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Porn Ruling Could Spell Trouble for ICANN

By Ross Todd
August 30, 2012

A case pitting adult entertainment companies against the gatekeepers of Internet domain names cleared a key hurdle when a federal judge in Los Angeles largely allowed antitrust claims over the controversial .xxx domain to go forward.

U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez last month partly granted motions to dismiss filed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the non-profit organization in charge of the domain name system, and ICM Registry, LLC, the registry running the .xxx domain. But the judge allowed the plaintiffs to pursue their core claims that ICANN and ICM were running what amounts to a shakedown of the adult industry, forcing website operators to defensively seek .xxx addresses to protect their brands. (Read Gutierrez's 17-page at http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/tal/icann.pdf.)

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