[At-Large] Protest at tomorrow's ICANN meeting

[Neil Schwartzman]

On 2011-03-17, at 2:15 PM, Carlton Samuels wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:
> 
>> Nearly every TLD represents an intent to categorize - yet it is only
>> .xxx that is being singled out and characterized as a ghetto or placed
>> for forced buying.
>> 
> 
> It is said consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.  But I've often
> wondered the kind of intellectual dishonesty which allows some truly decent
> people to not accept this as past the point of being a 'notion'!
> 
> Let 'em have their ghetto!!!

The .xxx proposal strikes me as nothing more than a cash-grab to milk money out of the adult industry, one playing on the smirky reactions most people have to porn. At a previous job, I had several clients who were in the adult industry and I can say unreservedly that if more marketers approached their craft with the professionalism, and respect to industry practices those people do, I would have quickly been out of a job. But that is an aside.

What is wrong with this proposed ghetto is a) that no purchasers of the product will use it and b) to protect their brand integrity and copyright every porn site on the planet will presumably have to fork over hard-won dollars to make sure somebody doesn't usurp their fame and fortune. Yes, I know, this is counterintuitive to my argument that no end-user will use .xxx, but for safety's sake, adult site owenrs will purchase it.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, I own welikeballs.com (which I happen to), and I ran an adult site (which I don't happen to do). Would I then be, if not obligated, fairly encouraged from a business point of view to protect my interests by buying, for whatever cost it is, welikeballs.xxx ? You bet. For no other reason than I want to protect it from the other guys over at wedontlikeballs.com who might grab it, and have their way with my good name.

As to ghettos, as I understand them, they are generally set up by forcibly pushing people, in one way or another, into them. Unless the rest of the registrar world refuses to sell adult sites a .com/.net et all, this won't be a ghetto so much as a gated community, with no-one actually living in the over-priced homes.

I agree with Karl on one point. Protect kids from violence? yes, absolutely. Far more of an issue, in my opinion.

--
Neil Schwartzman
Executive Director
CAUCE
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, North America Inc.

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