.xxx registry sues US government

An anonymous reader writes in to say that "ICM Registry LLC, the company behind the proposed .xxx internet porn domain, is to sue two departments of the US government for access to documents it claims show the US pressured ICANN into rejecting the domain. The Florida-based startup will sue the Department of Commerce and the Department of State to get them to release documents that they redacted when they responded to a Freedom Of Information Act request that ICM filed last year."

Comments

Those internal documents

[zerojoker]

[http://www.internetgovernance.org/pdf/xxx-foiapag e.pdf] are a very interesting read and show how the US Government changed its mind from neutrality to influencing the decision. Probably due to pressure from conservative family-oriented politicans...

Re:Why?! This .xxx registry is a big waste of spac

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of kids have a fun time looking at previews of pay sites as well.

They only need an older brother/friend that points them to this . All the pr0n you need...

A stack of links

[jginspace]

I went a searchin' for alternative sources - that cbronline article has problems in Opera for one thing - http://bigblog.com/search.cgi?id=535484929

Re:WTF? Redacted?

[six11]

I completely agree that these people (government types) play this childish "nyaaa-nyaaah I know something you don't know!" game. I don't know if things are more likely to be redacted now than before 9/11, but it's been crazy for a long time. A long time.

Yesterday, I was just curious what one had to do in order for the FBI to start a file on you (something that I aspire to have at some point), so I googled for "How do I get an FBI file?"

The second hit is the John Lennon FBI Files, which is hilarious and frightening at the same time. In particular: The Parrot Story was at first given to a researcher in a completely redacted form. Only after going through a court battle over this and other redacted documents did the true, criminally horrifying nature of the Parrot Story become clear. John Lennon had been harboring "Linda", who owned a parrot:

THE PARROT STORY

The informer's report written by Julie Maynard about her trip from Madison to New York in March 1972 continues with a story about "a girl there named Linda" who has a parrot that "interjects 'Right On' whenever the conversation gets rousing" (NY-88 page 5). That story was featured in news reports on the settlement as an example of the trivial information the FBI had been collecting in 1972, information to which the FBI devoted substantial resources to keep secret through ensuing decades. This page includes a variety of other movement gossip and information, none of which describes plans for criminal activity. This page was withheld in its entirety for fourteen years as confidential and then released as part of the 1997 settlement.

Remember, that ENTIRE STORY had been redacted, and remained so until after a court forced the FBI to reveal what the page contained. Not only did the federal government spend American tax dollars collecting the story, they spent money, time, and legal resources depending their goal of keeping it secret.

I suspect the reason the government does this is similar to the reason that the RIAA or commercial software publishers might corrupt peer-to-peer networks with corrupted versions of files. In both the redaction and peer-to-peer cases, The Man is introducing noise into the medium and frustrates efforts of users to get at the content they are looking for.

Maybe the sequel to the Freedom of Information Act should be the Freedom from Redactions act.

Using TLDs For Filtering Harmful

[EzInKy]

There is a W3C article, Why Using TLDs for Filtering is Ineffective, Harmful, and Unnecessary, that points out all the downfalls of creating a .xxx domain. This excerpt sums up why I am personally opposed to the idea:

"7. The definition of what is offensive obviously differs greatly from country to country, from year to year, and from person to person. If bare ankles are considered obscene in some cultures, but are permitted in photos of Web sites in France selling sandals, then individuals wishing to keep photos of bare ankles out of their home using filtering on ".xxx" are unlikely to succeed. How will sites about safe sex or AIDS be treated? Who will establish what is art and what is pornography?"

Also, having read these documents it appears to me that this whole thing is nothing but a land grab by ICM.

MOD PARENT UP... to stop un-informed ranting

[HighOrbit]

Exactly, there are several exemptions. As somebody who has filed a FOIA request before ( as part of a grievance process), I know first hand that you often get redacted documents back as a matter of course. You can read the full text of the "Freedom of Information Act" here.

Specifically, the exemptions are [and this case my money is on (b)(5)]:

• Exemption (b)(1) - National Security Information
• Exemption (b)(2) - Internal Personnel Rules and Practices
• - "High" (b)(2) - Substantial internal matters, disclosure would risk circumvention of a legal requirement
• - "Low" (b)(2) - Internal matters that are essentially trivial in nature.
• Exemption (b)(3) - Information exempt under other laws
• Exemption (b)(4) - Confidential Business Information
• Exemption (b)(5) - Inter or intra agency communication that is subject to deliberative process, litigation, and other privileges
• Exemption (b)(6) - Personal Privacy
• Exemption (b)(7) - Law Enforcement Records that implicate one of 6 enumerated concerns
• Exemption (b)(8) - Financial Institutions
• Exemption (b)(9) - Geological Information

Re:I wonder what would happen if..

[Anonymous Coward]

Like New.net which already sells their own version of the .xxx domain name.