Two Porn Companies Take ICANN and .xxx Registrar To Court

SharkLaser writes "Two of the largest porn companies on the internet, Manwin and Digital Playground, yesterday sued both ICANN and ICM Registry, which runs the .xxx TLD, over extorting defensive registrations with ICANN's blessing. 'The complaint focuses on ICM's recently concluded "sunrise" period, during which porn companies, for about $200, could apply to own a .xxx address matching their trademark or .com domain.' Schools also felt the same way, and had to reserve domains under their name so that no porn content could be put up on them. The .xxx TLD has also previously been subject to criticism by both religious groups and adult industry, but for different reasons. Religious groups believe the .xxx TLD legitimizes pornography, while the adult industry believes it could lead to censorship."

Comments

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Although the only real solution is to replace the TLD system altogether.

just another form of censorship

[Adult film producer]

Maybe the next TLD will be .X13 and then .X18.. etc. The same thing that the MPAA does with film ratings.

Re:just another form of censorship

[geekoid]

I would ahve no problem if theior was an agancy that dictated those guidline and sites ahd to put them in a searchable area of the web page.

So you would have g/pg/pg13/nc17/ 18+/ No Rating

Seriously, Give me a tool to filter out unwanted site reliable.

Re:just another form of censorship

[SomePgmr]

Except, who creates standards of appropriateness for an international resource like the web? You can't without creating a nonsensical, administrative mess of censorship and general disagreement.

That's just another example of how .XXX was just a cash grab. Nobody can effectively categorize and police content on the web outside of a voluntary service, which will never be 100%. And so there's no way to say, "all porn must move to .XXX". If you can't move all porn to .xxx, then there's no real reason to have it.

It was just a way to make a crapload of money from people that don't even want the resource, just so that they can protect their existing services. That's shitty, and they only got away with it because the target was the porn industry.

Re:just another form of censorship

[bmo]

>Seriously, Give me a tool to filter out unwanted site reliable.

Just being lazy and checking Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content-control_software

Windows applications
Cyclope-Series (proprietary)
Green Dam Youth Escort (Mainland Chinese Government mandated software)
K9 Web Protection (proprietary, free for home use)
Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway (proprietary)
NetNanny (proprietary)
SurfWatch (proprietary)
SafeSquid (proprietary, free for up to 3 users)
Windows Live Family Safety (proprietary, free)
Secure Web SmartFilter EDU, formerly known as Bess
FB Limiter (free, paid upgrade available)
[edit]
Mac applications
K9 Web Protection (proprietary, free for home use)
SurfWatch (proprietary, free for home use)
[edit]
Hardware solutions
Lightspeed Systems (hosted or hardware, for mobile or desktop)
[edit]
Web browser
[edit]
Internet Explorer
Content Advisor (After IE 6)
[edit]
Other
CleanFeed (ISP based)
ClearOS (unix/linux and ISP based)
DansGuardian (unix/linux and ISP based)
DynDNS (DNS based, with a free plan)
Mobicip (cloud-based)
OnlineFamily.Norton (cloud-based)
OpenDNS (DNS/ISP based, free for Families and Non-commercial users)
SafeSquid (unix/linux and ISP based)
Scieno Sitter (system unknown: used exclusively by Church of Scientology members under an NDA)
SmartWeb (Parental Control for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch platforms)
Websense (system unknown: notable for use by China, Yemen, and US Governments)

Re:just another form of censorship

[PopeRatzo]

Hell if you only wanted to see her in plastic there is plenty of CGI cartoon crap that will give you any celeb in any pose you want.

Citation needed.

ICANN's Authority

[Anonymous Coward]

The $200 fee is bullshit, and clearly unfair profiteering. My tax dollars went toward the development of the Internet. Who gave ICANN the authority to require another $200 from me to register a domain name?

Re:ICANN's Authority

[CmdrPony]

But it's not under $10/year. It's $200, and companies have to register product names, typos etc too.

Re:ICANN's Authority

[tomhudson]

I know that XXX domains are $200 a year - that wasn't the question I was replying to. The OP asked why there was any justification to charge ANY fee to register a domain name in ANY .TLD (since it used to be free, until Network Solutions got a monopoly and then started gouging at $100 per name, and finally it was opened up to competition and the price dropped to $50, then $35, then $25, then $20, then $12.50, and now under $10).

Re:ICANN's Authority

[mysidia]

If they were only charging a nominal fee, such as $1/year, noone would be complaining. The high fee is the extortionate part.

