Domain Names of the World

Porn-friendly .xxx domain backer loses suit against federal agencies.
The company behind the proposed .xxx top-level domain, which was rejected after the Bush administration intervened, has been trying to dig up embarrassing government documents through a federal lawsuit.

Make that "was trying." A federal judge on March 12 granted summary judgment to the Bush administration in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ICM Registry.

By way of background, ICM Registry had proposed the porn-friendly .xxx domain in 2004 to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, four years after ICANN rejected the idea the first time. In June 2005, ICANN approved .xxx--but the Bush administration objected two months later, and ICANN's board subsequently reversed itself by a 9-5 vote.

ICM Registry's Stuart Lawley, an indefatigable entrepreneur who made his fortune by founding a U.K. Internet service provider, didn't give up. He filed a FOIA request to learn how conservative groups pressured the Bush administration, and he released the first round of documents in May 2006. But the State Department and Commerce Department withheld others--claiming they were part of an internal "deliberative process"--and those are the documents at issue in the current lawsuit.

Robert Corn-Revere, an attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine who is representing ICM Registry, said a lawsuit against ICANN for denying the .xxx top-level domain is now possible.

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