CYBERSPACE—The good news about the passage of .XXX is that opponents will hopefully no longer have to attend ICANN meetings. Though they take place at far-flung locales one might otherwise want to visit, for lobbyists from the porn biz they were, generally speaking, hostile and desultory affairs.

It’s not much better at home. To the extent one could ever trust the privacy of work-related environs, ICM’s tentacles now increasingly encroach upon even the most protected places. One must be more careful now than ever, and that goes ten-fold for me as I apparently remain a fixed and fixated target of ICM.

That fact was reinforced even before I got to the Phoenix Forum this month, when I learned that in addition to playing games with the .XXX seminar by demanding I be removed as moderator because of my bias (I will address this specious claim in another post!), ICM’s Vaughn Liley—who I do not know very well and who could only have mentioned what he did by hearing about it second- or third-hand—told someone in a somewhat hushed tone that I was a turncoat to the anti-.XXX cause because I had secretly applied to be on the IFFOR board. hehe

Liley, need it be said, hadn’t the slightest clue what he was talking about. Had he, his gambit—which not only utterly mischaracterizes my actions but only serves to resurrect an episode that makes ICM look petty and vindictive (gasp!)—would never have been made. I will of course gladly oblige by retelling the story, which I laid out in detail in the 2007 .XXX public comment period in the days leading up to the .XXX vote at the Lisbon ICANN meeting—which took place during that year’s Phoenix Forum—where the ICANN Board that existed then voted bravely and definitively, or so it thought, to reject the ICM proposal once and for all. Feels a hundred years ago.

Actually, I think I will just repost the public comment I made in 2007, after discovering that ICM violated its promise to me and made me the ONLY person to have a presumably confidential ICM-related correspondence made public, along with my personal contact information and my then home address. Sweet.

Keep in mind, by this time, in 2007, my 2004 brush with IFFOR was already well-established water under the bridge. In 2005, when I joined the Free Speech Coalition as its communications director, I told executive director Michelle Freridge and the board about what had happened. It was not a secret as far as I was concerned, and never a conflict. It was, as you will read, a mistake that did not take long for me to correct. I might add, the fact that Vaughn Liley actually tried to tarnish me with it again, in 2011, after having already gained the sTLD, only reaffirms for me that the decision not to become ICM’s patsy on IFFOR.was the correct one.

Lastly, it remains of concern to me that ICANN allowed my unredacted personal information to be disseminated publicly by ICM Registry through their website, and as shown by the links above, still do, in direct contradiction to my stated wishes and in seeming contrast to their own statements regarding protecting people’s personal identification. Not very nice.

My March 25, 2007 ICANN public comment, in its entirety:

ICM Registry Posted My Letter PubliclyTo:

<xxx-icm-agreement@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: ICM Registry Posted My Letter Publicly
From: “Tom Hymes” <tomhymes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 07:59:04 -0700

To the ICANN Board,

Re: *Annex 10* – http://icann.org/tlds/agreements/xxx/annex10-hymes.pdf, included as one of the ICM Registry submissions posted to the ICANN website March 13, 2007.

In the minutes of the March 13, 2007 ICANN Board meeting, it states, “John [Jeffrey, ICANN counsel] noted that these [submissions], in their redacted form [have] been posted on the ICANN website. John indicated that ICM has represented that the identities of people and entities obtained in pre-registration materials, and webmaster information obtained from their website form were not cleared for public posting.”

The minutes also state, “[ICANN Board Chair Vinton Cerf] noted that some of [the] materials had been made publicly available and some could not be posted given that names of individuals were involved in some of the documentation.”

I wonder, then, why my letter was made publicly available, with my name, home address and phone, when no one bothered to clear its use for public posting. In fact, when ICM principal Jason Hendeles solicited the letter from me in 2004, he promised me that it would not be made public or used in the XXX application process. I do not live at that address anymore, but I think ICANN should consider redacting it anyway, or removing the letter completely. I also think Stuart Lawley should apologize to my wife, me and our three-year-old son for posting our home address for all to see, especially after having expressed so much concern about his own physical safety from the “militants” who deign to oppose .XXX. I, of course, guaranteed his safety when he attended my seminar. He should be ashamed, and ICANN concerned, that he would then turn right around and so spitefully put mine at presumed risk. But I have learned the hard way that Stuart has no problem resorting to intimidation tactics, even or especially with people of good faith, if he feels it will get him what he wants. The posting of this letter, in my case, was just the culmination.

But even worse is the use ICM is making of the letter, as explained on page 26 of its March 8 memo to the Board, where ICM states that my current opposition to XXX might be more “strategic than substantive” because of what I wrote, is a strikingly inaccurate claim considering the fact that I disavowed the contents of the letter in two conversations with Stuart Lawley, in 2005 and 2006. He must remember both conversations because it was he who instigated each, the first time even calling me to specifically discuss my participation on the IFFOR Board. During each conversation, I could not have been clearer about my position regarding the letter and IFFOR.

Stuart should also recall my telling him that Jason Hendeles spent three years trying to get me to write a letter in support of .XXX, to no avail, finally all but begging me to at least agree to consider being on the IFFOR Board, even if I still opposed the creation of the TLD! Yes, it was stupid of me to send that letter, even after Jason promised not to use it in the application process, and even stupider to use his language, but at the time I did not think ICANN would provisionally approve the application. Boy, was I stupid, or what?

Tom Hymes

Pretty slimy stuff, huh, even if I did leave myself open to it? In my own defense, though, I did not know Lawley very well in 2005, when he was still more or less acting behind the scenes. It was after the ill-fated June 1, 2005 conference call by the ICANN Board that he stepped in front of the curtain in earnest. Later, when Hendeles was raked across the industry boards for, as I recall, his moving company mishaps, Lawley assumed the public role for good. I remember well in Wellington him telling me that Hendeles would no longer be an issue; a shifting of ICM faces that has now repeated itself with the sudden appearance and ascension of the supposedly more diplomatic Vaughn Liley. Still, I should never have sent that fax.