Stuart Lawley

Country:	UK
Website:	[lawley.com lawley.com]
Facebook:	[Profile Stuart Lawley]
LinkedIn:	[Stuart Lawley Stuart Lawley]
Twitter:	@sjlawley
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Stuart Lawley is the Chairman and President of ICM Registry, Chairman at Stimulus Medical and a Director at The Rabbit Hole Ltd.

The London Sunday Times named him one of the 1,000 richest people in Britain. He currently lives in Florida, USA.

He attends ICANN meetings and other industry conferences.

Work

Mr. Lawley is an experienced leader, who has acted as Chairman or CEO in a number of UK and US businesses, largely within the Internet and technology sectors. He has acted as CEO of Eurofax Ltd., Alto Group Ltd., and has been the Chairman at Oneview.net. He guided Oneview.net though a public offering within the London Stock Exchange, and saw the number of employees double. It was sold in March, 2000 for $200 million. Eurofax grew at a compund rate of over 40% over 12 years. Alto Group doubled in size and share values increased by 450% during his 15 month tenure.

After Mr. Lawley successfully sold Oneview.net, he gave himself a brief retirement in the Bahamas, where he worked on his golf game and learned to spear fish.

He is involved as an investor or leader in a variety of side projects as well; this includes work with a home automation company, a health records company, and a multimedia online game company.

ICM

Mr. Lawley has been with ICM Registry since 2003, and thus very much a part of the long process involved in approving the .xxx TLD; it was declined for approval in 2000, 2004, and 2007, and subsequently approved in March, 2011 at the ICANN Silicon Valley meeting. It was first declined in 2000, years before Stuart became its CEO. Stuart Lawley initially became interested in ICM when reviewing the applications for inaugural TLD introduction in 2000; he thought their proposal had real merit so he invested enough in ICM to take control of the company. Prior to launch, Stuart claimed that ICM could be bringing in around $200 million a year though .xxx; they also have plans to create a PayPal type service throughout the namespace. Stuart maintains that he has "no current or historic links to the adult industry in any form".

Sponsoring Community Controversy

ICM faced a constant battle not only with ICANN and its GAC, but also with the community that it claimed to represent. Stuart Lawley registered as a user of Xbiz.net, a members only forum for those involved in the adult industry, to directly answer questions and negative comments he was receiving on the forum. He immediately received a number of questions, and eventually responded to many of them in full. He defended .xxx as a new income opportunity and not a burden; he defended the higher price of registration compared to a .com registration as necessary given their resources compared to Verisign's; he promised to advertise and promote the name space to further increase its value; he claimed to have support from the industry and promised to turn the .xxx space into premium, secure real estate. The conversation, which was extremely variable in terms of tone and information, eventually led a number of prominent adult industry veterans to make a movie detailing ICM's business plan and deriding Mr. Lawley and his company. The full thread from Xbiz.net can be read here.

IFFOR

In November, 2011, Mr. Lawley stepped down as Chairman of the International Foundation For Online Responsibility, or IFFOR. The organization was the sponsoring organization required for the 2004 organizations applying for sponsored top level domains. The organization was supposed to be independent, and many saw an inherent conflict of interest that Stuart Lawley was the leader of both the registry and the sponsoring organization. ICM Registry will still hold a seat on the IFFOR, but the chairmanship has been passed onto Clyde Beattie, former Chair of the Canadian ccTLD manager, CIRA.

Education

He has a B.Sc. in Engineering from the University of London, 1982 — 1985.

Top-Level Domain