WSIS

Watch out: .xxx is coming to an Internet near you soon

by kierenmccarthy on February 23, 2010

So I think there is a real chance that the Internet extension .xxx will appear on the Internet some time this year.

Of course, you really can never know since overseeing body ICANN is a complex beast, but following the first use of the organization’s Independent Review Process (IRP) and the resulting panel declaration [pdf], I don’t actually see that many obstacles in the path of .xxx: all the arguments have been had and pretty much rejected by a very distinguished set of judges. And of course the current chairman of ICANN was emphatically of the view that dot-xxx should have been approved at the time it was officially rejected back in 2007.

My personal feeling is that dot-xxx is a good idea. It gives a place for pornography to reside online – and allows for pornography-specific rules to be created; it allows for companies and even countries to block access to it if they decide it is against their laws or policies; and it makes it possible that pornography could be pulled out of other top-level domains, so you don’t have it scattered all over the Internet.

As someone who has a little bit of knowledge about the adult industry and the Internet through researching my Sex.com book (although I would not put myself forward as an expert), I would say this is but an inevitable next step for pornography on the Internet. The history of sexually explicit media shows the same pattern over and over again.

Anyway, that’s an aside. I have written a lengthy story for The Register on this issue that includes the views of ICANN’s current CEO, Rod Beckstrom; ICM Registry’s (company behind .xxx) chairman Stuart Lawley; ex-ICANN chairman Vint Cerf; and Internet governance expert Wolfgang Kleinwachter.

You can read the three-part story on El Reg and I have posted it below for those too lazy to click a link.

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The Internet Governance Forum – third time lucky

by Kieren on September 21, 2008

I was at the United Nations in Geneva last week to watch what was happening to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as it prepares for its third outing, this December in Hyderabad, India.

Actually I was there for a different reason – an ICANN consultative meeting on the future of the organization the morning before the UN meeting – but it seemed daft to fly all that way and not check out the day of open discussions about the IGF. Plus I have a real soft spot for the IGF and the people that have worked extremely hard to make it a success.

I was a witness to the IGF’s creation, on paper, at the World Summit on the Information Society back in 2005, and then followed it all the way through various preparatory sessions as a reporter.

At the inaugural IGF in Athens, I was asked to be the conference’s “blogger-in-chief” – a position that, ironically enough, my current employer tried to veto. As a semi-official part of the IGF, I also got to see behind the scenes, and was impressed with the hard work, dedication and calm handling of what was an enormous and risky experiment. A lot of people at the time confessed to turning up just to see what would happen – spectators to what could have been the biggest diplomatic car crash for a decade. In the end, despite the odds, it shone through.

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Welcome to Geneva – the entire city is fully booked

May 16, 2007

If anyone ever wondered whether the Internet was vital, or if the new Internet Governance Forum suffered from a lack of interest, worry no more.
Next week, a series of events will be held in Geneva covering the follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society and most importantly a preparatory meeting for the next [...]

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Dynamic Coalition for Online Collaboration

February 13, 2007

I have just announced the creation of the “dynamic coalition” for online collaboration in the IGF meeting in Geneva. Effectively this is a group of people who plan to test and run online tools to help governments, businesses, civil society, NGOs and so on, have discussions and arrive at solutions, conclusions, recommendations, whatever. It is [...]

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Some stats on the IGF Athens meeting

February 13, 2007

The Greek delegate has just spoken at the stocktaking meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Geneva.
He gave some stats from the first Athens meeting in November 2006 that might be worth preserving:

1350 participants (including 152 media, and coming from 97 countries)
8 translation booths and 20 translators
50 buses
7 metal detectors
4 X-ray machines

By the way, there [...]

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The Internet rollercoaster starts up the track again: IGF in Geneva

February 12, 2007

I am in Geneva for a stock-take of the first Internet Governance Forum in Athens last November.
It should be an interesting meeting. The one thing that no one is any doubt about is that the IGF will be bigger and more important in 2007. Born out of international discussion (some might say argument) at the [...]

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So, I took this job at ICANN…

January 25, 2007

Starting 5 February, I will be the “general manager, public participation” for ICANN – an organisation I have closely followed and frequently criticised almost since its inception in 1999. I’m excited about it, and the possibilities the position holds.
Here then is a blog post about why I took the job and what I hope to [...]

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Online participation: the possibilities and the realities

December 7, 2006

I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently building and running online participation websites – or, in English, trying to get people on the Internet learning about and interacting with physical meetings.
Both have been for Internet organisations, which should theoretically make things easier. The first was the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens in early [...]

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NomCom nonsense continues

December 6, 2006

[I just posted this on the ICANN Participation website - and realised maybe I should have only posted it here on my own blog. So here is some daft repetition.]
The Nominating Committee of ICANN decides who will take the most important posts in the organisation.
It is also the most secretive organisation I believe I have [...]

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Online participation website for ICANN

December 2, 2006

So I was asked by ICANN’s “executive officer and vice president for corporate affairs” Paul Levins to do an online participation website for its meeting in São Paulo, starting officially on Monday.

Paul was at the IGF in Athens last month and saw the site that Jeremy and I had done for the IGF in order to try to get some online interaction both by people that couldn’t be there and by those that were there. In fact, in retrospect, the whole thing dovetailed with a conversation I had had with Paul when I visited ICANN in Los Angeles on a whim two months ago.

Despite alot of well-founded criticism of ICANN in the past (much of it from me) about the organisation being secretive, insular, opaque and whatever other term you wish to use, it struck me that ICANN had actually taken the criticism on board this time and was looking for ways to open up a bit.

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