.XXX Comments Lively at ICANN Public Forum

The board's 15 voting members could approve it, reject it outright or reject it but leave room for a revised proposal to return.

A public forum Thursday morning provided a lively debate among .XXX ’s key figures. Below is the .XXX portion of the public forum. The transcript is provided by ICANN.

VINT CERF: We go on to the next topic, which is to do with the proposal from ICM for a new top-level domain, .XXX .

I have allocated 20 minutes for the opposition to the top-level domain and 20 minutes for the proponents of the top-level domain to speak.

I don't know how many people are going to ask to speak on either of those categories, so I will warn you ahead of time that if we get a big long queue in either of the two categories that I will probably have to invoke some kind of a time limit.

We have a clock available to limit speaking times per person to two or three minutes.

But let me start by asking if there is anyone who wishes to speak in opposition to the .XXX proposal.

You can come and queue up to the microphone, please.

And if I could get some sense for how many of you wish to speak, it would be helpful. Either a show of hands or people standing to queue in the microphone.

The scribes are going to be asking for your names so that they can accurately record this in the transcript.

I am not seeing a huge crowd but it may accumulate over time so I will ask you to be as brief as you can so as to allow as many people who wish to speak to do so.

Would you please introduce yourself.

DIANE DUKE: Yes, my name is Diane Duke and I am the executive director for the Free Speech Coalition. It's the trade association for the adult entertainment industry. We are based in the United States but we have membership worldwide.

First of all, I would like to thank the ICANN board for allowing us this time to speak, and to speak of our concerns of the .XXX sponsored top-level domain.

Let me be clear. As the only trade association for the adult entertainment industry, we represent the sponsorship community. It is our organization that sued the United States government on behalf of the industry and won in the U.S. Supreme Court.

It was our organization that ICM itself came to five years ago offering a portion of the proceeds from the sTLD in return for our support of their proposed domain.

ICM recognized us as the representative for the sponsorship community even then. Today, we are here because the adult entertainment community believes that the views of the industry are being misrepresented on the issue of the .XXX sponsored top-level domain.

Let me be clear. The adult entertainment industry, the sponsorship community, not only does not support ICM's proposal but it actively opposes the creation of a .XXX top-level domain.

Five years ago when ICM approached the Free Speech Coalition with a proposal that could increase our income by tenfold, we turned down that, recognizing the negative ramification that .XXX TDL would have for the industry.

Today industry leaders as well as small webmasters have joined together not only to publicly oppose the creation of a .XXX TLD but also to fund our trip to this conference, ensuring that their opposition is clearly communicated to the people who will be making this critical decision.

ICM will tell you that it already has met the obligation of sponsorship. Through interest received early in the process before some of the details and dangers had been made apparent and when financial windfalls were promised to many, ICM claimed to have industry support.

Support no longer exists.

ICANN has set precedents in this matter when dot travel failed to have support at the onset and gained it by the end. It was the end result that ICANN considered.

Why would the reverse not be just as, if not more, pertinent in this case? What seemed to be support at the beginning has now not only dissipated but it's turned to outright opposition.

Moreover, as we heard earlier in this meeting, GAC is upholding the concerns that it stated in the Wellington communique that it does not believe the sponsorship concerns have been adequately addressed.

This came to the board as a form of formal advice. In its March 23rd letter to the board, Stuart Lawley stated that ICANN is listening to a noisy minority and thwarting the private sector's efforts to lead by self-regulation.

Are we talking minority when the two leading organizations for the adult entertainment industry AVN and XBIZ, have written letters explicitly in opposition to dot .XXX . Are we talking minority when industry founders such as Larry Flint write letters in opposition?

When major webmasters TriTech and LightSpeed fund our trip, not to mention countless smaller webmasters who have sent in donations as well as well wishes to defeat this self-serving, shallow, and greedy endeavor?

And these folks are standing front and center lending their names in support of this opposition and not hiding behind so-called privacy rights. Even though they are clearly aware of ICM's propensity towards lawsuits and threats of financial ruin.

And how dare Mr. Lawley claim private sector self-regulation when he announced at the XBIZ conference that he has never nor will ever be part of the adult entertainment industry?

Mr. Lawley and ICM, you have no claim to self-regulation when they are no part of the industry or the industry wants no part of them or their top-level domain. The industry already has self-regulation restricted to adults and the ICRA filters. It funds that and is actively participating in such.

ICM will tell you that it has thousands of pre-reservations, evidence of industry support for dot .XXX . Do I believe it has numerous preregistrations? Yes, I do.

Do I believe that represents support for the community? No. Absolutely not.

At the XBIZ conference in which Mr. Lawley participated in panel discussion I told him then as I tell you now, webmasters in the industry are pre-reserving URLs in order to protect their brand identity. Defensive registrations.

I told Mr. Lawley in front of that large crowd at the conference, that webmasters who purchase .XXX URLs plan to purchase and park those addresses, steering clear of censorship and regulations imposed by the IFFOR board.

I asked Mr. Lawley at that February conference if purchasing and parking addresses would be permitted, and he replied yes.

This brings up an interesting point. Who benefits from a TLD that has no support of the sponsorship community? A TLD where webmasters who do participate will purchase and park their addresses. It doesn't create a vital, active web presence in line with ICANN's mission and principles. It certainly doesn't benefit the sponsorship community.

Clearly, it will do nothing to protect children.

The only possible benefit to a .XXX so-called sponsored top-level domain is the one that will be realized by ICM's bottom line.

And that is not reason enough for a .XXX top-level domain.

In keeping with ICANN's mission and core values, I urge you to reject ICM's proposal for a .XXX sponsored top-level domain.

Thank you.

VINT CERF: Thank you very much.

Do we have another speaker against the proposal? Please identify yourself.

PHILIP CORWIN: Yes, good morning.

Excuse me.

Philip Corwin representing the Internet Commerce Association, which is a non-profit trade group whose membership is made up of professional investors in and developers of domain names.

