WASHINGTON, D.C. — March is not a particularly auspicious month for ICM Registry LLC. In March 2007, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers rejected — for the second time — the company’s proposal to manage the much-reviled dot-xxx sponsored Top Level Domain. Slightly less than one year later, a federal judge granted summary judgment against the registrar-hopeful in a lawsuit against the U.S. government that sprung from ICM’s seven-year battle to establish the adult-content-only sTLD.The lawsuit, filed in 2005 after ICM’s first disappointment at ICANN’s hands, sought documents that might prove conservative groups pressured the Bush administration into withdrawing support for dot-xxx and then pressuring ICANN not to approve the sTLD. Some of the documents were released in May 2006, but the State Department and the Department of Commerce withheld others claiming they were privileged communications. ICM returned to court to demand those documents be released under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, which allows a court to compel the government to turn over even privileged communications if there is reason to suspect undue influence by parties outside the decision-making process.
Although U.S. District Judge James Robertson on March 12th agreed ICM’s argument might be valid if the U.S. government “opposed dot-xxx for nefarious purposes,” he also said ICM failed to demonstrate the administration “leaned on” ICANN — a supposedly independent organization — based on the weight conservative groups might have applied to the government. However, the judge didn’t read the subject documents himself, so there is room in his decision for ICM to appeal.
And it might. Robert Corn-Revere, an attorney who represents ICM, indicated his client may sue ICANN, as well.
“ICM Registry is planning to examine and pursue all of its legal options,” Corn-Revere told CNET’s Declan McCullagh on Tuesday. “We were waiting to see what the outcome of this FOIA litigation was.”
The disputed documents are interesting, based on their descriptions in court records. Among them are various emails from several Commerce Department employees outlining opinions about how dot-xxx might affect children’s access to pornography and the types of sites that likely would be found in the dot-xxx realm, as well as opinions about how to present such a domain to the public and the roles ICANN and the Commerce Department should play in the approval process.
