ICM Registry, the applicant for the .XXX Top Level Domain, has hit back against claims the proposed TLD has no support amongst the adult industry, disputing many of the claims made by the Free Speech Coalition.

In a letter to ICANN published on the ICM Registry website, ICM questions the FSC's role in representing the adult industry, and refutes or clarifies other issues raised.

ICM says that the FSC is an American-based organisation and "is not and has never been "the" trade association for the global adult entertainment industry." And with the FSC and its American base, ICM claims in its letter to ICANN as a "way of contrast, IFFOR is of a global nature, and to date, ICM has received pre-reservations from over 9,000 members of the Sponsored Community from over 80 different counties."

While this is true, ICM ignores other non-American adult industry organisations who vehemently oppose the .XXX proposal. One of those is Fiona Patten, CEO of the Eros Association, Australia's national adult retail and entertainment association.

"I can see no positive outcome from the introduction of .xxx," Patten told DomainNews.com in April 2010. She also believes nothing has changed since the ICANN meeting in Wellington in March 2006 where the Government Advisory Committee, where governments give advice to ICANN, opposed the approval of .XXX. This included the Australian government who Patten says has indicated they are still opposed to the introduction of .XXX.

Patten also said it is her "understanding of the TLD process [that] industry support is a fundamental requisite and ICM does not have that."

Refuting allegations that those pre-registering .XXX domain names had somehow been tricked, ICM says this is "completely unfounded". In their earlier letter to ICANN, the FSC also questions the way in which pre-registration numbers and suggests that the numbers should not be used to determine support for the proposed TLD. The FSC says that as ICM said pre-registrations would not be used as a means of determining support, then this should not be considered in the TLD application.

The FSC also asks ICANN to investigate how many pre-registrations are defensive registrations and how many are by those wanting to on-sell the domain names at a later date.

However ICM says that "ICM's pre-reservation service was launched in May of 2006, and was cited numerous times thereafter as evidence of the sponsored community's desire to register names in .XXX." Regarding defensive registrations, ICM claim that "6,435 out of a total of 179,630 names submitted have been identified as defensive, which includes defensive registrations by individuals and entities who are not members of the sponsored community."

To read both the letter from the Free Speech Coalition and ICM Registry to ICANN, see:
icann.org/correspondence/duke-to-jeffrey-08sep10-en.pdf
www.icmregistry.com/articles/Response_to_FSC_Letter_9_Sept_2010.pdf