We filed an extensive comment opposing the contract and took a rather different approach than most of the commentators in that we have no opinion for or against the creation of a top-level domain intended to host adult content as long as it remains entirely voluntary. We do not want to see the — any mandatory directive where anyone must — offering any type of content must only have it hosted at a particular TLD.

We did have extensive objections to the terms of the contract in that we felt that the contract would involve ICANN, through its enforcement responsibility, to oversee adherence with the contract in a host of responsibilities that are far afield from its technical management role and are really much more properly the responsibility of government and international regulatory authority.

So we thought the terms of the contract, which we understand grew in that way in an attempt to respond to the many content objections regarding .XXX really took ICANN very far afield and really set some very undesirable precedents in terms of what subjects could be addressed in a registry contract and what functions a registry operator could ask registrants to pay for through the registry contract.

So our extensive comments are on the record.

They are there for anyone to look at.

But that is the substance of our objection to the present contract proposal.

Thank you.

VINT CERF: Thank you very much for brevity.

Peter, you had a question for Ms. Duke and I didn't see you.

Is she still here? Would you kindly come back to the microphone, please.

PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Vint.

Thank you for your presentation.

You raise an issue which troubles me in relation to this application and that is what happens when a portion of the apparent sponsored community is actively opposed to it. We haven't had that before. We have had sections where a community may have just been disinterested, but we haven't had to take into account opposition.

So I've got in front of me what I think is the definition of a sponsored TLD community.

And all it required is the sponsored TLD must address the need and interests of a clearly defined community.

Why can't the members of your adult content industry who do want to be a part of the triple X and do want to try to sea if there are any potential benefits to this, why can't they form a community as a subset of your entire adult content community? Why does it make any difference in a portion of the community chooses not to be part of the sponsored community?

DIANE DUKE: There are two pieces of that question I would like to address, and one is I have yet to find anybody who is in favor of this.

We have asked around and we have not seen, in all of our membership and all of the people we have been talking to, we have not been able to find a single business in favor of a .XXX sponsored TLD.

The second part of that is the content of this lends itself toward government intrusion.

In such, in the United States already there has been a bill introduced that if .XXX is passed by ICANN to make it mandatory.

PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I'm sorry —

DIANE DUKE: There's a direct threat to the industry.

PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I don't think you understood my question.

I didn't want to know whether you thought there were people who were or not.

I understand you say that.

Nor am I concerned about possible consequences that you say may happen from the introduction.

My question was really just about have we got a clear idea of a sponsored community? We have got to test whether this application meets our requirements that there be a sponsored community.

You say that there are a large number of the adult content community who are opposed.

My question to you is, isn't a subset of the adult content community who do wish to take whatever advantage may arise from a triple X registration, doesn't that form a sponsored community under our tests? Even if a lot of the people who may have been in that community choose not to be and to go away and even to oppose it.

Aren't we still left with a subset that forms a sponsored community?

DIANE DUKE: I would take that —

VINT CERF: I'm sorry, Ms. Duke, I want to intervene for a moment, Peter.

In a sense, you are asking her a question about our processes, and I'm not sure that that's entirely fair.

We're the ones who have to decide what constitutes a sponsored community, so I'm not going to stop her from responding.

I'm just puzzled by the question coming to a person who isn't part of our normal process.

Anyway, please go ahead, Ms. Duke.

DIANE DUKE: I guess if the goal for ICANN is to build a vibrant web presence with these top-level domains, if you do not take into consideration the majority of the community that it will be affecting, I doubt that your goal will be established, one.

And two — or if you were looking at any other entity and the majority of that group, maybe churches are such, I would say that that would be a difficult.

VINT CERF: Let me try to help a little bit, Peter. A reminder about dot travel. When it was first proposed, there was strong opposition from one very major player in the travel industry, IATA. And the board, in fact, did not proceed with the dot travel proposal until the proposers actually came back with confirmation that the opposer in fact had joined the coalition, so to speak.

So in that sense, we have had to deal with this sort of opposition before, and the practice had been to confirm that the significant opposition had, in fact, relented.

I get the impression from Ms. Duke that that may not be the case here.

DIANE DUKE: Thank you.

VINT CERF: Are there other — oh, Paul.

PAUL TWOMEY: Thank you, Ms. Duke I wonder if I could ask you another question.

I'm just looking at your Website, and I actually can't find a list of members.

DIANE DUKE: I'm sorry?

PAUL TWOMEY: I can't find a list of members.

DIANE DUKE: You won't find a list of members on our Website.

We do get to talk about privacy rights on that level.

PAUL TWOMEY: So I am just interested to hear from you as you are claiming that you are and you are claiming you are the only association.

I know in my own country there's an EROS association which claims to be the same.

So first of all I am saying you are not the only association.

But I'm interested — and they do put their members in, but I am interested to hear from you if you can give us some sense — not that I'm not saying that you are not telling the truth, of course.

I am trying to get the sense of who are your members, at what range, numbers or something, to given me a sense of how significant are you.

DIANE DUKE: We have over 3,000 members which represent hundreds of thousands of Websites.

We have webmasters, we have producers, content producers.

We have retail establishments.

PAUL TWOMEY: And can you give me some sense of your — this document you have read to us, is that — I'm — being the president of an organization like this, I know the difference between I write a quick e-mail versus as president I speak versus I speak with the endorsement of the board.

DIANE DUKE: I speak with the endorsement of the board and the membership.

PAUL TWOMEY: OK.

Thank you.

VINT CERF: Could we have the next comment, please.

Amadeu.

AMADEU ABRIL i ABRIL: OK.

I am Amadeu Abril i Abril, loyal ICANN follower.

And let me say that if I look uncomfortable, it is because I hate what I am going to say.

First, I think that .XXX is a bad idea, but who cares? Quite frankly, that's my personal idea for a number of reasons.

But if I was sitting there I would not vote against because I think it's a bad idea.

We are not judging whether this can be successful or not beyond some minimum requirements of stability.

And we are not judging the personal taste of Amadeu Abril or whoever.

The second question here is a major concern I have is concerning something Peter raised.

