As XBIZ reported on Sunday, ICM planned to offer the “industry reservation” period to the adult entertainment community while it pursued its appeal of the ICANN Board’s 9-5 decision to reject .XXX. The company also has filed a Freedom of Information suit against the departments of state and commerce, alleging that both improperly denied the company access to government documents surrounding the .XXX approval process.
“The reservation period is separate from our appeal and any lawsuits,” ICM President Stuart Lawley told XBIZ. “We are simply using our resources efficiently while we are in the appeals stage. We had already built these systems as part of our anticipated launch, and we also have very skilled staff on hand.”
While Lawley encouraged webmasters to “apply to secure their existing domains early,” Tom Hymes, communications director for the FSC, was wary of the company’s motives.
“This is a hostile move against both the adult industry and ICANN,” Hymes told XBIZ. “This looks like a pure act of desperation.”
While Lawley has said that the volume of registration has been high, despite the lack of a media push, Hymes said that participation was nothing more than “defensive registration.”
“Defensive registration, where webmasters sign up to protect themselves, is not a sign of support,” Hymes said. “ICANN is aware of that practice, which occurs outside of the .XXX issue. It is a well-known concept to ICANN."
Lawley saw the rush to register differently.
“We always knew the TLD had a lot of support from members of the sponsored community,” Lawley said.
Reed Lee, an attorney for the FSC, said that he didn’t think that registration translated into support.
“For ICM this is solely a business issue,” Lee told XBIZ. “But ICANN doesn’t make decisions exclusively based on money. ICANN rejected .XXX because it was a bad idea.”
In the meantime, ICM continues to accept reservations free of charge. Although a disclaimer on the ICM site acknowledge that ICANN had not, and may not, accept .XXX, Lawley stressed that there was “no downside for anyone” who registered.
For webmasters worried that they could lose out on potentially valuable real estate should ICANN decide to reverse its .XXX decision, ICM has a method to moderate any disputes that should arise, according to Lawley.
“There are several equitable methods to decide a tie break in the case of multiple qualifying applications for a specific domain,” Lawley said. “We have a firm idea on how we will decide these, but at this point have decided not to publish the method we will most likely choose. The reason we have done this is that by doing so, [we] would possibly give applicants an opportunity to ‘game the system,’ which we do not want.”