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ICANN Board Votes Against .XXX Sponsored Top Level Domain Agreement

10 May 2006

Marina del Rey, California, 10 May 2006: Today, ICANN's Board of Directors voted against a proposed agreement for a .XXX. Sponsored Top Level Domain (sTLD). The application was proposed by the ICM Registry.

The application has received much public comment and detailed discussion by the ICANN Board. Reflecting the diversity of views this application has generated, the Board discussion at today's meeting focused on the criteria for the sTLD, especially for sponsorship, and the terms of the contract proposed by ICM, including compliance issues related to key terms associated with public policy concerns. ICM had proposed additional terms in response to issues raised by ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee, particularly at ICANN's meeting in Wellington in March. http:// www.icann.org/announcements/announcement1-18apr06.htm

ICM had requested that the ICANN Board vote on the proposed contract at this meeting.

ICANN's Board voted 9 to 5 against the proposed agreement. Votes in favor of the proposed .XXX Registry Agreement were cast by the following Board Members: Veni Markovski, Susan Crawford, Peter Dengate Thrush, Joichi Ito, and Mouhamet Diop. Directors who voted against the approval were Vint Cerf (Chairman), Alejandro Pisanty (Vice-Chairman), Raimundo Beca, Demi Getschko, Hagen Hultzsch, Njeri Rionge, Vanda Scartezini, Paul Twomey (President and CEO), and Hualin Qian. Additional details regarding the vote will be provided by ICANN later this week.

About ICANN

ICANN is an internationally organised, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions. As a private-public partnership, ICANN is dedicated to preserving the operational stability of the Internet; to promoting competition; to achieving broad representation of global Internet communities; and to developing policy appropriate to its mission through bottom-up, consensus-based processes.

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