Is this really a sponsored proposal in the sense that we intended that? I think not.

So if this was not first sponsored TLD in that round that I was supposed to vote, I probably would vote against because I really think that this is forced into that category, and it's really not a sponsored TLD.

But today, I wouldn't do so because you have approved some others that, in my view, also fail to that other standard.

And I would not like to be discriminatory in that sense.

They don't fail any more than some others that you have approved.

Still, there is a third concern that really bothers me, and it's the question that we have some relevant opposition to the proposal from different areas.

One being part of the supposed community, the other being the GAC.

And what are we supposed to do here?

Well, my standard for approving the TLDs is it doesn't create any problem, it shows a stable technical and financial proposal to the scale that they propose to survive.

And third, it has some support for the intended users.

Some.

And especially, it doesn't have, let's say, relevant support from the intended community, or the Internet stakeholders as such.

What I see here is GAC saying, GAC, not just one or two governments, saying that they don't like it for some reasons that may be good and for some others that, to say it politely, I fail to understand an intellectual framework behind them.

But once again, it does not matter whether I understand or whether I agree with or not.

The question is do we have some relevant opposition from, not Internet community, but, you know, a part of the process.

And then we have something they cannot avoid but part of the supposed community saying they don't accept.

So you have much more information than I have.

And first thing, thanks for organizing this in this way that, you know, more structure for clear and open debate on that.

Second, my gut feeling is that I couldn't vote in favor of that given the state of the opposition I see from different parts.

But third, if you do approve that, please do us a favor and state some sense, not of the moral reasons, you know, the financial reasons for doing one thing or the other or the contractual guarantees you are there, but a sense of how you evaluate what's sufficient opposition from the community.

Because if not, the risk in the next round for people understanding what's the public comment for, what's the GAC for, what really you need to express that something is a bad idea in order to create a new resource for the Internet? This is ICANN creating this.

It is not allowing someone to do something or not.

We all are here to do this expensive process for deciding which public resources should be managed and then delegated to whom under which conditions.

Please do me a favor and be very specific on that because if not, we will run into some risk problems into the next round.

VINT CERF: Thank you, Amadeu.

Let me before we take the next — that's all right.

Come to the microphone.

How many other people are commenting on this? One more.

OK.

I will take these two.

That's the end of the comments on opposition, and then we'll have comments in favor.

Please go ahead.

JEFFREY DOUGLAS: Thank you, Chairman Cerf and the board for the allocation of your time and the opportunity to address you.

My name is Jeffrey Douglas.

I'm the volunteer chair of the Free Speech Coalition, of which Ms. Duke is the executive director.

I realize that many or most of you have already made up your mind.

I doubt that I'll be raising any issues that you have not considered.

But I hope that if you do have questions, I may have the opportunity to address those.

As has been indicated, we believe the sponsorship community overwhelmingly opposes .XXX . Those of our members who have come forward to oppose do it in order to attempt to persuade.

The reasons that our policy the membership is not put on the Website or others is because of the hostile governmental environment in the United States of America, so that, as a controversial organization, a listing of our membership is deemed to be contrary to the benefit of both the organization and our members.

But numerous of our members have identified themselves for the specific purpose of opposing this proposed top-level domain.

I'd like to address specifically concerns expressed by some board members regarding the subjectivity of the criteria which is potentially a basis for rejecting it.

In contrast to dot tel or dot mobi, the — the difficulty with the .XXX is that the content itself has inherent controversy in the possibility of regulation.

That is, dot tel, dot mob. I may be competing for space.

Here there is a reason not to have a self-defined community, because it will endanger the entire community.

The creation of .XXX will, of course, allow new means of censorship by multiple layers of government, especially within the United States.

As mentioned, there are already two bills pending before Congress to mandate migration from dot com or another dot space to dot triple X for the purpose of censorship, and depressingly, the Congressional research service in January of this year analyzed those pending mandatory .XXX bills as being potentially constitutional.

Additionally, something that has not been discussed adequately which is of grave concern to me is that there can be informal pressure to mandate through the credit card processing companies.

That is to say, whatever pledges ICM registry has made to you that they will oppose, including to the point of litigation, a law that would mandate, whether at a county, state, or national level, migration to dot .XXX , they have made no pledge nor, realistically can they pledge that they would oppose, could oppose, or in fact would not support a commercial force towards migration.

That is, if the credit card processors that are the basis of the existence of the adult web community were to mandate that if you were not a part of dot .XXX , they would not process the credit cards, that would be at least as effective a force for migration from outside the .XXX domain to within the dot .XXX .

And, again, the consequences of a significant number of people being within the .XXX means that, inevitably, there will be a ghettoization.

I don't mean to demean the actual force of a real ghetto.

But, for our purposes, having a wall around that community means there will be restricted access.

And the history of adult speech within the United States especially is a history of efforts to constrain access to that speech by consenting adults.

We're not concerned here with inappropriate access.

It's the rights of adults who wish to access it, to get access to it.

And once .XXX is established, they will lose access.

And there are a myriad means to allow that to happen.

And I, as a lawyer who represents members of the adult industry and the coalition, bear the scars to show that those wars have occurred.

The other component of .XXX that is unique from any other dot proposal, again because it's based on content, is that it, in effect, creates a second class of speech, a speech that needs to be overseen by apparently responsible adults, that needs to be treated differently.

If you could imagine a proponent of a dot religion saying that, "We are appropriate so that we can regulate responsible speakers of religion," that's identical to what the proposal is before you now.

As Ms. Duke indicated, there is a specific problem with this proposal.

All the comments I've made before apply to any proposal for a .XXX or dot sex or any kind of dot content.

A particular problem with this proposal is that the proponents are from outside the community and are outside of the community proudly.

That is, they say that they will encourage responsible regulation because the adult community is inherently incapable of responsible self-regulation.

That is, of course, extraordinarily patronizing.

But beyond being patronizing, it is, again, a dangerous concept, and a dangerous concept for ICANN to endorse.

