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.
Part of the application process for a sTLD is to show that it is supported by the community it intends to serve. Looking at the history of every sTLD, I think we can fairly say that whatever process ICANN used to verify the alleged support was completely incompetent. So the right thing to do would be to say, "oh, sorry, you actually never qualified for an sTLD, here's your money back and an extra million that you'd otherwise get more expensively by suing us." Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly