YNOT – Adult industry trade association Free Speech Coalition hopes to have more answers about the proposed dot-xxx sponsored Top-Level Domain Thursday, following a closed-door meeting of the board of directors for the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Discussion of the adult-content-specific domain was among the agenda items for the meeting.FSC submitted a letter to ICANN’s board ahead of the meeting, voicing concern about whether the board has engaged in sufficient consultation with ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee. The GAC is a working group that in the past has questioned the advisability of dot-xxx based on indications the domain is not supported by a “sponsoring group,” as required by ICANN’s operating procedures. At the time of the GAC’s concern, the sponsoring group was understood to be the adult entertainment industry, which initially embraced the concept but later withdrew its support. According to the most recent documentation substantiating the registrar application of Florida-based ICM Registry, the sponsoring group actually is members of a yet-to-be-formed organization called the International Foundation for Online Responsibility. The foundation’s membership will be composed of and funded by anyone who registers a dot-xxx sTLD, should the domain be approved.

FSC’s letter called on the board to consult GAC “in the interest of transparency and equitability.”

The letter raised four points for the board to consider, along with a timeline documenting GAC’s concerns and some GAC members’ opposition to dot-xxx. Points emphasized by FSC include:

• GAC’s most recent formal statement about dot-xxx occurred in the committee’s March 28, 2007, Lisbon Communiqué which stated, “The GAC reaffirms the letter sent to the ICANN board on 2nd February 2007. The Wellington Communiqué [March 2006] remains a valid and important expression of the GAC’s views on dot-xxx. The GAC does not consider the information provided by the board to have answered the GAC concerns as to whether the ICM application meets the sponsorship criteria.”

• In the Wellington Communiqué, the GAC identified a number of concerns about the application and the concept as a whole, ending its comment with the statement, “Nevertheless without prejudice to the above, several members of the GAC are emphatically opposed from a public policy perspective to the introduction of a dot-xxx sTLD.”

• During the GAC meeting in Brussels in June 2010, informal conversation among the members indicated general consensus that the committee’s concerns still had not been addressed and therefore its prior Communiqué objections stand.

• Just as the board has given deference to the decision of an independent, international arbitration tribunal, so must it give deference to the GAC’s advice. (The tribunal, to which ICAM had appealed a previous ICANN rejection of dot-xxx, sided with ICM in February 2010.)

FSC opposes the creation of a dot-xxx sTLD on the grounds such a domain would cost adult web businesses millions in unnecessary fees and put adult websites in a category easily targeted by censors.