Porn group starts anti-XXX campaign

Now that the Christians appear to have quietened down, the adult entertainment industry has unleashed its own letter-writing campaign aimed at crippling ICM Registry’s bid for the .xxx TLD.
The Free Speech Coalition has started urging its members to lobby ICANN with emails demanding that the .xxx proposal is rejected.
The front page of its web site started carrying the call to action earlier today, already resulting in over a dozen form complaints.
The anti-porn complaints that have flooded ICANN’s forums for the last week focussed largely on the alleged harmful effects of porn, and will probably be politely ignored.
But unlike the Christians, the FSC has read the background documents – which request comments on how ICANN should process ICM’s application – and its letters are therefore on-topic
They urge ICANN to “Adopt Option #3” by agreeing with the dissenting minority view of the Independent Review Panel that recently ruled ICANN was unfair to reject ICM back in 2007.
“Regardless of the option chosen, I ask that ICANN continue to consider the widespread opposition of the sponsored community in any further decisions concerning a .XXX sTLD,” the letters add.
The campaign is not unexpected, but it won’t make ICANN’s board of directors’ decision any easier. After all, .xxx is ostensibly a “sponsored” TLD, and a significant voice within its potential customer base does not appear to want it.
There may also be other power games at play.
ICM president Stuart Lawley claimed during his IRP cross-examination in September that the FSC had offered to support ICM in 2003, but only if it could control the sponsoring organization and collect the associated $10 per domain per year.
The ICANN comment period runs until May 10. The FSC’s own comments, from boss Diane Duke, are here.

TLDH sells off domain portfolio, waits for new TLDs

Top Level Domain Holdings has reported blah revenue for its fiscal 2009, as it reorganized itself in preparation for ICANN’s forthcoming new gTLD round.
The company, which owns registry services firm Minds + Machines and has interests in dotNYC and DotEco, is listed on London’s low-cap AIM market.
It today reported revenue for the 12 months to October 31, 2009 of £315,000 ($487,000), up from £232,000 ($358,000) a year earlier, with an operating loss of £1.4 million, ($2.2 million) down from £1.5 million ($2.3 million).
TLDH also revealed that it sold off its entire parked domain name portfolio for $250,000 last November, after the end of its financial year, after it found parking revenue on the decline:

The Company’s domain name portfolio comprising mainly German and other European parked domain names that receive direct navigation and search traffic which can be monetized through search links to generate click-through advertising revenues generated a lower revenue in the period and were subsequently sold following the period end for US$250,000 in cash.

TLDH recorded an impairment charge of £154,000 ($238,000) for this transaction, suggesting the company sold its portfolio for approximately half of its previously reported paper value.
The firm says its strategy is “to build a portfolio of gTLD applicants and infrastructure technologies”, and believes ICANN’s recent Nairobi meeting decisions continued “a trend of increasing the barriers to application for non-experts”.
TLDH still looks like it has more than enough cash on hand to see it through to when ICANN begins officially accepting new TLD applications, barring further delays, with £4.3 million ($6.6 million) in the bank at the end of October.

.xxx jumps on social media bandwagon

ICM Registry, the firm behind the proposed .xxx TLD, has belatedly joined the social media revolution, setting up a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account to expound the benefits of pornographic domain names.
I’d hazard a guess that this is in response to the deluge of negative opinion currently directed at it in ICANN’s public comment forum.
If you can wade through the Christian spam there, you’ll find only a handful of people backing ICM.
Some of these comments come from policy wonks, urging ICANN to show it can be as accountable as it says it is.
Others come from random individuals, suspiciously based in ICM’s home state of Florida.
If this woman, for example, is not British ICM president Stuart Lawley’s green card lawyer, I’ll eat my beanie.
Hat tip: @mneylon

.jobs aiming to become a gTLD by the back door?

Employ Media, the company behind the sponsored TLD .jobs, looks like it’s making a play to become a significantly more open gTLD.
The company has proposed a substantial relaxation of its registration policies, based on what may be a loophole in its ICANN registry contract.
Currently, the .jobs namespace is one of the most restrictive TLDs. Only company names can be registered, and registrants have to be approved HR professionals at those companies.
As you might imagine, it’s been phenomenally unsuccessful from a business point of view, with only about 15,000 domains registered since it went live five years ago.
Employ Media now wants to be able to register “non-companyname” domains, and is to apply to its sponsorship body, the Society for Human Resource Management, for permission.
At least, that’s what it looks like. The documents posted over at policy.jobs are pretty opaque.
Indeed, as ERE.net points out, the “proposed amendment” to its charter reads more like a claim that no amendment is required.
The company appears to be pursuing a business model whereby it could auction off (continue reading)

UK domains get government oversight

With the passing of the Digital Economy Bill last night, the UK government has created powers to oversee Nominet, the .uk registry manager, as well as any new gTLD that is “UK-related”.
The Bill would allow the government to replace a registry if, in its opinion, the registry’s activities tarnish the reputation or availability of UK internet services.
It also allows the minister to apply to a court to alter the constitution of a registry such as Nominet.
The legislation was created in response to concerns that the registry could be captured by domainers, following a turbulent few years within Nominet’s leadership.
Nominet has since modified its constitution to make this unlikely, and is now of the position that the government will have no need to exercise its new powers.
The Bill does not name Nominet specifically, but rather any domain registry that is “UK-related”.

