ICM Registry Acts in Response to Reports of Cyber-Squatting
 

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. December 13, 2011. ICM Registry, the official registry of the new .xxx top-level domain TLD, announced that as part of its investigation of reported cybersquatting by a handful of individuals, it has suspended registrations that appear to involve unmistakable, blatant cybersquatting in violation of the Registry?s policies and the Registry-Registrant Agreement. The suspended registrations include patterns of abusive registrations for names like businessweek.xxx, cnbc.xxx, geocities.xxx, nextag.xxx, snapfish.xxx, verizonwireless.xxx, washingtonpost.xxx, and gayroom.xxx, amongst others.

In announcing this action, ICM?s CEO, Stuart Lawley, reiterated the Registry?s commitment to enforce its policies. ?ICM Registry has raised the bar on responsible registry operations and we intend to maintain the highest standards. We will not tolerate nefarious conduct and will exercise our right to take appropriate action when we detect widespread repeat patterns of cyber-squatting activity. Would-be cyber-squatters are on notice - neither ICM Registry nor the .xxx community will be complicit in the theft or abuse of intellectual property. ICM takes a stand to facilitate user choice and parental control, protect the privacy, security, and consumer rights of consenting adults, fight child abuse images, and protect intellectual property,? said Lawley.

While cyber-squatters try to take advantage of legitimate rights owners in every TLD (from .com to .edu), ICM?s CEO, Stuart Lawley noted that the rights protections built into its agreement with registrants gives the Registry a number of innovative tools to combat malicious conduct and protect the .xxx TLD space. In addition to its authentication policy, which makes it harder for cyber-squatters to hide, the Registry also makes a variety of innovative tools available to prevent and address abusive registrations, including a Rapid Evaluation Service (?RES?) to take immediate action on clear abuse of well-known, distinctive registered trademarks or service marks of significant commercial value, or of personal or professional names of individuals, and its Charter Eligibility Dispute Resolution Process (?CEDRP?) to resolve challenges to registered names in the .XXX TLD based on alleged use inconsistent with the qualifications for registration. ICM Registry recently conducted a ground-breaking Sunrise process that enabled rights-holders to permanently remove their brands from availability for a cost-based one time fee.

Working with its sponsoring organization, the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (?IFFOR?), ICM has implemented a comprehensive and rigorous set of policies designed to protect third party rights and combat malicious conduct. The IFFOR Policy Council, which includes representatives from the adult industry as well as experts in the areas of free expression, privacy, and child advocacy ratified the Registry?s baseline policies, including its policy prohibiting the registration of ?strings that infringe the intellectual property rights of a third party, including common law trademark rights; strings that are obvious variants of well-known trademarks not belonging to the registrant; first and last names of an individual other than the individual or his/her agent or names that suggest the presence of child abuse images.? All registrants in the .xxx domain must agree to abide by those policies when they register .xxx names.

Yet ICM will infringe on the rights of others for profit , priceless.

great move by icm and xxx. applause.jpg

Ohhhhhhhh brother.... :disgust

I'd like to add that boykakke.xxx, gaypass.xxx, and gayroom.xxx were in the list (Just adult names that come to mind - and boykakke.xxx was one of the ones mentioned on the board recently) of sites taken down. This wasn't limited to mainstream. We are absolutely committed to our position on this.

dotXXX, when ICM Registry are quite happy to reserve names infringing on the IP of others in an attempt to extort as much money from rights holders as possible, you have no cause to be cheering this as one of the protections of the .xxx namespace.

The .xxx namespace will, after the fuss has died down, become a ghetto once countries start blocking it (Australia will be one - the Government opposes .XXX and is planning to introduce mandatory filtering).

Where's the best place to report cybersquatting incidents for .xxx? We've already had a guy calling...

Where do we report Cybersquatters? We have them contacting us already.

Thanks.

[email protected] would be the best choice.

Yeah, pretty much.

So does this mean that mainstream trademark owners didn't actually have to lock down their domain? Just wait until someone registers it, then complain to ICM that they're cybersquatting.