We sure know it doesn't reasonably cost $200 a year per domain to create and maintain the database entry, answer queries, and provide WHOIS service.

The high fee is purely opportunistic price gouging. Hurry up and buy, before we let the general public take your name.

Religious groups

[Enderandrew]

Porn will exist on the internet whether you want it to or not. Using a .xxx TLD makes it that much easier to identify and filter porn if you don't want to see it.

Re:Religious groups

[Ethanol-fueled]

Religious people watch just as much, if not more, porn than non-religious people.

They're just publicly obligated to speak out against it, along with all the other enjoyable things in life like smoking Marijuana and polyamory.

Re:Religious groups

[Xanny]

Porn will exist in general. 99.9% of humans past the age of 13 have sexual urges, and satisfying them through images and video causes no harm to anyone, it just makes them feel good. Its like drug prohibition. Porn doesn't hurt your neighbor in ANY WAY, but the fact it exists offends them, like they want to change the fundemental laws of the universe to make it so it can't exist. Since they don't have the education to even know how to do that, they just complain to government and the "moral" fabric of society takes over. That might sound judgmental, but having grown up in the last two decades, all I see is old people complaining about things that have no influence or effect on them and preventing everyone else from doing what they want to satisfy their own superiority complex. It gets old.

Re:Religious groups

[EdIII]

Porn doesn't hurt your neighbor in ANY WAY

Ohh, I dunno about that.

I videotaped myself whacking off in the backyard a couple of times and the neighbor got pretty pissed off. Something about how it "ruined" his view from the balcony or some other crap like that.

Other than that I agree with you. Bunch of Quakers out there.

Re:Religious groups

[DrBoumBoum]

Using a .xxx TLD makes it that much easier to identify and filter porn

You would have for that to force all porn to use an .xxx domain, which is impossible, be it only because nobody's able to define porn precisely.

Basically this "black-list" approach is ridiculous, unenforceable and ineffective, and was simply devised from the start as a rip-off. To achieve the goal that you're proposing, the simple solution was to standardize a white-list approach, where sites that don't contain porn would advertise this fact using a HTTP header for instance. Then any site breaking the rule could be quickly and effectively reported and prosecuted.

Re:Religious groups

[Dwonis]

Using a .xxx TLD makes it that much easier to identify and filter porn if you don't want to see it.

RFC 3675 disagrees with you.

Re:Religious groups

[bmo]

>1. 99.9% of humans past the age of 13 have sexual urges.
  -While I am sure the percentage is high you have only skewed this to your own ends.

Without sexual urges the human race would have ceased to exist. Lack of sexual urge has been mostly bred out and is seen as "not normal" by most people skilled in the sciences of biology and psychology, usually attributed to hormone imbalance and depression. He has not skewed the data. You have ignored the data all around you.

--
BMO

Re:Religious groups

[Adrian Lopez]

They certainly have little problem nailing people for child porn, for example.

So little problem, in fact, that parents have been prosecuted for innocent pictures of their naked children.

Or to put it another way: it's not as simple as you think it is.

Re:Religious groups

[ElectricTurtle]

I think you significantly underestimate the number of women, especially younger ones, who watch porn. It's a market with a lot of opportunity considering that they want different niches than do men, but increasing numbers want it nonetheless.

Further, the vast majority of porn actresses are not being "trafficked" ... makes me wonder if you even know what the word means. (Nor does anybody get locked up for watching porn other than kiddie or snuff, and that's not because it's porn but because it's kiddie rape or homicide.)

Re:Religious groups

[SuricouRaven]

Alcohol is legal because it's been established too long to ban. Like tobacco.

I debate with anti-porn crusaders a lot, and their standard approach is to convince themselves that pornography is some super-addictive drug-like poison that'll destroy a person's life with ease. If they can't find any actual mechanism of damage, they make one up. They'll even claim it is spiritually damaging, which has the nice advantage of being impossible to disprove. Take, for example, this quote from pressure group the Family Research Council:

"Pornography is a major threat to marriages, the family, and the society at large. It is not a private choice without public consequence. Pornography alters both sexual attitudes and behavior, undermining marriage, which in turn, undermines the stability of the entire community.