If one could think of another perhaps less controversial form of commerce, I was thinking of the mortuary industry, a group that were heavily criticized decades ago.

If someone came forward proposing an sTLD of dot mortuary, and the basis or an essential component of that argument is that morticians are incapable of responsible self-regulation, we, as critics of or who have distance from it are the appropriate ones to do it, I believe that the board would reject that out of hand.

But essential to this application is the component that foxes should not guard the hen house.

It should be rejected as an absurdity.

VINT CERF: I'm sorry.

You're running a little far over time now.

JEFFREY DOUGLAS: I apologize.

I will immediately wrap.

Thank you for alerting me to that.

One very briefly.

The notion of nonresolution, nonresolving names.

If businesses from outside the adult community have a right to, at cheap or free basis, block an equivalent .XXX because they're outside the community, but members from within the adult community do not share that same right, that is, if I have an X-rated Website as a dot com, if I am declined — denied the same opportunity that a non-adult business would have, shoes dot com wants to block shoot dot .XXX , but I, representing man dot com that's an X-rated Website, would not have that same ability to block at free or no price a man dot .XXX , again, the adult community is being placed in a second-class position.

This has not been fully resolved, because ICM registry requires the ability to address these little problems only after the contract has been agreed to.

These are concerns that need to have been addressed, can't be addressed under the current format.

And since they are outside the community, they cannot be relied upon to address those favorable to the community.

And to address very briefly the question that was posed —

VINT CERF: I'm sorry.

But I have to move to — thank you.

Khaled, I think you're the last speaker.

KHALED FATTAL: What I was going to talk about is not either for or against, and I walked in in the middle.

I don't want to interrupt your process.

If you wish for me to wait until — VINT CERF: No.

That's an interesting transition.

We go from against to something, to for.

Let me — you came in late.

We are discussing dot .XXX , just in case you weren't sure what you were commenting on.

[ Laughter ] [ Applause ] VINT CERF: If you're not for sex — oh, well, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

KHALED FATTAL: Well, Vint, when I'm done, I will ask you if my comments were actually of value to the board and to ICANN, and then you can give me your opinion if maybe I was listening.

My name is Khaled Fattal.

I am chairman of MINC, the multilingual Internet names consortium.

But I'm speaking to you today as an Arab, also as an Arab-American.

The arguments we're hearing today, very valid, and I think the board in its wisdom will be undertaking, listening to them, and rendering an opinion and perhaps a resolution.

But I would like to draw another thought to you.

And this is why my points are neither for nor against, perhaps a challenge to ICANN board to consider the ramification in what these deliberations are about.

One, if the process was purely from the two goalposts of whether an application has fulfilled the requirements or not, then I think it's a simple process for you.

You can determine, and I'm sure you have the wisdom to determine whether it has or has not.

But there are other bigger issues at hand.

And this is not an issue of just privacy or the rights.

But let's consider the issue of IDNs or the multilingual Internet.

And speaking as an Arab here, I can tell you, I can speak on behalf of the Arabic community.

We met yesterday, and I think if you were to poll the streets of the governments, the private sector, you will get 90-plus percent that they would not be in favor of having anything to do with the adult or pornography in Arabic.

So perhaps the goal post that I would throw the challenge to the board is, the next time around when the process of application is put forth, perhaps a consideration is, how would that also affect the other communities that this process aims to serve? And perhaps one of the fundamental issues is that one IDNs are implemented, and existing TLDs that have been authorized will be able to go and deploy them, certain communities would really have serious concerns, because, as you all know, there is no Arabic DNS today.

We have been calling for it and working for it for years in this process.

And I know we have a lot of support from you on this.

But the reality is, if we have, for example, a .XXX and the IDN is implemented and the extensions in other languages are in, it is foreseeable that the Arabs will end up with an Arabic adult Internet long before we have an Arabic Internet.

So — the point I'm trying to say to you is, this process, I hope, can learn from a lot of the things we've been telling you about over the years in private and in public, so that when the processes of what should be authorized or not authorized, or what should be resolved to be agreed, it should factor in other ramifications, especially that we are all considering turning this ASCII Internet into a multilingual Internet so that we can help and assist the non-ASCII world of becoming participants in this forum.

So now I can ask you, Vint, to tell me if I was listening to the original discussions.

Thank you.

VINT CERF: Yes.

I think you were.

And thank you very much for those comments, Khaled.

We're at the point now where we would switch over to positive side of support.

Let me ask how many people are going to be speaking in favor? I see Stuart, I see Michael.

I see Ron Andruff.

I see the gentleman there whom I don't — whose name I don't know.

And I think we have one comment from Bret Fausett.

Bret actually put his comment in earlier this morning.

MICHAEL PALAGE: Vint, if I comment I don't want to be pro or con.

VINT CERF: OK.

MICHAEL PALAGE: I would like to talk about process.

So perhaps that is a transition between — or I can wait until the end.

VINT CERF: Well, — MICHAEL PALAGE: I can wait until the end.

VINT CERF: Let's do that.

Actually, it might be more relevant to do that.

So let me ask the — actually, let me get Bret Fausett's comment, because he put it in very early in the session.

So I'll ask Kieren to speak to that and then Stuart.

KIEREN McCARTHY: Speak slowly and clearly, and no English slang, I'm told as well.

Bret Fausett posted this on the participation Website, so as general manager, I suppose I'll take it on myself to read it.

I will read it carefully, because he's a lawyer and I'm sure he's phrased it carefully.

He would like to point out he has no affiliation with ICM registry who are the people applying for .XXX and no financial interest in the outcome of the board's decision.

On an issue as debated as .XXX , I imagine that many board members already have staked a position pro or CON on the merits of this new gTLD proposal.

For those who are still considering this proposal, I would encourage you to vote in favor of a new .XXX top-level domain for at least three independent reasons.

Number one, no technical impediment exists to the creation of a .XXX top-level domain.

Neither the independent reviewers nor those submitting comments about .XXX have identified any technical impediment or issue of security and stability that would prevent the adoption of .XXX .

Point two, precedent recommends adoption of dot .XXX .

