YNOT – The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has tabled until June any further action on the proposed dot-xxx sponsored Top-Level Domain.As Friday’s general meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, closed, ICANN’s board of directors initiated a 70-day period of consultations in order to study what ICANN Chief Executive Officer Rod Beckstrom called “a lot of complex issues” surrounding dot-xxx. The board gave Beckstrom and the organization’s in-house counsel two weeks to present options for proceeding, bearing in mind an arbitration panel’s February ruling that ICANN erred in 2007 when it withdrew approval for the controversial sTLD. Once Beckstrom and the attorney return with suggestions, the board plans to open a 45-day public comment period before reaching a decision during its next meeting, scheduled to take place June 20-25 in Brussels.
Stuart Lawley, president of ICM Registry LLC — the mainstream corporation that proposed dot-xxx in 2000 and almost immediately thereafter found itself in the center of a whirlwind of mixed public sentiment about the sTLD — said he and his company are content to wait 14 more days to see what develops.
“ICANN has basically accepted the [International Centre for Dispute Resolution arbitration] panel’s decision as valid and just needs to work a process to move to the next step,” he told YNOT Monday. “We will take a close look at the proposals that come out in 14 days and comment then, perhaps.”
Lawley and ICM contend dot-xxx will be a badge of honor for pornographic website operators, because the organization will be run for the adult-entertainment community by the adult-entertainment community. Lawley has said dot-xxx websites conceivably could expect greater revenues and consumer confidence because of their location within an sTLD where website owners are required to adhere to a group-defined set of business ethics. He also has indicated ICM may seek “collective bargaining” advantages for dot-xxx domain owners, likely including better banking and credit card processing terms.
Mainstream critics of dot-xxx have said designating a “smut channel” on the web would lead to proliferation of online obscenity. Within the adult industry, the primary criticisms of the dot-xxx proposal have related to potential for censorship and “ghettoization” of adult content should it be concentrated in one domain.