An internet domain is “UK-related” if, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, the last element of its name is likely to cause users of the internet, or a class of such users, to believe that the domain and its sub-domains are connected with the United Kingdom or a part of the United Kingdom.”

This almost certainly captures the proposed .eng, .scot and .cym gTLDs, which want to represent the English, Scots and Welsh in ICANN’s next new gTLD round.

.xxx TLD passes Godwin’s law milestone

ICM Registry’s application for the .xxx TLD passed a crucial milestone yesterday, when it was compared to the Nazis for the first time.
Godwin’s law states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
That moment arrived at 11:54:09 yesterday, when an ICANN commentator by the name of Ian K posted this:

If we truly believe in *NET NEUTRALITY*, then a TLD such as XXX has no part in it. Adding the TLD to the options, along with all that it means, is no different than when the *Nazi’s* forced all of the /Jewish Faith/ to wear *yellow Stars of David*, for easy identification, and subsequent *persecution*.

Mr K’s comment comes amid a deluge of negative opinion from pornographers and Christians alike. The latter disagree with porn in principle; the former think .xxx will lead to censorship.
The .xxx discussion has been dragging on for the best part of a decade, so the Godwin milestone has been a long time coming.
Frankly, I’m surprised it took this long.

New gTLDs will cost $155 billion, honest

A report out from the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, which pegs the cost of first-round new gTLD defensive registrations at $746 million, has set eyes rolling this evening.
CircleID rather oddly compares it to a recent Minds + Machines study, “predicting new gTLDs will only cost $.10 per trademark worldwide.”
Apples and oranges, in my view.
But numbers are fun.
My own estimate, using data from both CADNA and M+M, puts the total cost of new gTLDs defensive registrations at $155.85 billion.
For the avoidance of doubt, you should (continue reading)

China domain name registrations plummeting

The Chinese ccTLD has lost almost four million domain name registrations since it implemented Draconian identification requirements last December.
According to CNNIC, the .cn manager, there were 9.53 million domains registered at the end of February, compared to 12.28 million in January and 13.45 million in December.
That’s a loss of 3.9 million domains since the new registration requirements were introduced mid-December.
The bulk of the loss appears to have come from pure .cn names, which dropped from 8.61 million in December to 6.14 million in February.
The .com.cn namespace lost about half a million names over the same period. The rest of the drop-off came in lesser-used second-level domains such a .org.cn.
Since December 14, CNNIC has required all Chinese registrants to provide photo ID before they register a domain.
Recently, the registry has tried to enforce retroactive enforcement of this requirement, causing registrars including Go Daddy and Network Solutions to abandon the TLD altogether.

VeriSign plans domain tasting service

VeriSign plans to offer a service that would allow domain names to be registered for as short a period as a month, possibly creating a system of legitimised domain tasting.
The company has asked ICANN (pdf) if it can launch a Domain Name Exchange service, whereby registrars could cash in unused names, transferring the remaining time on the registration to a new domain.
The service, according to VeriSign’s filing, is designed for registrars that offer domain registration as part of bundled hosting packages paid for on a monthly subscription basis.
Currently, those registrars have to register the domain for a full year with VeriSign, even if the customer stops paying for it after a month or two, the company said.
Under Domain Name Exchange, registrars would (continue reading)

Christians descend on ICANN’s .xxx forum

It took a few weeks, but American Christian groups have finally noticed that ICM Registry’s .xxx domain is back under consideration at ICANN.
The number of comments on ICANN’s latest .xxx public comment forum has rocketed today, reminiscent of the first time this proposal was considered.
While the emails fail to address the issues at hand — how ICANN should process ICM’s application in light of the IRP decision — they do at least avoid using form letters.
The general sentiment is anti-pornography, rather than anti-.xxx.
Here’s a sample:

Please do not approve a .xxx domain for peddlers of pornography. Pornography is degrading to women and destructive to families.

and

Pornography is vile and can lead to breakdown of marriages, abuse, even murder in some cases.

and

Money talks, and the money this kind of sleaze (“Dot-XXX”) generates veritably screams.

and

History has shown that civilizations that go down this road eventually fail due to lack of moral standards. This type of internet will increase the danger of a society that has no moorings, that has no “right or wrong.” It will lead to more such atrocities such as drugs, revolting against society, even death.

I hope you’re listening, ICM Registry. You are the lead in the drinking water.
Check it out.