US meddled in .XXX decision
p2p news / p2pnet: ICM Registry, the company behind the
The
Governance Project says there will be a “judicial appeal under the Freedom of Information Act to challenge redactions and omissions from the internal US government documents released to it under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. In connection with its judicial appeal, ICM Registry released 88 pages of documents obtained under the FOIA showing how the U.S. handled its application.
“Even with the major redactions, these documents show how US supervision of ICANN was influenced by domestic political pressure. They leave no room for doubt that the US altered its policy toward ICANN in response to this pressure, and that it actively worked in tandem with ICANN to conceal the nature and significance of US governmental influence over ICANN from the media.”
Computer Business Review Online has apparently seen, “about 100 pages of these documents, most of them emails sent between staff at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of Commerce. The documents we’ve seen suggest that last summer the NTIA reversed its quiet tolerance of the .xxx application, which was on the way to approval, after lobbying from conservative groups, then set about trying to persuade foreign governments to back its position.”
Tens of thousands of emails
were sent by pressure groups to ICANN and the US department of commerce
arguing against the .xxx domain after conservative radio host James
Dobson criticized it on air.
“What he says on his radio
program in the morning will determine how ugly this really gets–if he
jumps on the bandwagon, our mail server may crash.” said one of the
emails seen by CBRO.
Also See:
sites – May 11, 2006
Governance Project – XXX Challenge, May19, 2006
Computer Business Review Online – Porn domain firm sues US government – May 19,
2006
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