Dot-XXX Domains Go Live, Escalating Battle for Smutty URLs

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Dot-XXX Domains Go Live, Escalating Battle for Smutty URLs

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More than 100,000 porn websites sporting the .XXX domain went live today. The public launch of the .XXX domain is a culmination of years of struggle between the adult entertainment industry, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers and ICM Registry, now the official registry of the new domain.

All available .XXX domain names will be released for registration later today, and they can only be purchased via accredited registrars on a first-come, first-serve basis. The new domain names start at around $80 per year and each site will be scanned daily for malware with McAfee tools -- a first for any domain names so far.

In theory, the .XXX domain is meant to safely filter adult content on the Web under one domain name that would also give users an advanced heads-up over what they will find once the website has loaded. "While adult entertainment is enjoyable to many adults, it is not appropriate for all audiences,” said Stuart Lawley, chief executive of ICM Registry. “We created .XXX to address the unique needs of the online adult entertainment industry.”

All .XXX registrants are also obliged to follow a set of self-regulation practices drawn up by the adult industry, which include safeguarding children from being marketed or targeted online and accurate labeling and meta-tagging so that .XXX domains can be blocked more easily by parental controls filters.
The fallout over .XXX domains

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As you would expect, anti-porn and religious groups have been against the .XXX top-level domain, arguing this will make porn sites more visible and would be an endorsement for the adult entertainment industry.

Plus, it’s not a requirement for .XXX domain owners to ditch their .com or .net domains in favor of the new domain. But it’s not only these groups that are against .XXX.

Movers and shakers in the porn industry are against it, as well as businesses worried about domain squatting. “We oppose the .XXX domain and all it stands for,” reportedly said Fabian Thylmann, managing partner of Manwin, which runs Playboy sites as a licensee. “It is my opinion that .XXX domain is an anticompetitive business practice that works a disservice to all companies that do business on the Internet.” Manwin announced last week that it has banned all activity between its brands and .XXX websites (including advertising), on top of an antitrust lawsuit it filed last month.

Businesses are seeing themselves forced to buy .XXX porn domains in order to protect their trademarks.

One of the UK’s largest registrars, Easyspace, said four out of five businesses that have preregistered .XXX domain names this year have no direct connection to the adult entertainment industry. Instead, it’s argued the .XXX domain is a burden for businesses that wish to protect trademarks against domain squatters, as large companies would pay thousands per year to domain registrars (the winners in this case) just to keep their .XXX domains safe.

ICM is now offering a service where companies can pay a one-off fee to have their domains permanently excluded from .XXX registration, but the fees can be significant, as they vary between registrars.

Meanwhile, an arbitration program has been launched in order to help resolve complaints over the new .XXX domains, which is similar to the policies applied to most domains under ICANN. The .XXX's Rapid Evaluation Service is meant to result in a takedown of an infringing domain name in just two business days.
 
“We created .XXX to address the unique needs of the online adult entertainment industry.”
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“We created .XXX to make a crap-ton of money from the adult entertainment industry and domain squatters.”
 
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Universities block triple-X domain names​




Universities have gotten into an unlikely business: buying .xxx website addresses.

New .xxx addresses became available to the public last week, but some schools didn't wait that long to secure important addresses, as a way to prevent adult content providers from profitting off them.

Beginning two months ago, ICM Registry gave trademark holders an opportunity to pay $200 per address for a one-time blocking charge to ensure that it not be used for adult content. At that time, the University of Kansaspurchased the rights to several addresses including kansas.xxx and rockchalkjayhawk.xxx and jayhawks.xxx.

Then, last week when the public sale began, the college bought several more—including kustore.xxx, kugirls.xxx and jayhawk.xxx—bringing its total to nearly two dozen. "We settled on the ones that we thought it would be reasonable for us to protect," says Paul Vander Tuig , the university's trademark licensing director. "It's truly a preventative blocking measure, blocking others from doing it."

Across the country, other colleges including Michigan, Penn State, Purdue, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Indiana did the same thing. The University of Missouri secured the addresses missouri.xxx, missouritigers.xx and mizzou.xxx. " I think it's a smart thing to do," says Terry Robb of the university's information technology department.

Internet domain group Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved the .xxx domain earlier this year; ICM Registry originally submitted a proposal in 2000.

What is confusing is that current adult content sites are not required to move from .com or .net addresses, says ICANN's Brad White. "Half the porn industry likes it and half doesn't."

What the .xxx domain does do "is to clearly signpost adult entertainment on the Net. For those people who want to find adult content, they can easily find it," says ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley. ", and for those who wish to avoid this kind of content, not only can you see that it has the .xxx as a suffix visibly … parents can set their browser settings at home and on mobile devices to filter this content out automatically."

Also before putting .xxx addresses up for sale, certain key addresses were sold, most notably gay.xxx for $500,000 to the gay film production studio Corbin Fisher.

As with universities, other trademark holders such as companies took advantage of the "defensive registrations," Lawley says. "A lot of famous brands did that."

Along with www.kansas.com, addresses such as www.disney.xxx and www.marvel.xxxindicate they have been reserved.

Acquiring the addresses as a defensive move makes perfect sense, says Barbara Brooks, co-senior partner at The Strategy Group. "It's to preclude anybody else from using their good name in an inappropriate way."

Once addresses become available to the public, cyber squatters can snatch them up and hold the sites for high-dollar ransom. "It's an unfortunate part of what one does today in order to do business and maintain the integrity of the institutional name, the brand name, the organization, the students, whatever it is that one has built the equity in that what we have to do in this digital age."

Article from: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2011-12-09/xxx-university-domain/51825300/1
 
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.xxx domains snapped up by colleges and businesses

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(Credit: icmregistry.com; screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET)

Playboy's frequent portfolios of college women across the US are bad enough--never mind the prospect of porn sites with names like "www.USCleazy.xxx".

That seems to be the thinking employed by colleges that, according to the Associated Press, are grabbing .xxx domain names to keep them off the market and prevent the sullying of their collegiate reputations.

The AP offers up the example of the University of Kansas, which, it says, spent nearly US$3,000 to lock down names like "www.KUgirls.xxx" and "www.KUnurses.xxx".

Businesses, too, are buying domains to prevent the defilement of their brands. Blog Fusible reports that Google bought the domain "YouTube.xxx" earlier this week. The company is also sitting on "Google.xxx" and "Blogspot.xxx," Fusible says.

Domain-name governance body ICANN--the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers--gave the .xxx domain its official approval earlier this year, and registrations for the domains began in September.

A "sunrise" period kicked things off, giving companies in- and outside the porn industry 50 days to register for or block themselves from the domain. A "land rush" period followed, with businesses having access to remaining .xxx addresses.

Domains became available for purchase by the general public earlier this week--on a first come, first served basis.
 
they talked about this on the news yesterday... saying if you didn't work in the "industry", you'd not be able to keep the domain registered.
 
Mystery buyer acquires vatican.xxx web address



The Vatican said on Wednesday an unknown buyer had snapped up the internet address vatican.xxx, a domain combining its name with an extension reserved for pornographic content.
"This domain is not available because it has been acquired by someone else, but not the Vatican," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said on Vatican radio.
It was not clear from his statement if the Vatican had tried to acquire the domain in order to prevent future misuse and had been beaten to the punch by the unknown buyer.
Lombardi denied Italian media reports that the Vatican had, like many other organizations including companies, universities and museums, registered the xxx domain to prevent its misuse.
The xxx domains are being launched this month for pornographic content and many organizations have preemptively acquired them so others cannot.
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