Porn Ruling Could Spell Trouble for ICANN

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.)

The Big Porn v. Big Web showdown began last November, when Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp filed suit on behalf of adult film company Digital Playground, Inc. and Manwin Licensing International S.a.r.l., the company that manages online content for Playboy and owns and licenses adult websites like the wildly popular YouPorn.com. The companies alleged in their complaint that ICANN and ICM violated federal antitrust law during the establishment of the .xxx domain, which was intended to be used exclusively for adult content. ICM had been lobbying for the .xxx top-level domain for more than a decade before ICANN finally approved it and contracted with ICM to operate it last year, according to the complaint. (See the complaint at http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/tal/ICANNComplaint.pdf.)