expect my letter to play a deciding role in the "dot xxx" debate,
I would very much appreciate it if the ICANN board members gave proper
attention to the facts and arguments presented in it. At the end I would
also like to apologise for not commenting on the specifics on the new
proposed ICM Registry agreement. Yet as I clearly illustrated, I do not
think discussing the revisions in the current contract compared to the
previous one, would serve any purpose, because looking from a broader
perspective the whole .xxx idea is flawed and based on false assumptions and
premises.





Kind regards,







Paul Zapf


PS I would very appreciate if you could confirm the receipt of this letter.
If you would decide that it's worth sharing my letter with other ICANN board
members as well, please feel free to do it, I would in fact appreciate it. I
just submitted my message to the public comments forum as well.