On 17 March 2011 11:43, Neil Schwartzman <neil@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