I am in the adult entertainment industry and I oppose .XXX and am a webmaster
Hi, I want to email to express my concern. I am a webmaster in the adult industry and run over 20 important sites, and I oppose xxx due to many reasons, which include Mr. Lawley and his company stand to make millions from this deal—at the expense of the adult entertainment industry. .XXX is a very bad idea because: • It “ghettoizes” the industry, making adult entertainment an easy target for anti-industry extremists and government intrusion. • It will add, unnecessarily, to the cost of doing business. At $60 per URL per year, the cost to a member could reach tens of thousands of dollars annually. Many in the adult entertainment industry will purchase and park addresses, realizing no benefit to this added expense. Finally, there will be countless battles for names, and the resulting arbitration will be costly. • If a .XXX domain becomes available, it is likely that the United States and other countries will try to make it mandatory and subject to trans-Internet filtering that could effectively eliminate much of the adult content currently available on the Web. • The .XXX option could enable the industry’s enemies to convert even a voluntary .XXX domain use into an effectively mandatory requirement by pressuring private parties, such as credit card processors, to require .XXX use and compliance. In this way, ICM through unchecked rule-making could “back door” all the governmental regulations that we have beaten back. If that happens the industry would not have its most potent weapon, the First Amendment to challenge ICM because ICM is not a governmental entity. • The ambiguity with which ICM plans to establish its governing board is of grave concern as there exists strong potential for censorship, which is clearly not in the best interest of the industry or for ICANN. At ICANN’s last meeting, a number of board members expressed concern that .XXX did not the have support of the adult entertainment industry, this after public input submitted prior to that meeting and word of a contentious panel discussion which included Lawley at an XBIZ conference. Previously, the board relied solely on Lawley’s assurance that he had the industry’s support.
Sincerely, a concerned webmaster |