Online

R.I.P. Dot-xxx—Maybe

By: Sue Denim

Posted: 03/31/2007

CHATSWORTH, Calif. - In the wake of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' Friday rejection of dot-xxx as a sponsored Top-Level Domain, the adult industry was abuzz with discussion about ICM Registry LLC's failed bid to administer the proposed domain and what the resolution of the nearly seven-year controversy might mean for the future of adult content on the Web. Some industry attorneys said they don't expect the issue to evaporate.

"Dot-xxx was a terrible idea," prominent First Amendment attorney and long-time AVN Media Network contributor Clyde DeWitt told AVNOnline.com. "Hopefully, ICANN's vote will put it to bed for good, but unfortunately, I doubt it. Perhaps the combination of this vote and the wonderful decision striking down [the Child Online Protection Act]—again—will finally propel parents who don't want to baby sit their own children to look to filtering technology instead of to the government to look after their little ones.

"Dot-xxx not only stood to ghettoize adults-only content and inevitably lead to governmental regulations converting it from a voluntary system to a mandatory one," DeWitt continued. "Radical religious groups, for example, would have used it to block teenagers from access to information about sexually transmitted diseases on the idiotic theory that if teenagers don't hear about sex they won't do it."

Prominent First Amendment attorney Lou Sirkin, who has represented the adult-industry trade group Free Speech Coalition in some of its battles against government restriction of speech, echoed DeWitt's sentiments and added a few caveats of his own.

"All I can say is that whenever we've gotten into these battles, there's some zealot out there with ideas that they're hard-pressed to give up; that there's no right and wrong in their mind—it's a crusade," Sirkin said. "And crusades seem to go on from generation to generation.

"In the early days, we tried obscenity cases in communities around Cincinnati [Ohio]," Sirkin continued. "We'd get acquittals, and then six or eight months later, they would come back. It seems never to go away. It's like when we know that the sex industry is going to come under scrutiny in November, February, and May—those are television ratings months.

"My concern is that it will quiet down for a little bit, but I think it's probably going to be out there and be one of those things that's going to be in the dark shadows haunting you and looking over your shoulder," he warned

Industry insiders, too, mentioned concern that dot-xxx may return from the dead.

"It's going to come back," XBiz Publisher Tom Hymes posited during a Phoenix Forum seminar on Friday. "[ICM Registry President and Chief Executive Officer] Stuart Lawley has already stated that he intends to sue ICANN, and he's proven that he's not going to go away until the final gavel comes down.

"Last year, we did see legislation that proposed the creation of dot-xxx," Hymes continued. "The irony here is, of course, that ICANN is accused of bending to the will of the [U.S. Department of Commerce, under the auspices of which it was created but from which it has severed itself] and found themselves between a rock and a hard place. And [ICANN has] to be commended for making a decision that will probably result in a lawsuit brought on by a man who has a lot of money to pursue it. And then, of course, there is [potential] future legislation that mandates the creation [of an adult-content-specific domain]. The irony there is that [the U.S. government] would once again be imposing that upon ICANN, and maybe ICANN would then have to sue the U.S. government to prevent that from happening."

Adult-industry workers, however, seemed to be in a celebratory mood after hearing dot-xxx had not been approved.

"I think this decision is phenomenal," HotHardCash President Bruce Friedman told AVNOnline.com. "[The potential approval of dot-xxx] was most webmasters' worst nightmare, and I was thrilled to hear that ICANN isn't very open to the idea of revisiting it. We, as webmasters, can all breathe a sigh of relief."

Steve, a marketing and advertising representative of Python and Python Pays, added, "I think the reality of the situation was that it was simply a cash grab for a new TLD, and the fact that it was wrapped in this package of litigation and politics took away its credibility. I never thought it was a valid model to begin with. I think the only people really interested in dot-xxx were the people who stood to make the most money off of it. It certainly wasn't going to be the webmasters."

Even if dot-xxx is gone for good, that may not be "all she wrote," as the saying goes.

"Going beyond [dot-xxx], I think the next problem is going to be the interesting union between the religious right and [the adult] industry," First Amendment attorney Eric M. Bernstein told webmasters assembled at Phoenix Forum. "Assuming we don't have the same [political] group in power [within the U.S. government] in two years, the Democrats may find that dot-xxx can be some kind of remedy for other kinds of issues. The Democrats may find that while 'Yes, we don't believe in restriction,' putting the adult industry in a specific spot may not be such a bad idea—and [they could] regulate beyond [ICANN's dot-xxx decision] and not kill it."