It goes on to list all manner of studies which prove pornography causes all manner of health problems, but I'm not even going to bother checking into the studies myself because I know the FRC has a long history of using worthless junk studies churned out by political pressure groups and distorting the findings even of legitimate studies. But that doesn't matter. It's the confirmation bias in action. If you tell an anti-porn crusader that 'scientific studies' show that, as the FRC puts it, 'Pornography viewing and sexual offense are inextricably linked' then they'll believe the claim without actually wanting to look at the studies.

Re:Religious groups

[DrBoumBoum]

Simple, complicated, whatever -- the lines have been drawn.

Really it's not a line, it's a large grey band, and it's moving all the time. What was considered unacceptable in the 60's is now totally boring. But anyway, my point was not that the government will not be able to draw an arbitrary line and prosecute people according to the mood of the day. They can and they will, as you've stated, and very happily at that; they will never balk at using and showing their power. My point is simply that it will be useless in keeping porn off the non-xxx domains.

It IS extortion

[tompaulco]

Domain names cost like $7. Why do they have to pay $200 for one in another TLD just because it has the same base name? Disband ICANN and ICM and sell of their assets.
Domains used to be free. Whose brother-in-law in congress gave these a-holes authority to charge money for a free service?

Re:It IS extortion

[mysidia]

Domains really couldn't truly be free forever. When the first troll arrived on the internet, dispute resolution became necessary,

Nonsense... dispute resolution wasn't necessary, for 25 years during which the NIC was in operation, and the internet had broad commercial use for a long time with plenty of trolls, "dispute resolution" and ICANN and came long after the Network Solutions InterNic started charging outlandish prices for domains; the inception of ICANN was in 1998...

There was a very simple dispute resolution process.... file a lawsuit and let the courts sort it out, while preserving the rights of the parties involved. A much fairer, more proper process than what we have today.

There's a much simpler reason domains can't be free though -- the US government stopped funding the NIC, due to its commercial use - it was deemed the funding has to come from the private sector.

It's not free to run a domain registry, the money has to come from somewhere.

Ideally a non-profit organization would have formed to operate the registry for the benefit of the community; and the community of ISPs / DNS users would support that registry by utilizing it.

Guess what... that part didn't happen. Turns out there is so much money to be made running a domain registry, for-profit entities slipped in there first through their existing contracts, lots of money to be made by treating domain names as tangible items that "expire" or are "rented" at high price instead of community resources allocated to the registrant, with costs to be recovered from the community of users.

Instead of a "non-profit" central domain registry operated in a manner that bests benefits the entire community and all registrants.

We have a multitude of for-profit registries... that's the substitute answer. Instead of providing the community as a whole a single central DNS service that bests serves the community, a strange idea one out that if we have enough for-profit organizations competing, and all selling the same registry-operator service with their own markup that is remarkably similar across all registrars (with special discounts to certain orgs that register hundreds of thousands of superfluous domains), that somehow makes it "OK".

Re:Parent is Goatse

[Samantha Wright]

Little-known fact: humanity achieved strong AI almost a decade ago. Unfortunately, we botched its sense of humour. All lazy trolls on the Internet are actually just one super-intelligent perl script.

"sunrise fees were excessive"

[muon-catalyzed]

$200 is definitely a high price when you try to register all typos, abreviations and variants of your mark, but a good price to deter squatters and bulk buyer speculators.

Re:"sunrise fees were excessive"

[stephanruby]

...but a good price to deter squatters and bulk buyer speculators

I vote that we move all ecommerce and technical sites to .xxx since they do seem to have better quality control.

Re:why can everyone be happy.

[bmo]

I mean .xxx does in some sense acknowledge that people market pron.

When is the last time you paid attention to a TLD? When is the last time *anyone* paid attention to a TLD?

It also should make it MUCH easier for people who want to avoid seeing pron to not be spammed by it.

You are suggesting that all the porn providers would magically all move over to the .xxx domain by themselves, for your convenience. Gosh, you're naive and lazy.

And if you are being spammed by porn, I suggest you examine exactly which websites you are going to. I only get porn spam by visiting, you know, porn sites.

Is it censorship to not look at things I don't want to and now allow them to be seen by people using equipment I have authority over?

English, motherfucker, do you speak it?

Let me try to parse that....

Oh yeah, you can subscribe to one of the many filtering companies out there like Websense and Bluecoat. You can even set your DNS to use the filtering at OpenDNS, which is free (well, they take your demographics and such). There is no shortage of companies that will help you shield your eyes, should you want it. The fact that you are offended by stuff you see says 2 things about you: that you are thin skinned and lazy.