According to ICANN's independent reviewers and any objective review of their respective applications, both the proposal for .XXX and the prospective registry operator for .XXX meet the criteria for sTLD selection at least as well as the other sponsored top-level domain proposals that have preceded it.

TLDs such as dot travel, dot cat, dot jobs, dot Asia, dot tel, and dot MOBI.

Each of these TLDs had its own problems and received objections from various parts of the Internet community.

ICANN was quite correct to select these new gTLDs over the objections of those who believe that geographic locations should not be gTLDs and those who believe the concept of travel was too broad and employment too narrow.

ICANN even approved dot MOBI over the objection of Tim Berners-Lee.

ICANN should continue to show its leadership in the development of the Internet's infrastructure by treating .XXX in the same straightforward, apolitical manner in which it has treated the other TLD applications.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, .XXX is a regulatory hook that will enable improved content labeling.

On its merits, .XXX deserves addition to the root zone.

When it is adopted, .XXX will not be a short-term solution to parental concerns about keeping age-appropriate content away from children.

Nothing magic will happen the moment that .XXX is added to the root zone.

Those who criticize .XXX , however, because it is not an immediate turnkey solution to a problem, are missing its long-term benefits.

Along one path, .XXX is a regulatory hook on which governments can hang content restrictions to make parental content filtering more effective.

Along another path, .XXX is a strictly regulatory zone which content providers can use to ward off these same governmental mandates.

Either path will yield only modest changes in the short term, but in a longer window of five to ten years, .XXX ought to prove its merit as an effective labeling scheme.

As both a longtime ICANN observer and as a protective parent of three young children, I encourage the board to vote in favor of this proposal.

And that's Bret Fausett's statement.

VINT CERF: Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]

VINT CERF: Appreciate — if there are more, I'm going to ask you to hold them.

KIEREN McCARTHY: OK.

VINT CERF: I have committed 20 minutes of time to ICM. And that begins now. So, Stuart, you're on.

STUART LAWLEY: Stuart Lawley, president and CEO of ICM Registry.

Over three years ago, ICM submitted its application to operate the sponsored top-level domain for responsible adult webmasters.

Since then, ICM has gone well beyond what was required of any other sTLD applicant and well beyond what was reasonably required in reference to its application.

To demonstrate its compliance with the RFP criteria.

Specifically in relation to the shopper evaluation criteria, ICM has demonstrated firstly that .XXX will bring concrete new value to the global name space and the Internet community as a whole by facilitating badly needed voluntary industry self-regulation, by creating a forum for the sponsor community to work together with other impacted stakeholders around the world to develop industry best practices that are informed by the expertise of child advocates and the free expression community and enhancing the ability of Internet users to control their own online experience.

Secondly, ICM precisely defined the sponsored community for .XXX as a self-identified group of responsible webmasters, adult webmasters, who wish to work together to implement industry best practices in a specific, easily identifiable virtually marketplace, while providing a forum for interaction and cooperation with other community stakeholders affected by the adult content industry.

ICM demonstrated the community's need for a voluntary sTLD to create an easily identifiable virtually marketplace in which to create and enforce industry best practices, to engage in diverse stakeholder community around these best practices, and this need is not being met elsewhere.

And to enable responsible adult webmasters to market a reliable, fraud and phishing-free experience to consenting adults, consenting adult consumers of legal content, thereby producing for them enhanced, more reliable revenue streams for the registrants.

Thirdly, not only did ICM demonstrate the appropriateness of the sponsoring organization and the policy formation environment ICM was asked to provide — and — sorry, ICM was asked to provide and, in fact, did provide a signed contract with the family online safety institute to address the board's request for ironclad performance guarantees.

FOSI is a non-for-profit organization that's fully independent of ICM and whose founding members include the largest and most well-known e-Commerce players from around the globe and whose independence in this matter are beyond question.

These include AOL, AT&T, British Telecom, Cisco, the GSM association, Microsoft, Telemex, and Verizon.

Further, in response to concerns about the adequacy of ICANN's own policy formation environment, which served as the model for IFFOR, ICM provided structural guarantees to ensure that all policy commitments made through the RFP process would be fulfilled in the form of direct contractual recourse against ICM by ICANN for any failure to fulfill these commitments.

Fourthly, ICM demonstrated the strong support of the specifically defined sponsored community.

Strong demand for .XXX by adult webmasters, which has been documented repeatedly in the last three years and which includes substantial recent support in the form of over 77,000 prereservations, this demonstrated support far outweighs the opposition generated by webmasters who are potentially not part of the defined community.

And prereservation is still ongoing, with hundreds coming in daily.

Here are the facts with the ICM sponsored community.

By the end of February, over 76,000 adult Website names had been pre-reserved in .XXX since June of last year.

We launched the industry pre-reservation service at a time when ICANN had rejected our contract, so to many participants in the marketplace, we were on life support, if not dead and buried.

But since then we have got 76,000 registration, and we offered to accept reservations from webmasters or their authorized agents operating adult sites in other ICANN-recognized top-level domains.

We didn't advertise or market this service.

We literally just made it available on our Website.

The pre-reservations are not speculative.

Over 71,000 of the pre-reservations are for unique strings which are consistent with regular registration patterns.

The pre-reservations are not defensive.

Less than 1 percent of the pre-reservations were submitted by webmasters who have expressed opposition to dot .XXX .

ICM has documented these pre-reservations.

We provided ICANN with the documentary evidence of all the pre-reservations and even the ALEXA rankings for a random selection of the com, net and org sites corresponding to the reserved strings to say whether these are small, medium or large players.

Separately from this pre-registration data we supplied ICANN with details of 1217 supporters who said they wish to register since June 1st, 2005.

Visitors to the ICM registry Website can provide information in order to stay up with ICM registry news.

They provided their name, e-mail address and country.

1,217 subscriber voluntarily describe themselves as supporters and wish to register.

Only eight said they oppose the application.

