British porn domain mastermind fights US Government
.xxx blocked by US Gov, Lawley claims
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
The British man behind the proposed .xxx internet domain believes the US Government has intervened to thwart his plans. Stuart Lawley is fighting a court battle to retrieve the documents he says would prove his case.
Lawley made dotcom millions with web design and hosting firm Oneview.net which was floated then sold before the first internet crash, and has bank rolled the seven-year proposal to have a top level domain for pornography.
His firm ICM Registry was awarded the right to operate the domain but contractual wrangling is more about the conservative Bush administration's connections to the religious right than they are about the contract itself, Lawley told technology podcast OUT-LAW Radio.
"We were hoping to sign our contract which was a standard contract that most other registries have, until the United States Government intervened," said Lawley, who lives in Florida. "They had been lobbied very heavily by the Christian conservative groups here in the United States."
Lawley says that the US Department of Commerce's view of the proposal changed, which filtered down to ICANN. He said that he obtained some government documents under freedom of information legislation outlining parts of his case but that crucial elements were redacted, which means they were blanked out.
"We received documentation that showed clearly what had gone on. Some of the documents were sent in redacted form and we have litigation in the District of Columbia courts against the United States Department of Commerce and the United States Department of State to try and force them to turn over these documents that we allege show the level of interference in the ICANN process," said Lawley.
"The documents show that up to a certain date the Department of Commerce understood our application and were mildly approving of it," said Lawley. "After several high level meetings between Christian conservative leaders and administration and Department of Commerce officials the tone very much changed overnight into 'how do we stop this' and 'how do we kill it'. That's the nature of the documents we are trying to get more detail on."
Lawley says that the .xxx domain is a good idea because it introduces some self-regulation into a $5bn industry that does not currently police itself. His proposal mandates that anyone registering a .xxx domain must tag their content so that it is labelled as pornographic or adult material.
Even if the .xxx site merely points to a .com or .net domain, the content to which it ultimately points must be tagged, he said. He also said that $10 of the $60 annual registration fee will go to a foundation set up by his company to fund child protection online.
Copyright © 2007, OUT-LAW.com
OUT-LAW.COM is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.
COMMENTS
Why would anyone want to block this?!
I can't imagine why anyone would NOT want porn sites to have their own .xxx internet domain. This is coming from a Christian mommy of 2 (soon to be 3)! The .xxx websites would be easily identifiable to the average user; I myself have occasionally stumbled upon a .com address that contained porn when I thought I was looking up something else. It would be a simple matter for me as a parent to block all .xxx websites from my children. YES, give them their own top-level category! I would love to see this measure to go through. It is what the porn producers want to have and also what I want them to have, as it will make it easier to categorize them out of my family's internet content. I also like that 1/6 of the registration fee goes toward PROTECTING CHILDREN ONLINE. Any responsible porn producer should be acutely aware of this problem and I hope more of them will make their content harder for children to access, and also be sure that ALL of their content is of people age 18 or older. I think porn is a cancer on our society but as long as it's going to be around anyway, let's keep it in its place.
censoring vs. categorization of pornography
eros, I am not interested in censoring your pornography, only in keeping it appropriate to viewing audiences who are old enough to view it responsibly (18+) and who WANT to view it. What's wrong with confining the porn to people who are looking for it? Heaven knows there's enough of them out there.
adult site opposed to .xxx
One thing that Lawley neglected to mention is that the adult industry in teh US and internationally is opposed to the introduction of .xxx
We see it as a great profit making opportunity for Lawley with no benefit to the industry at all.
It may however give our opponents a great tool to further censor us.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
What you need to know about cloud backup
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Top 10 SIEM Implementer’s Checklist