It seems to me .xxx meets a legitimate content labeling goal that can make everyone's life easier because we all understand what kind of 'information' should be labeled in that way and can act appropriately.

Go be a nanny somewhere else.

--
BMO

Re:why can everyone be happy.

[BenoitRen]

Who defines what is porn? Two persons on opposite sides of the planet will have very different opinions on that. That's why there's fear of censorship. It opens the way for a law to have everything deemed pornographic to be moved under the .xxx TLD, which means that the website might as well not exist from the point of view of many networks.

It's Extortion

[brainzach]

This is just a racket to force many companies to pay ICANN for protection.

Unlike the uselss .biz and .co TLDs that no one care about, .xxx can be used to be actively exploit and damage the names of respected businesses and organizations.

Legitimate porn companies will probably stay away from .xxx names because it is saying that we can't afford a real TLD. It will also open themselves up to be easily censored. There is nothing advantageous to it.

Re:Parent is Goatse

[Mashiki]

Makes sense. If I had a sense of humor, made via perl I'd inflict my misery on everyone too.

For Fear Of Godwinning...

[nick_davison]

Porn will exist on the internet whether you want it to or not. Using a .xxx TLD makes it that much easier to identify and filter porn if you don't want to see it.

Jewish owned sites will exist on the internet whether you want them to or not. Using a .jew TLD makes it that much easier to identify and filter Jewish sites if you don't want to see them.

Jewish owned businesses will exist in Germany whether you want them to or not. Using a Star of David badge makes it that much easier to identify and filter Jewish businesses if you don't want to use them.

Jewish people will exist in Germany whether you want them to or not. Using a Star of David badge makes it that much easier to identify and filter Jewish people if you don't want to associate with them.

That chain of thought started out as seeming pretty damn reasonable in an era when, not just Germany but the US, the UK, France, Russia, you name it, all regarded Jewish people, particularly Jewish businesses, with suspicion. Why shouldn't people have the right to choose where to do business and avoid those they find morally offensive? It's just a badge, right? How badly could it get misused?

In any environment, singling out a group you regard as morally inferior, forcing them to wear badges is generally a slippery slope.

Mix in the US government's current belief that it has the right to censor websites not just within the US but globally is their registrar is US based. Now what happens when a good [religion of your choice] president gets voted in and, pandering to his voter base, promised to disable .xxx. Now you've not only handed users the ability to easily filter their own content, you've handed politicians from a single nation the ability to globally switch off porn because they feel it's "bad."

How would America's gun lobby react if we ghettoized all gun related websites to .gun or .violence? How would our moral minority respond if we pushed all religious sites over to .religion? Of course, this being the US these days, .muslim would probably be plenty. How would the politicians supporting .xxx respond if all of their campaigning was forced to .politics and a flick of a browser switch could hide their campaigns from people? A lot more people are killed in the name of guns or of religion or of politics, a lot more lives ruined, than porn achieves. Yet the same people who support .xxx would freak over their interests being treated the same way.

Re:For Fear Of Godwinning...

[0123456]

Slippery slope fallacy does not an argument make.

The only 'slippery slope fallacy' is the laughable claim that once there's a power that the government can easily abuse... they won't abuse it.

Re:why can everyone be happy.

[bmo]

Who defines what is porn?

This.

We have Hasidic Jews in NYC that are upset at bicyclists going through their neighborhood on a Saturday wearing shorts and teeshirts. Especially if they are women.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/08/hipsters-hasidic-jews-fig_n_384579.html

And that's just the US. I just read a story about how women in Saudi Arabia, that if they have "sexy eyes" while otherwise clothed head-to-toe must also cover up their eyes, or face the beatings by the Religious Police.

http://jezebel.com/5860660/helpful-saudi-arabian-committee-suggests-women-cover-their-sexy-eyes

People don't tell control freaks and prudes to fuck-off nearly as much as they need to.

--
BMO

Re:why can everyone be happy.

[Sir_Sri]

Let me guess, you are an american?

Those of us outside the US pay a lot more attention to TLD's than the US does. Because the difference between .com, and .ca or .uk can be substantial.

Lets say you're making a display, and you want to call yourself 'vivid' because well, you make displays that are vivid. (Or maybe you're HTC making a phone you want to brand that way, same deal) and someone else wants to equally correctly, but in a completely different context brand themselves 'vivid'.

Maybe you are Apple Records, and this pair of jackass hacker dudes want to be Apple computer, and someone else who wants to do porn was given the unfortunate name of Apple.