We gave you a confidential copy of this information while public posting of this information would be inconsistent with fair information practices, even someone unfamiliar with the adult industry, and I assume most of you are, based on nothing more than a cursory review of the documents will clearly understand that this reflects adult webmasters who were, one, interested in .XXX ; two, voluntarily visited the ICM Website; three, voluntarily provided personal information; and four, selected from a drop-down list overwhelmingly support.XXX 's wish to register.

These supporters hail from all around the world.

From Australia to Zambia, with Latvia and 70 other countries in between.

In addition, nearly 300 additional webmasters have asked about registering in .XXX .

We have received people who didn't come to the Website but sent in generally supportive e-mails, over 300 of them.

And we've given those e-mail addresses to ICANN.

The original application included strong written community support.

In connection with the independent evaluation process, we submitted letters of support from industry members, with combined points of presence in more than 35 countries, responsible for generating a substantial share of the global online and adult entertainment revenue. p> And associated with many thousands of adult content webmasters.

None of these supporters are affiliated with ICM in any way, have any financial interest in the stake or the outcome of this process.

Even the sponsorship evaluation team noted that these letters reflected strong support from industry members.

The opposition to .XXX is substantially overblown.

ICM affirmatively disclosed the existence of a minority but vocal opposition to .XXX years ago, in particular in our board presentation to the board in Marina del Rey, Argentina in April 2005.

It's been so many years.

As you will hear more about from Bob Corn-Revere, the webmasters who oppose .XXX number in the hundreds and constitute only a fraction of the estimated tens of thousands of adult webmasters.

They have affirmatively misrepresented their strength.

They have posted numerous times under different screen names, e-mail addresses, they have used automated tools to generate postings under false e-mail addresses to route around the ICANN verification process, as well as many other unsavory activities that we have, by and large, when we spotted them, disclosed these fully to ICANN staff.

It's long past time to acknowledge that ICM has passed every test to establish this established in the sTLD RFP, and surmounted every barrier erected in the course of this RFP process.

In short, ICM defined the sponsored community of responsible adult webmasters with particularity.

ICM demonstrated the support and increasing coalescence of this sponsored community, its need for the TLD, and the benefits expected to flow from that.

We demonstrated the support and appropriateness of IFFOR as a sponsoring organization and worked diligently and creatively with ICANN staff to respond to each and every concern regarding the policy formation environment, and to provide extraordinary assurances that it would fulfill the various policy commitments outlined in the application and in the course of the RFP process.

In contrast, in the past three years, a few hundred webmasters opposed to .XXX have manipulated the public forums, overestimated the size of industry opposition.

I would like to now ask Bob Corn-Revere, an acknowledged and highly respected expert in free expression and a zealous advocate of such to address this in further details.

I would then ask for just a minute or so to close after Bob has spoken, if that's OK.

VINT CERF: Yes, it is.

Please go ahead, Bob.

ROBERT CORN-REVERE: Thank you, and good afternoon.

My name is Bob Corn-Revere.

I am partner at the Washington office of Dave advice, Wright, Tremaine, and I am outside council to ICM registry.

I want to say a few words about some of the substantive issues and substantive objections that have been raised to the .XXX proposal.

In particular, I'll talk about whether or not it actually will assist in individuals being able to select or deselect what content they want and also whether or not this is likely to lead to censorship.

But I want to really discuss those issues in the context in which Mr. Douglas raised them and in particular in the context of whether or not there is an overwhelming opposition by an organized sponsoring organization that really should be standing in the shoes of ICM registry as they tell it.

So to do that I do want to say a few words about the Free Speech Coalition.

And I want to acknowledge up front that I feel a little uncomfortable doing that, because I often work with the Free Speech Coalition on matters involving free speech in the United States.

They are one of many groups that have taken valuable stands on a variety of issues involving legislation in the United States.

That being said, they are not the only group. And I think it is a misnomer to stand before the board today and have their representative describe it as the trade association for the adult industry.

I think that's true in the United States, much less on a global level, I don't think that the Free Speech Coalition represents the world.

SUSAN CRAWFORD: I'm sorry, Bob did you mean to say that's not true in the United States?

ROBERT CORN-REVERE: Pardon the syntax. It is not true to say they represent the adult industry as a whole in the United States and certainly isn't true to say they represent the world.

For example, you can't compare the Free Speech Coalition to a recognized trade association like the motion picture association of America which represents all the major studios, nor could you compare it to a group like the international air transport association which has industrial members.

Instead, it is a small California-based group that got its start as legal defense fund in the early 1990s.

Although it has grown and then receded over the years, that largely has been in response to various legal challenges that have happened over the years.

As I say, their work in this area is valuable but it hardly qualifies them as the only trade association in the area.

Moreover, it's important to recognize that the Free Speech Coalition isn't an Internet-based group.

It represents the adult industry on a number of issues broadly, but that includes gentlemen's clubs, adult toy manufacturers, Websites have come in later but they in no way represent the majority of the membership.

Ms. Duke represented their members today at about 3,000.

I have no reason to really question that, but suggest that that really is attributable to a 2005 court case that said that anyone who signed up would get the protections of an injunction that was issued against various federal record keeping requirements.

So the membership of the Free Speech Coalition surged in 2005 from its usual level of a few hundred members to what we hear today as a few thousand members.

Again, we don't know what the makeup of that is it might be individual members because it does take individuals.

But to butt putt that in perspective a little bit, it's reported there are 9,000 members of the adult industry in the San Fernando Valley alone.

So I think viewing this as a global organization — and it may have international members, I take no position on that — but to bill it as the only organization that can represent people who want to sign up for .XXX is simply incorrect.

In that regard, it is true that Free Speech Coalition was one of the groups, and one of many, that ICM contacted as part of its application process.

Unfortunately an agreement was not able to be reached largely because Free Speech Coalition demanded and could not get complete control, exclusive control of the sponsoring organization.

Even at that, it's probably useful to recognize that the position of Free Speech Coalition has, well, probably the best word is evolved over time.

In an article about the Free Speech Coalition published in the Cardoza Arts and Entertainment Law Journal in 2004, the executive director at the time was asked about the proposal for the .XXX domain.

