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

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 17 March 2011 11:43, Neil Schwartzman <neil at cauce.org> wrote:


> 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.
>

And the adult industry, as the FSC has already indicated, has the option to
avoid .xxx -- either individually or collectively (ie, boycott). I fully
support this option. If .xxx has no value (let alone if it is actively
disliked) then the industry is within its rights to avoid .xxx.

There is the claim that there are thousands of pre-registered would-be .xxx
domains, and the counter argument that these have been mainly reserved by
speculators and defensive registrations. If the industry wants to kill .xxx
then it need do nothing more than avoid this TLD.

Central to the fear of .xxx is the belief that the industry will be forced
by law to use it and subsequently be more easily bloockable as a group. I
have no reason to believe that such a ghetto fear is justified, or that such
a regulation would be easily worked around. Anti-infringement rules would
allow existing adult brands to protect their names without needing to make
defensive registrations.



> What is wrong with this proposed ghetto is a) that no purchasers of the
> product will use it
>

Why does that make the application wrong (let alone suitable for rejection)?
Approval of a TLD is not a license for riches; just ask the operators of
.aero, .pro or .mobi

I see no reason to believe that .xxx is an assumed commercial success. If
demand doesn't exist -- if the industry indeed does not want it, then it
will fail. Then the industry gets what it wants -- a failed TLD -- without
putting ICANN in the position of making content-related TLD judgments.



> 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.


Don't agree. If you have a legitimate use of the brand, you can issue a UDRP
claim and get  any future .xxx implementation removed without having to pay
to get it yourself.



> 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.
>

The entire registrar world refusing to legally sell adult sites into .com
would (and should) surely run afoul of anti-trust.


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

I vehemently object to governments or agencies telling me how to protect my
children -- let alone trying to protect them in my stead -- so long as I am
not judged an unfit parent. In my own experience, claims by anyone trying to
protect my children usually hide attempts inflict their own vision of "harm"
onto others -- adults *and* children.

-- 
Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56