By Connor Young

YNOT – For those of you who are new to the industry and those who were blindsided by the recent news that the dot-xxx sponsored Top Level Domain was approved, I’m here to tell you this battle has been raging for a long time. You may not be aware of it, but opponents of the dot-xxx domain fought its eventual approval for more than eight years.

As one of the people who has been active in this fight since 2004, I am less than pleased with the news that Joan Irvine, who has been executive director of the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection for many years now, has decided to join forces with ICM Registry, the company responsible for the dot-xxx threat now hanging over the heads of every adult internet business.

From the start, I always felt ICM’s biggest hurdle in getting dot-xxx approved was the utter lack of community support. A sponsored TLD, like dot-travel or dot-edu, is supposed to have the support of the community it serves. It seemed logical that without community support, dot-xxx would fail to get the nod from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. My thoughts in this direction only increased when I witnessed the frantic efforts by ICM over the years to gain leverage on the issue. The more they tried to win support, the more it looked like they needed it.

ICM sought the support of the Free Speech Coalition, and its members declined to offer it. ICM sought the support of the now-defunct Internet Freedom Association, and those of us on the board declined to offer it. So with no other significant industry organizations available, it’s safe to assume ICM also sought the support of ASACP.

And that’s where things got interesting.

Officially, ASACP says it did not offer any clear statements of support for ICM and dot-xxx, but neither did it clearly oppose dot-xxx in the way the FSC and IFA did. Early on, Irvine told me ASACP wanted to remain “neutral,” which seemed a dubious position to me. But even if you find a neutral stance acceptable, does a neutral party write letters to ICANN that ICM could use in support of its dot-xxx initiative?

In the middle of 2004, at a time when ICANN was trying to assess the level of community support and countless industry leaders were writing ICANN to ask that dot-xxx be denied an existence, Irvine wrote the following to the ICANN board:[INDENT]ASACP has been in negotiations with the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR) and ICM for it to serve as a hotline for reviewing reports of suspected child pornography and to carry out the secondary monitoring of .xxx sites for child pornography.

I also support the online adult industry developing their own credible business practices in conjunction with other impacted stakeholders and support the IFFOR initiative to create a line of communication between the adult industry and the global community.
[/INDENT]You can read the full letter on ICANN’s website.

To me, that seemed like a pretty straightforward letter of support, not a neutral stance. I have to imagine ICM Registry was more than a little pleased when that letter was presented to ICANN. After the FSC and IFA had both said “no way,” the only other significant industry organization available chose to “applaud” ICM and IFFOR. Some of us took notice.

Shortly after this, I found myself on a panel discussion at Cybernet Expo in San Diego. I knew I would be on the panel with Irvine, and figured dot-xxx would come up — and I was annoyed by her claims of neutrality. It seemed to me that ASACP was supporting ICM’s bid, and that Irvine was trying to have it both ways since she knew dot-xxx was wildly unpopular with the industry she relied upon for ASACP’s revenue. So in the event she might claim neutrality again, I printed out the letter and carried it with me.

In fact, she did claim neutrality — and I responded by reading the letter to the audience.

As you can imagine, this didn’t make Irvine happy. And while it’s never fun to make enemies in this business, I’ve always felt the dot-xxx issue was one of profound importance. I felt then, and do now, that this issue is far too important to be met with silence. The adult internet has provided me with a means to live a pretty enjoyable life, and there are countless people amongst its ranks that I consider to be both good friends and really good people. It was offensive to me to think some individuals might sell all of that down the river for a chance at favor with ICM, should dot-xxx be approved.

My relationship with Irvine has been difficult from that moment on. We both sat together on the FSC’s board of directors for some time, and we often found ourselves on opposite sides of important issues. We’ve stayed as friendly as we can, and YNOT has always been happy to help distribute ASACP’s important press releases, but I never approved of Irvine’s stance on dot-xxx and she never approved of me calling her on it.

At one point, it looked as though the industry had beaten dot-xxx once and for all. ICANN denied ICM’s application, and opponents of dot-xxx celebrated. I forgot about my differences with Irvine, and we all moved on with the business of the day. In fact, with piracy increasing and revenues declining for adult studios, we all had pressing matters to address. In the aftermath of Round One, those who had failed to oppose dot-xxx looked to mend fences and repair any damage that had been done. It was in this environment that Irvine revealed a new stance on dot-xxx and IFFOR: She was now strong in pointing out that dot-xxx did not protect children.

“ASACP does not agree that ICANN’s rejection of .xxx represents a failure to protect children online, because we do not believe that a .xxx sTLD would have further enhanced the online adult entertainment industry’s ongoing voluntary efforts to protect children,” she said.

Bravo. Had she finally seen the light?

