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August 24, 2011

.XXX Domains Purchased to Protect Trademarks

According to one of the United Kingdom’s largest registrars, four out of five businesses that have preregistered .XXX domain name extensions do not have any connection to the adult film industry. Easyspace reported that only 20 percent of hundreds of business preregistering through its services are using them for the intended purposes of selling adult content.

Protecting Trademarks and Brands

This is an indication that other industry businesses have realized the need to protect trademarks and brands utilizing .XXX. To protect your trademark or brand, it is critical to preorder the preferred domain name and extension prior to the launch of General Availability which is slowly approaching.

Replication

Many believe this pattern is being replicated across this and many other industries. If this is true, then the opposition of the new naming conventions will have been correct. Single .XXX domain extensions cost approximately $330 per year. Therefore, many naysayers believed it would be a major tax on legitimate companies who are desperate to protect their trademarks and brands from third-party buyers.

New ICM Registry Service

Large companies who are protecting many domains could spend thousands per year. All the profit will be transferred to domain registrars such as Easyspace. ICM Registry has taken this idea a step further by launching a service that allows companies to pay a one-off free which permanently excludes them from .XXX registration. However, the costs for the services are considerable.

Prioritizing Genuine Operators

ICANN designed the preregistration and registration phases of .XXX domain extensions to prioritize adult operators that are genuine in their purchasing and who were approved in March 2011 following years of battling the new naming convention. As expected, the advent of .XXX has become highly controversial. Those using .XXX have recently begun appearing in small batch despite the official release schedule of appearing later in 2011.

Advocates for the Naming Convention

Advocates for the domain name extension have promoted .XXX in an effort to easily identify Internet pornography. Therefore, any individual viewing a website with this extension could not claim they did not anticipate the content. Unfortunately adult industry websites will not abandon their established domain which defeats the idea of filtering.

The .XXX domain name extension has proven and will continue to be a controversial topic within the adult film industry and with registrars. However, it appears to be an excellent identification of adult websites allowing for the easy blockage of these and others to younger viewers.

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