AVN President Paul Fishbein posts:
For those who trash us on the boards and speak without any knowledge of what’s really going on (yes Mike South, you), here’s the story. In the early days, at the encouragement of a couple of our biggest clients, we had meetings with Jason Hendeles concerning AVN’s potential involvement with the .XXX business. We viewed it as a business opportunity. We sought the advice of many in the adult business, some of whom felt that the .XXX domains would “ghettoize” the adult business, while others felt there was a real opportunity.
However, we never made a deal with Jason and to date have no involvement in .XXX.
That last sentence speaks volumes, the truth is you SHOULD have had involvement and you should have seen it for the bad move that it is. Instead you chose to stick your head in the sand and sell us out by not doing anything. or did you do something?
From My Site: 07/27/2004 For all of you asking why .XXX is a bad idea…READ THIS:
.XXX Still Not Dead, And AVNOnline is Helping to Pimp It:
The key word here being pimp of course.
lets look at whose who in this battle:
First you Have ICMRegistry and their little used car salesman Jason Hendales, Jason’s job is to garner support for the .XXX domain for ICMRegistry so that they can try to ramrod it through ICANN. The proposed price tag for .XXX domains 75.00/yr.
Second, You have knowledgeable adult webmasters, attorneys and lobbyists like myself, , J.D. Obenberger and Bill Lyon who are against this, for reasons I will spell out in a bit.
Third You have parties in the biz, who, out of ignorance or alterior motive or both would support this under the guise of….you guessed it….keeping the children safe. These include LFP, Vivid, AVN and some of the board of the Free Speech Cabal. Though AVN has been passive in it’s support, it’s editorials speak for themselves.
Take the recent issue of AVN Online where they lay out the story noting that the Free Speech Coalition held a special meeting to discuss and vote on this. AVN reported that the members in attendance voted it in BUT the big bad wolf (Then Director of the FSC) Bill Lyon vetoed the vote and called on the board of directors to decide the issue. Now here is the FACT that changes the whole story that AVN conveniently left out.
The night of the vote ICMRegistry brought in a bunch of “Ringers”, they paid the dues for them to join the FSC so that they could vote in favor of .XXX, thus guaranteeing that the measure would pass. Bill Lyon saw through this ruse and did the right thing.
They also conveniently left out the fact that the FSC had been BRIBED to pass the measure….reportedly to the tune of 8.00 per domain sold. That’s a hefty chunk of change and was certainly enough to buy the votes of some of the FSC Board members with less integrity than Lyon. Lawrence Walters and Greg Picconelli were salivating at the idea too because passage is job security for them as you will soon see.
So when you come right down to it, it’s all about the money. ICM Registry will make millions off of this and thus will go to great lengths to sell it, even if it means selling us out.
Now some of you might be thinking that this aint such a bad idea, you are wrong, here’s why:
It doesn’t “protect the children”, kids dont get porn from responsible adult sites, they get it off of kazaa, bearshare, limewire, morpheus, IRC and others.
It does “Zone” adult into a cyber ghetto, they say that we won’t be required to use it but ask yourself this: Does your state have seatbelt laws? Remember how they sold that? They said Oh we won’t just pull you over and give you a ticket for not wearing it, we just want to enact it to protect you and your children, now “Click It Or Ticket Campaigns are rampant right? Just how long do you think it would take Ashcroft or someone of similar narrow mindedness to pass legislation “protecting the children” by forcing adult sites to use .XXX. Picconelli and Walters say no way they can’t do that but I guarantee you these two hot shots aren’t going to represent you for free to prove it. For them .XXX is money in the bank, fuck what’s good for the industry.
How long would it take your city or state to demand that ISPs “filter out” the .XXX domain or lose permission to provide service to you? Specially if you live in, say Utah?
Starting to see the problems now? Ya I thought you might.
You see its all about the money, ICM Registry, Picconelli, Walters…these people could give a fuck because they are going to make money, even if only because adult webmasters will buy the .XXX domains to protect them from cybersquatting, at least that’s what they are counting on.
Next time you hear AVN wanting to speak for the adult webmaster community, remember this people. You gonna be at Internext? Tell them to stop trying to sell you to the highest bidder.
That’s the way I see it.
Got A Message from Paul Fishbein Yesterday:
He said I hit below the belt…maybe I did but make no mistake about it when I am fighting for my livlihood there is no below the belt. This is my livilihood that you guys are fucking with, everyone else may roll over but you can bet your ass I won’t
AVN should have led the fight to prevent this instead of quietly supporting it.
I stand my ground.