At that time, she said, "What are your thoughts on special domain for this type of material?" The executive director said "It's just a personal choice.

I think we probably made a bad decision in trying to debate this in a big way and put it out to our members.

We had a general membership meeting on it.

Right now we are neutral on it.

I encourage people who think it would work for them to do it but we are not going to endorse it one way or the other.

Now, clearly, the Free Speech Coalition has changed its public position.

But it's not clear to what extent that represents most of its members or what percentage of its members since there is a matter of active debate.

Finally, let me address some of the substantive objections that have been raised.

Largely, and unfortunately we haven't been able to engage in a direct dialogue on this, these are issues that I don't think the members of the Free Speech Coalition even believe themselves.

Whether or not a label will help children and whether or not it will lead to censorship.

As a theoretical matter, any labeling proposal, were it's through a domain name or others, could encourage regulators to regulate the material.

Everybody recognizes that.

And in fact, Free Speech Coalition has endorsed the proposal of the adult sites advocating child protection, the so-called RTA or restricted to adult label.

And in the RTA Website, where Free Speech Coalition probably lists itself as a supporter, many of these same arguments about whether it would be helpful or harmful are addressed and debunked.

For example, the question is asked, won't labeling my site set me up for censorship? The response: Site labels, key words, domain names, even certain types of images can all be used by ISPs or online intermediaries to filter out content.

As for government censorship, if certain government lawmakers could get away with making all pornography illegal, they would, but they can't.

Even the age verification provisions in the Child Online Protection Act were kept tied up in the court for years.

Are you worried with the government ordering all ISPs to block porn sites or all users, that is not a realistic concern.

That concern became even more unrealistic last week when the federal court in Philadelphia struck down again the child online protection act.

Finally, as to the substantive issues, I should mention that Jeffrey Douglas mentioned to you that the congressional research service did an analysis of legislation out there to indicate whether or not that would likely be upheld to make an adult domain mandatory if adopted in the United States.

I did bring along that copy of the congressional research report and nowhere in it can I find a statement that says this is likely to be upheld in the United States if adopted.

In fact, in its summary conclusion, it says that if a court viewed it as a content-based restriction on speech that it would be constitutional only if the court found it served a compelling governmental interest by the least restrictive means and goes on to say it is unclear whether making a .XXX domain mandatory would violate the first amendment.

We have given extensive reasons in our application materials indicating why it would not be upheld.

I think that really is just not a realistic issue.

Finally, Ms. Duke mentioned the XBIZ conference in Los Angeles.

What we did not mention was at the end of the session when the conversation was drawing to a close she asked Stuart if the .XXX proposal is approved, will you work with us and the answer is yes.

So people disagree about a lot of things but at the end of the day this would provide a structure for people to resolve those differences within a sponsoring organization.

Thank you.

VINT CERF: Thank you, Bob.

And Stuart you are back now for a moment.

STUART LAWLEY: If I can finish up and if anybody has any questions on the contract, Becky Burr is here to answer those.

Over three years ago we submitted the application to operate the sTLD for responsible adult webmasters.

The sponsorship evaluators were no big fans of the ICM proposal.

But then again, the sponsorship evaluators rejected eight out of the ten applications ICANN received.

And five of those eight applications are now in the root or shortly will be in the root.

The board's direction to staff to enter into commercial negotiations with ICM registry on June the 1st, 2005 was identical in every respect with the direction given to the board on dot Asia, dot cat, dot jobs, dot mobi, dot TEL and dot travel.

The record plainly shows that the vote reflected the board's determination that the ICM application met the RFP criteria.

I hope that the members of the board who now dispute the meaning of that vote will review the written record and consider the ways in which it strains credulity to suggest that the board would first spend hours discussing ICM's compliance with the sponsorship criteria and then direct a resourced constrained staff to enter into time-consuming contract negotiations and finally act on the proposed contract as it did on May the 10th, 2006 without first determining that the application was adequate.

Wizard of Oz fans may be persuaded to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain but the rest of us have an idea of what's really going on.

ICM registry did not ever and does not now suggest that the creation of .XXX was a no brainer.

ICM acknowledged and went out of its way to address and respond to each and every concern voiced by the board, by the GAC, by business users, and other constituencies and members of the ICANN community.

ICM will operate the domain in accordance with its commitments to you.

ICM registry did not ever and does not now suggest that triple X enjoyed the support of each and every member of the overall adult entertainment industry.

Indeed, from the earliest days, we went out of its way to point out to you the existence of industry opposition.

But ICM did show that .XXX enjoys the documented support of a sizable community of responsible webmasters.

And ICM will work hard to ensure that those opponents are included in the IFFOR policy-making process if they wish to be so.

And we defend the right of those opponents not to register in dot .XXX .

ICM did not ever and does not now suggest that .XXX will be a silver bullet to prevent children from stumbling upon adult content, but it did show that the creation of .XXX will bring concrete new value to the name space and the Internet by facilitating voluntary industry self-regular and by enhancing the ability of Internet users to control their online experience.

Creation of .XXX will not undermine important expression and association rights recognized in international law and treaty, nor will it ghetto-ize responsible adult webmasters.

It will provide a reliable fraud and phishing-free experience to consenting adult consumers of legal content, and thereby enjoy enhanced and more reliable revenue streams as a result.

The ICANN board debated and adopted the RFP criteria, and established the rules under which sTLD applications would be considered.

ICM met your criteria and followed your rules.

The registry agreement before you is not just another ICM proposal, but the joint product of ICM and ICANN staff arrived at through extended thoughtful and thorough negotiations.

It is time for you to approve that agreement, not just because failure to do will likely embroil ICANN in another legal contest but because it is the right thing to do.

That ends my presentation.

I'll answer any questions.

ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Just some clarification, Vint.

VINT CERF: Two issues here.

I have how many other speakers? I have Ron Andruff.

Stuart, would you — and we have another one there.

And we're very short on time.

ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Mine is a clarification question, please.