And once again I will invite you to write to us with development ideas for the domain name that you want.

And the potential mandatory filtering in Australia is for ALL adult content on ALL top level domains. It isn't limited to .XXX.

I'm just waiting for the inevitable blocking of .xxx by more countries. Enough of them block it, the less anyone will care.

Anthony, The only thing these xxx domains are good for is helping the filtering software business. Its only a matter of time before more and more countries and ISPs block xxx domains.

This keeps coming up, and what I find most troubling is that people seem to be under the impression that the ability to block adult content is only possible with the .XXX extension. Whole countries already have the ability to block content, and DO. China does, India does, Australia is on it's way, and the UK's top 4 ISP's are now on an opt-in for adult content system.


None of that has anything at all to do with a domain suffix. It has everything to do with censorship, and suppressing the right to free expression. Part of the reason that IFFOR receives such a significant portion of each domain registration is to assure that they have the funds necessary to adhere to their policy goals, which includes protecting free expression rights. IFFOR recently addressed this in a press release which you can read here: http://iffor.org/news/pc-first-meeting.html

Cool, if anyone squats my properties I'll be in touch.

Where I don't see a pic.. :upsidedow:upsidedow

Pic works for me.
iseewhatyoudidthere.jpg

what he said :thumbsup

http://www.tiggysribticklers.com/ima...ing_Monkey.jpg

Will ICM Registry be refunding all those schools and universities that paid to have their names blocked?

For who like to read legalese, following the ?RES? and ?CEDRP? links:

http://www.icmregistry.com/policies/res-policy/
http://www.icmregistry.com/policies/cedrp-policy/

And in plain english it means? :)

DotXXX,
No disrespected intended but,
Thats a nice spin you just did. the XXX suffix makes it easy to block all the new porn sites using that suffix. With the XXX suffix, its a crap shoot. Will the suffix be blocked or not. China and India is no big deal since that traffic doesn't convert. No big loss.

If a country wants to censor what is accessible on the internet, they are not bound by the laws of the USA. They can do whatever they want. You have no control over what they block.

If an IPS wants to block xxx domains, there is nothing you can do about it. You can scream and file a censorship lawsuit but, an internet connection is a privilege not a right.

There is more than enough porn on .com, .net domains. I really dont think too many people will miss xxx domains blocked. The internet has survived this long without xxx suffix.

I'll have a smoking Monkey Alex please:pimp

have any links for this

ICM go away & stop extorting the industry. you are a total scam. Your sales are not coming from people looking to create sites; they come from businesses afraid strangers will wreck their brands, enabled by you. You are no different then a mafia shaking down a corner store for protection money.

Fuck you.

I don't need to discuss ideas for the domain I want, it's a common law trademark protected by treatise between Australia and the United States and as has been explained to you, the moment you release it , our lawyers Mallesons Stephen Jaques will issue proceedings against ICM Registry.

I don't really understand your confusion, a common law trademark is as protected by law in Australia as a Registered Trademark.

As for Mandatory Filtering, if you had half a clue, you would know that Stephen Conroy has suggested that .xxx could be automatically filtered, while discretion would be applied to other TLD's as prima facie a .XXX domain would contain prohibited content.

When any entity chooses to block 'porn' they must start by answering the question of how something can be defined as porn. That can take a long time, become very convoluted, evolve over time and lead to a stagnant attempt at censorship. However, when someone raises their hand and says 'I own this and I confirm it is porn' that takes the burden off the people pursuing prohibition and expedites their attempt to censor content. As entities seek to censor content they will look for the easiest targets first. No target could be easier than a .xxx that inherently admits to the criteria for persecution of itself. Metaphorically, it's the difference between a heist with a getaway car that looks like every other car on the road, versus trying to use a getaway van that has 'fuck the police' written on the sides with a blaring bass-thumping stereo and Christmas lights blanketed over the hood.

If that's the case, then ICM Registry should issue refunds and cancel domains for anyone or any entity that registered .XXX domain(s) solely to protect their brand and with no intentions of development.