By a 9-to-5 vote last month, ICANN, which governs Internet domains, shot down the idea of a virtual red-light district after the Bush administration and some other national governments made strong objections.
But ICM Registry said Friday that it will ask ICANN to reconsider.
ICM Registry released 88 pages of documents it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showing how politicised the debate over .XXX had become inside the Bush administration last summer.
It was publicly known that conservative groups in the United States called on their supporters to ask the Commerce Department to block the new suffix, but the FOI documents reveal how aggressive the lobbying campaign actually was.
Mike Hurst, an aide to Chip Pickering, a Mississippi Republican who's one of the most conservative in Congress, pressured the Commerce Department not to ratify ICANN's decision -- and then reported his results back to conservative Christian lobby groups.
Pickering wrote to Jim Wasilewski, the director of Commerce's Office of Congressional Affairs, that Congress is "reviewing our options here on the Hill" -- Washington-speak for proposing legislation to block .XXX.
"I met with the Commerce Dept. folks today," Hurst wrote in a subsequent email message on 16 June 2005 to Christian groups including the American Family Association and the Family Research Council. Hurst suggested ICANN would be a better pressure point: "Maybe we can marshal all our resources toward ICANN?"
Another message shows that Pat Trueman from the Family Research Council and Jan LaRue met with John Kneuer, Commerce's deputy assistant secretary, on 21 June.
A few weeks later, in August 2005, the Bush administration made a move unprecedented in ICANN's eight-year history by sending a letter saying: "The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and emails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children." ICANN had endorsed the concept of a .XXX domain in June and approval of ICM Registry's contract to run the suffix was expected to take place in a routine vote in late summer.
Commerce Department officials appeared worried about an even more public outcry from conservative groups. The Family Research Council, for instance, warned on its Web site that "pornographers will be given even more opportunities to flood our homes, libraries and society with pornography through the .XXX domain".
An email message dated 16 June 2005 from Fred Schwein, the department's executive secretary, said: "Who really matters in this mess is Jim Dobson. What he says on his radio program in the morning will determine how ugly this really gets -- if he jumps on the bandwagon, our mail server may crash."
Dobson is a right-wing evangelical Christian commentator.
Talkback
Please do everything in your power to keep this porn from going on line to protect our families and the moral fifer of humanity.
Dr. Robert A. Bickert
Wilmore, KY 40390
Doesn't it makes sense to have "Porn" under one umbrella. The idea of moving it all to .xxx overtime seems the best for all involved. The idea of stumbling across porn then seems somewhat more difficult for you know what your getting before you open the tin...peace.
The idea of a domain strictly for adult content is compelling. At first blush. Even a modest consideration of the idea will, however, expose serious flaws in the idea. In no particular order;
1. What, or whose, definition of porn should we use? The USA, The UK, The Netherlands, Japan's, or Saudi Arabia's, et cetera?
2. Enforcement: Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .com, .org, .net and so on can be used by ANY entity worlwide. Why should the legal system for one country (The US) set policy for an entire planet? From a practical standpoint there is no way to force webhosts to move adult content to a new TLD. All they would have to do is move to a host in a nation that has more liberal laws.
3. Cost/Benefit: Who would benefit from this TLD? Pretty much the only entity who would see a benefit from the creation of a TLD is the registrar who is allowed to manage the namespace and rake in millions of dollars as nations worldwise rushed to corral whatever they deemed "pornographic.". Guess who lobbyist #1 is for the .xxx domain? The costs, on the other hand, would be borne by thousands of webmaster, content providers, and other consumers/producers.
Dr. McCullagh,
You are right to think that all pornography placed under one "protected" umbrella would be great! But simply having a ".xxx" TLD does nothing to this end. Simply, what will guarantee the many thousands of pornographic companies (around the world) place their content under this umbrella? It would require nothing less than a globally coordinated legal effort - requiring vendors of pornography to obide by this new, international rule. And most countries around the world simply do not have the resources to monitor or enforce this issue. The ".xxx" umbrella is a pipe dream - benefiting only those who own the rights to the TLD. And they are counting on people like you (who only have the best of intentions, but lack sufficient technical understanding) to help push their agenda through. I am sorry to be the one offering the sobering truth.
Kind regards,
Shea
The solution is simple. As usual it's not a centralized one but a decentralized one. Nations can force ISP's within their country to inject certain phrases within the HTML code provided by whatever web server wordlwide. Those injected phrases could be determined by the results of the analysis by a national agency (thus making it possible to come up with localized solutions) of the HTML code in question. Which then can be used to label whatever HTML code with whatever label desired thus allowing to classify such HTML code. The only thing needed, globally, would be a global common way to introduce the injected phrase into the web browser used by the citizen in question. Otherwise such an approach would be known as a common standard or format that's open to national interpretation on the labelling level.
The above would allow nations to make known to their citizens which content gets labeled how by them (but risk global reactions if they go to far in that). At the same time allow ISP's within that nation to allow for their own interpretation (but risk national reactions if they go to far in that). And allow individuals to make their own interpretations (but risk localized reactions if they go to far in that).
Best of all, it won't make anyone filthy rich just by dominating a certain sector yet it allows for localized fine tuning as desired but also allows anyone subject to that to make known to the world what's happening. In short: self regulating.