TLD's are great for context, and they're great for blocking stuff at work that you don't want employees involved with. Around here makes a lot of sense to block .gov, because well, it's the wrong .gov, but search engines still spit out forms and stuff, and that doesn't do us a lot of favours. It's easier to keep it away from your employees than let them be stupid and waste hours trying to sort out paperwork for the wrong government. (This is somewhat more problematic between various commonwealth governments, which for example share a lot of department names, they're all "Her Majesties Government" on official paper work and so on, it's not so much of an issue with the US because for example, no one else spells defence defense, but I've had issues with NAFTA stuff like that were someone wasn't smart enough to do paperwork for the correct country and we had to do it over). It also gives you more variants on useful words so that you don't have just one monopolizing brand on a name, even when none of Apple Records, Apple Corp, or Apple Inc (Apple Computer) actually sell Apples, nor are they related to any person who has been unfortunately named Apple. Which I guess is an argument for more TLD's that are context sensitive. .com and .org at one point were supposed to mean different things potentially.

Re:why can everyone be happy.

[bmo]

.com and .org at one point were supposed to mean different things potentially.

You just nailed why TLDs no longer matter. It doesn't matter any more what you or I thought TLDs are supposed to mean. They mean nothing now. They are placeholders. You are lucky if a country code TLD actually matches where the website actually originates from or is targeted to.

Which is why you should pay attention more to what it says on the front page than it says in the TLD.

someone wasn't smart enough to do paperwork for the correct country and we had to do it over

So the "Her Majesty's Government of Australia" on the top of the page did not differentiate from "Her Majesty's Government of Northern Ireland?" I don't know about you, but I find governments to be pretty possessive about their names and make sure they're plastered all over every web page, print publication, video, film, etc.

>gov meaning explicitly US government is bad.

I agree, and it's an argument why TLDs should be done away with. We should have country codes at most.

--
BMO

That is the next step

[SmallFurryCreature]

Has EVERYONE forgotten about .mobi and .travel? There ARE already industry specific TLD's and they failed dismally. In fact, I am in the industry and when I asked at fairly high level people why .xxx was expected to go any better then .travel and .mobi it was awfully silent.

INCLUDING about the claim "well if nobody wants it the price will just drop" with the question "But you invested a fortune in lobbying so you will then just give up instead of using your bought politicians to mandate porn sites to buy an XXX domain".

Baby steps. First you register the jews, then you make them identifiable, well you know the rest. Godwin? Yes absolutely, it is not about the eradiction of undesirables BUT the .xxx domain has some very odd supporters. Lots of politicians that would dearly love to see porn gone (and freedom of expression) supported the .xxx domain. Why? I think a phase 2 might happen maybe not by design but by the business behind it who spend a fortune getting this wanting to make sure it succeeds. Again with Godwin but do you think the census takers at IBM who recorded the faith of people in Germany knew the final solution?

Anyway, ICANN has long been thinking about launching endless TLD's. Think .gun or .apple is bad? How about .paris and .washington? Each town, their own TLD, every business their own TLD.

.xxx is an experiment. Not so much about whether their is a market but how a market can be forcible created.

A lot of people think they can get .xxx to work for them, it is sold to some porn companies as in that the .xxx domain will be more legit so they can get better deals with mainstream business for advertising... yes, they really are that stupid.

Playboy had no problem getting mainstream advertising but most porn sites are a squalid dirty mag that even the industry itself would be reluctant to advertise in.

But you can claim you read playboy.COM for the articles. Good luck doing that with playboy.xxx

For decades the industry has attempted to seem legit, that they are just a business, just like Playboy is. And now a lot of them think the best way to do that is cover their faces in the cum of the .xxx tld. Yeah, that will work. Why not wear a star and paint your face black (the only difference between Germany and the US is that you don't need to get blacks to wear anything to tell them apart. People can just tell it seems. Must be the big noses)

100% is a red herring

[reiisi]

Making a 100% barrier is not the point.

A certain amount of self-regulation will occur, and that will be better than the present.

The companies and schools that get excited about their names being used in the .xxx domain, well, if they get excited about such things, let them pay for the blocking move.

Internet users who see "washington.edu" and "washington-edu.xxx" in a browser that doesn't hide the TLD are going to be aware that the latter is not the former.

The .xxx domain is not the best solution theoretically possible, but I don't have any real hope that all internet users will suddenly figure out how to keep their libidos in check.