YNOT – The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has opened a new public comment period it hopes will help answer a question that has bedeviled the web’s governing body since 2001: “What the heck are we going to do about dot-XXX?”The proposed sponsored Top-Level Domain, intended to provide a place for pornographic websites to moor, seems to have become ICANN’s albatross. The board of directors, which approved the sTLD in 2005 and then rejected it in 2007 during contract negotiations with registrar-hopeful ICM Registry LLC, now finds itself in a “damned if we do; damned if we don’t” position. ICANN almost certainly faces censure from governments and social conservatives if it breathes life into the domain now, but failing to do so will leave the organization at odds with the international cyberspace legal system.

In February, an international arbitration tribunal, convened at ICM’s request, reprimanded ICANN for violating its own bylaws when it withdrew approval from dot-XXX. The panel also strongly advised ICANN to rectify the error. Shortly thereafter, ICM President Stuart Lawley suggested his company might take even more severe legal action if ICANN continues to back away from its 2005 decision. Lawley backed up his company’s position March 28 with a letter to ICANN Chief Executive Officer Rod Beckstrom.

“ICM and its counsel … are dismayed to note that several of the options [for moving forward with dot-XXX] are in many respects substantively and procedurally inconsistent with the [arbitration panel’s] declaration,” Lawley wrote. “In fact, only one option (expedited due diligence to confirm financial and technical capabilities) appears to offer the current ICANN board a path to avoid new and ongoing violations of the organization’s Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws. This is, to put it plainly, unacceptable.

“The ICANN community clearly called on the board in Nairobi [earlier this month] to honor the [arbitration panel’s] declaration and move promptly to right its discriminatory, unfair and bad-faith treatment of ICM,” Lawley continued. “It would indeed be a disservice to urge the board to follow a path that breaks faith with the community and threatens to prolong this costly and distracting legal dispute.”

ICANN opened the new comment period late in the evening of March 26. Interested observers have through May 10 to voice their opinions online by visiting the formal Public Comment Forum Box or emailing ICANN. Comments may be viewed here.

By 2 p.m. PT Monday, only seven comments had been posted. One is from a former ICANN director who voted against dot-XXX in 2007 but since has changed his mind.

“ICANN had already determined that ICM’s application for [dot-XXX] met all the basic criteria as well as all the special contract conditions that ICANN had imposed on the applicant,” noted former director Steve Goldstein, who said he voted against the sTLD in 2007 because he believed approval would cause ICANN to violate its bylaws by engaging in content regulation. “It’s really time to walk the talk, ICANN.”

The adult industry’s trade association, too, has sounded off. Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Diane Duke has written to ICANN to inform the board dot-XXX is in no way “sponsored” or even desired by the adult entertainment industry. ICM, she noted, is not part of the industry and merely wishes to profit from and attempt to regulate a speech group that doesn’t support ICM’s expressed goals. Of particular concern for adult webmasters, according to Duke, is the International Foundation for Online Responsibility, a regulatory body tasked with establishing operating parameters for all dot-XXX domains. Lawley has said IFFOR’s board of directors would be composed partially of adult industry insiders.

“Our resolute position is that no self-respecting industry would ever agree to have a minority voice on a board tasked with setting critical policies for its members,” Duke wrote.

The FSC also objects to dot-XXX because FSC members are convinced the sTLD could become a mandatory online ghetto, effectively censoring legal adult content.

ICANN has said it will attempt to resolve the dot-XXX issue during its June meeting in Brussels.