YNOT – Free Speech Coalition representatives are girding their loins for what they expect to be a showdown over dot-xxx during next week’s general membership meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The group is scheduled to meet Dec. 5-10 in Cartagena, Colombia.

FSC Executive Director Diane Duke and board of directors chairman Jeffrey Douglas will attend the meeting to ensure FSC members’ opposition to dot-xxx remains front and center when ICANN’s board of directors votes on the controversial proposed sponsored Top Level Domain, as the board is expected to do.

On Wednesday, FSC submitted a letter to ICANN outlining the adult industry trade group’s opposition to dot-xxx. The letter, in its entirety, may be read here.

Among the issues uppermost on FSC’s list of reasons the adult-specific sTLD should be rejected are:

• By allowing content standards and business practices within the domain space to be regulated by registry hopeful ICM Registry LLC and the ethical standards oversight body ICM plans to fund with dot-xxx registration fees, ICANN may exceed its jurisdiction. The web regulatory body’s bylaws prohibit its involvement in matters of content regulation.
• FSC believes ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee still harbors significant concerns about the proposed domain.
• If approved, dot-xxx could set precedent by tacitly approving the practice of forcing domain registrants to fund non-profit organizations whose goals and objectives they do not support. Such a move violates free speech and free association rights codified in many countries, according to FSC.
• Creation of a domain space specifically for content that is objectionable and subject to censorship may present a threat to the security, stability and universal resolvability of the global Domain Name System, especially in light of recent reports that alternative DNSes already are under consideration.
• Segmenting controversial content into its own domain-name space facilitates rampant censorship, thereby raising the potential for division and fragmentation of the internet as countries would feel no compulsion not to block entire categories at their borders.

Duke and Douglas said they hope to convince ICANN’s board of directors to reject ICM’s dot-xxx application “once and for all.”
ICM President Stuart Lawley said he remains confident ICANN will approve dot-xxx in Cartagena, allowing the project to move forward and release the first dot-xxx websites onto the web during the first quarter of 2011.

“FSC’s [most recent] letter [to ICANN] is a last-ditch cry of desperation,” Lawley told YNOT.com. “It merely recycles the same tired misrepresentations that have been thoroughly — and repeatedly — debunked by the facts.”

Duke is no less convinced FSC will prevail, despite being outnumbered at the meeting by the 19 representatives ICM is sending to meet with registrars who already anticipate selling dot-xxx domains. Lawley confirmed the staff’s size and mission to YNOT on Friday.

“ICM continues to act as if it already has a contract with ICANN for dot-xxx,” Duke said. “The issues are far from resolved, and this battle is far from over. Rest assured that FSC will be there every step of the way to represent the best interests of the adult online community.”