VINT CERF: Go ahead, Alex.

ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Mr. Lawley, I am completely lost by your reference to the Wizard of Oz.

Can you either tell me that there was no (inaudible) in that statement and I should be able to (inaudible) by just reading the Wizard of Oz and find know who the man behind the curtain is? Or maybe relate it to Don Quixote or some of those things that people in my country were reading at the age where you were reading the Wizard of Oz.

STUART LAWLEY: When Becky Burr comes to the microphone, she is the Wizard of Oz expert, so she can explain in more detail.

ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Can you explain the statement that you made.

STUART LAWLEY: The wizard of Oz, there's a man behind the curtain that's controlling the situation and they keep saying to go out and get the wicked witch's broomstick and then you will get what you want.

And they go off.

They say bring the broomstick back and you need to kill the wicked witch.

Are you sure you want us to do that?

And then they go out and do that and bring back the broomstick, and then there's just one more thing to do.

ALEJANDRO PISANTY: And the man behind the curtain would be?

VINT CERF: It might be Paul if it's the wizard of Oz.

[ Laughter ]

STUART LAWLEY: There may be several men behind the curtain.

STEVE GOLDSTEIN: In the volumes of information which your legal representative had submitted to the board, your representative had made a claim to refute the claim of the people who ran XBIZ that there was a packed house listening to your presentation and you submitted pictures which showed a nearly empty house to refute their claim.

But I did indeed look at the photos on XBIZ Website and it did appear to me to be quite a packed house with a few people having to stand.

I do admit, though, that during the course of the presentations, you could see people leaving, so that toward the end the house was maybe only half full.

But could you explain that discrepancy, please.

STUART LAWLEY: I think briefly, I attended that meeting, so did Bob Corn-Revere, and we had also attended the 2257 conference in the morning and other conferences there, and those rooms were literally jam-packed with know seats available and standing room only around the sides.

And the point that we were trying to prove, and we just went off to look at the sites to see if anyone had taken any pictures, and even one of our visitors, Stephen Balkin showed the room half empty halfway through.

I think one of the comments was submitted by a lawyer who said it was standing room only, jam-packed, and we said actually it wasn't, and we said it truly wasn't jam-packed, standing room only.

And even some of the opponents, notably bad doing is his handle, said he was embarrassed — sorry, there was enough room to stand up and do jumping jacks around the room.

So we were trying to debunk the hype, to what degree, whether it's three-quarters full, half full, two-thirds empty, is not absolutely the point.

It's to say it wasn't jam-packed, standing room only.

STEVE GOLDSTEIN: Let the record show that I took screen shots from what I saw that did show that there, if any, were maybe one or two empty seats and there were a few people standing and that they tended to refute the implications of the pictures that you submitted showed.

STUART LAWLEY: Those pictures were taken by another adult webmaster resource site.

VINT CERF: We will just go back and forth on this and won't get anywhere.

Are there any other questions at this point for Mr. Lawley? Susan.

SUSAN CRAWFORD: Very briefly, Mr. Lawley.

How do you think the global Internet community feels about pornography?

STUART LAWLEY: I think most — the global Internet community understands that it exists, that it's there, and by — to do nothing is not an answer.

And whilst I have just said this isn't the silver bullet, it's a start and a move in the right direction.

So I think people understand it's there, and nobody has come up with any great ideas about how to engage in responsible self-regulation on a global basis, not just a national basis, so users can make their own decision to select or avoid this content.

VINT CERF: Let me try to understand where we are here.

We are now running into the time we had allocated for the RALO pictures and also Ron Andruff is waiting to speak.

Peter you are next.

Is there anyone else who wishes to speak? Yes.

And Michael.

We have a problem, we have a lot of people who want to speak to this.

Lots of people who want to speak to this.

We are way over our time.

I'll take four comments now, two minutes each, starting with Peter.

PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I just want to put to you the question that I put to Ms. Duke.

How do we determine the nature of the sponsored community when — and let's put aside for a moment the proportion of it — but a proportion of what might appear to be the sponsored community comes out in active opposition to it? How do we — how do we weigh that? And how is it that this group be can be just self-selecting to whether or not they're in it or not as opposed to a predefined sponsored community, which is what I think this thing was originally set out to be.

STUART LAWLEY: Yeah, the definition is those members of the adult entertainment community that wish to identify themselves as such and work together in this virtual marketplace.

And, in effect, the bottom line of what we're trying to say here in a nutshell, is that the .XXX extension will give an immediate flag to — from the industry's perspective, to would be-surfers of some kind of, these guys are operating under a code of conduct.

I can go to that site.

I'm not likely to stumble by accident into child pornography.

I'm less likely to download viruses.

I'm more likely to be treated under the code of conduct and not get cheated on my credit card.

PETER DENGATE THRUSH: You're doing what Ms. Duke did, talk about the benefits of joining.

I'm trying to work out whether there is, in fact, a community, if it's self-defined and if an operator could be in it one day and choose not to be the following day.

Do we have a sponsored community if it's this loosely defined?

STUART LAWLEY: That's those what I mean to choose to register, just like dot travel, out of all the people in the travel business, 25,000 of them have decided to register.

We already have 75,000 people who said, yes, I'm interested.

I want to register and use this domain.

That's a big enough community, in my opinion.

VINT CERF: I said four, Peter was one.

Ron has certainly been waiting.

RON ANDRUFF: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As Amadeu said a few minutes ago, this is a very uncomfortable topic for many of us.

And also, I would say it's as much uncomfortable for me.

But I think there's a couple of points that are important.

I fully support Bret Fausett's statement.

This is a very difficult one to define.

It's very obvious.

We don't know if there's a community or not a community, and both sides are hiding behind a statement of privacy.

But the bigger issue, in my view as an individual, is that as the body responsible for envisioning a future Internet, we have to take a stand at some point in our processes to establish a place where parents can have comfort that they can regulate, they can determine that their children will not be able to see these things if they so choose.

If we don't create that space, then we have a problem that will continue to exacerbate itself.

So I'm not necessarily for or agains