Guy asks ICANN to shut down prostitution site

A man is using ICANN’s Request for Reconsideration process to try to take down a domain that appears to being a marketplace for sex workers, many of whom appear to be offering prostitution services.

The requester says that the site in question, adultsearch.com (NSFW) is breaking the law in the US, where prostitution is in most places illegal, and that it should be taken down.

He says he contacted the registrar, Namecheap, but did not get a satisfactory response. He says he then contacted ICANN Compliance, but was given the brush off.

He’s now using RfR (pdf) to bring the matter to ICANN’s board of directors.

“Take it down, offline. If it were child pornography, which is illegal, too. Would I have to ask twice…?” he writes.

The site in question is essentially a collection of classified ads posted by people offering in-person sexual services. While many ads talk in coded terms about legal services such as “massage”, alongside sexually explicit photographs, many others are fairly explicit that they’re offering sex.

The site has listings for scores of countries, but the default front-page ads come from the US, broken down by state and city.

The requester says he was moved to file the complaint after meeting a young immigrant woman involved in illegal prostitution from a young age. He provides some details of her situation, though not enough to personally identify her.

Regardless, he asked ICANN to redact that portion of the request before posting it publicly, but ICANN didn’t.

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