The Xbiz article reporting that comment also reported that Irvine saw no need for IFFOR because the work it would do already was accomplished by the combination of the FSC and ASACP. In other words, IFFOR was pointless in her opinion.

“Irvine responded by reminding readers that the work the foundation would have done is one of the goals ASACP and the Free Speech Coalition already strive to accomplish,” the Xbiz article noted.

Sadly though, the dot-xxx issue had not been put to rest as many of us thought. A few months ago, ICANN met in Colombia, and there were rumblings dot-xxx would be approved at that meeting. Most the industry wasn’t paying attention, having turned its attention to content piracy because it thought dot-xxx had been resolved. But YNOT was lucky enough to come across a transcript of the public comments and was made aware of a very interesting development: Adult industry veteran Johan “Johnny V” Van Arnam, formerly of Wildline!, flew all the way to South America to declare he was the “the director” of ASACP and he had positive things to say about the dot-xxx proposal.

“I’m here to offer my support for dot-xxx and for ICM in their efforts to assist the industry to increase its reach in a thoughtful and child-protective manner,” Johnny V told the ICANN board.

Child protection again. You can read the YNOT story here.

ICANN however was playing by its own timetable, so it pushed the dot-xxx decision forward to its next meeting, in San Francisco in March. But in the time between Colombia in December and the eventual dot-xxx approval in San Francisco, the industry had plenty of reason to question anew ASACP’s role in the dot-xxx saga.

Irvine claimed Johnny V acted alone, and ASACP did not approve of what he had done. She offered a hasty statement saying as much — but in the same statement, she went out of her way to heap praise on Johnny V.

“ASACP appreciates Mr. Van Arnam’s commitment to child protection and looks forward to working with him on future projects,” Irvine offered.

That praise was followed up with a special award offered by ASACP to Johnny V at the Xbiz Awards show in Los Angeles. And as I learned about this award, I couldn’t help but think what would have happened if I had done something similar while still representing the FSC. What if I had flown to an ICANN meeting while I was on the FSC board and made it appear I was attending in an official capacity as a spokesperson for the FSC? And what if I had then told the ICANN board that I was there to offer support for dot-xxx and ICM? I imagine the FSC would have been furious, and I have every reason to believe I would have been booted off the FSC board shortly after. I definitely would not have been given an award a few weeks later.

On the eve of dot-xxx’s approval, I flew to San Francisco in a last-ditch effort to convince the ICANN board that it was about to make a major mistake. While there, I spoke to a member of ASACP’s Advisory Council, who said he was furious about what happened with Johnny V. I asked him if ASACP had offered any satisfactory explanation, and he said they had not.

So many of the people who sit on the ASACP Advisory Council have done a lot of good work, and more often than not they are true believers about the public mission of ASACP. Pssionate true believers, even. Sadly, though, I don’t believe the Advisory Council members are always aware of all the activities of the organization. They know only of the good work they have done, so it’s not easy for them to hear news like that which came out of Colombia.

As we all know now, dot-xxx was approved by ICANN despite the complete lack of community support. Yes, in the eight-plus years ICM had to win support for dot-xxx, it managed to convince only a handful of companies to get on board — while opposition was in the thousands.

At the recently concluded industry gathering in Phoenix, I had a chance to speak with a representative from ICM Registry. At the end of a heated panel discussion about dot-xxx, I told him the industry would be watching very carefully as to whom ICM chose to reward with positions at IFFOR. I really did expect ASACP would be given some kind of reward for its past actions, like perhaps the “child protection” position on the IFFOR board, but the news that ICM had chosen Irvine for one of the top positions — for executive director — was startling in how bold and blatant it was. There wouldn’t be even a small attempt to be less obvious?

We’ve had some heated discussions about this topic on GFY, and I think a lot of people who once offered benefit of the doubt now believe various parties have shown their cards.

Many I’ve spoken to are sad at the news, because they believed in the mission of ASACP. It hurts to think their advocacy of the organization may have been misplaced and misused. It’s never easy to come to the conclusion the nice, smiling, friendly people you see time and again, whom you hug and share stories with, might be capable of such horribly duplicitous and damaging actions. And there are good people involved with ASACP, including, I suspect, its new executive director, Tim Henning.

But now we have a world with dot-xxx, and now we have a world with IFFOR. And it looks like we now have a world with Irvine right near the top in an organization that will decide for all dot-xxx domain name holders what they can and can’t do with their dot-xxx websites.

Each and every member of the adult entertainment industry ought to think long and hard about whether they have any inclination to buy a dot-xxx domain name. There are few, if any, advantages to dot-xxx domains, and plenty of potential disasters awaiting over the horizon.

Plus — and this is quite important — do you really want Joan Irvine and people like her setting the rules for your online business?

Connor Young is president of YNOT Group LLC.