Opposition to .XXX TLD Proposal
February 19, 2007 ICANN Board of Directors 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330 Marina del Rey, CA 90292 To Whom It May Concern: I am a member of the "online adult entertainment industry" which you have discussed with regard to ICM Registry's .XXX sTLD Proposal during your recent meeting on February 12, 2007. I am writing this letter to state my emphatic opposition to this proposal in any form. I perceive this proposal as being the catalyst which will open the door to regulation of the Online Adult Industry by the government of the United States of America, and the majority of the colleagues I have discussed this with feel the same way. I recently attended the Xbiz Conference in Los Angeles, California, and participated in the Discussion Forum regarding this proposal. During the Q&A phase of that discussion panel, many questions were directed to Mr. Stuart Lawley of ICM Registry by members of the Adult Industry regarding exactly how this proposal would benefit our industry. Mr. Lawley could not, or would not, answer many of these questions to our satisfaction, and was often vague or evasive in his responses to us. Additionally, Mr. Lawley was very evasive with regard to how the portion of the proposed fees would be used to help in the fight to protect minors from being able to access adult materials online. Just for the record, this event was attended by many members of the Adult Industry, despite what was indicated during your meeting by Mr. John Jeffrey that it was "sparsely attended", and I believe it was even videotaped for future reference. A copy of this videotape should be available to you from either XBiz or their parent company, Adnet Media, for your review. I would like to point out to the Members of the Board, that there are currently systems in place to do just that...protect against unlawful access by minors to adult oriented materials while online. There are "content labels" currently available from two (2) organizations (RTA.org, and ICRA.org) which, when used properly by responsible members of the Adult Community, will aid to block access to "objectionable" material. Every responsible member of the community that I know already has these labels in place. However, I would also like to point out to the Board that it is also the parents responsibility to properly set up their own internet accounts to block this access as well, and that making ICM responsible for "policing" our industry for compliance in this area is more of a legal/political function, rather than one that should be the responsibility of an organization who is in the business of profiting off of selling domain registrations. Mr. Lawley has publicly stated that he is not a member of the Adult Industry, never has been, and never will be. I submit that by this statement alone, and as discussed by Ms. Rita Rodin during your meeting, that ICM Registry and Stuart Lawley are unqualified to decide what is in the "best interests" of the Online Adult Community, since they are not representative members of this community. I therefore strongly urge you to reject this proposal in it's entirety.
Todd Erbach Adult Industry Webmaster |