The two biggest misconceptions about .xxx domain names
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
News stories propagate fear over .xxx.
I’ve watched with amusement over the past week as the press has written story after story about defensive .xxx domain name registrations.
Almost every article I’ve read suggests two things about .xxx that I think are flat out wrong.
1. ICANN wanted .xxx.
I think it’s safe to say that ICANN didn’t want .xxx to become reality. Remember how it voted against it (after voting for it)? Remember how it spent money fighting it in arbitration? How it, for the most part, grudgingly approved it in San Francisco? How the CEO didn’t even vote?
ICANN knew it was between a rock and a hard place. It would have been sued had it denied ICM’s application. (Of course now it’s being sued by an adult entertainment company.)
It’s safe to say this wasn’t ICANN’s idea and it didn’t really want this.
2. Small businesses have to register their .xxx to protect themselves.
Here’s one example from Ecommerce Times: the owner of GreatApps.com felt that he had to pay the $99 to register GreatApps.xxx to protect his brand.
Why would the owner of an apps site need a .xxx domain name for defensive purposes? Given that other TLDs of “greatapps” are registered to other people, it must be concern about being associated with porn.
That makes little sense to me. Would a visitor to GreatApps.xxx (if it were a porn site) assume it was associated with the .com? If someone wanted to pop up for searches, couldn’t they just register GreatAppsxxx.com?
The odds of someone registering the .xxx version are low anyway. It costs as registrant about $100 to register a .xxx compared to just $10 for GreatAppsxxx.com.
I think it’s safe to say that most businesses don’t need to defensively register .xxx domain names.
Should businesses be aware of .xxx? Of course. But the risk is greatly overblown.
No related posts.
If ICANN didn’t want it why wouldn’t they have just used community concerns as grounds to reject and simply paid ICM for the inconvenience they put them to?
The .xxx “protect your business” slogan has to be one of the worst in the history of domains and extensions. A whole business banking on extortion. What an awful thing. They could have made a good buck, regardless. But they chose that way. They have created a lot of enemies in doing so. Why? Perhaps greed. Don’t know for sure. An absolute nightmare for Tm holders, to be sure. They could have just kept in their genre and everything would have been kosher. But no. Someone wanted MORE…
Saw my first .xxx tv commercial last night, the one where the .xxx guy approaches the ‘gang’ in the alley and slaps one of them. Didn’t really get the message but it was funny! It was on AMC network.
It won’t be long before Congress and the
Department of Justice looks into this scheme.
“Protect Your Reputation” as a slogan…..Wow!
Spot on em.
Correct there is no need to register defensively because Stuart lawley and the geniuses over at icm have begun pulling names from cybersquatters for FREE
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE THE SUCKER WHO PAID THE EXTORSION MONEY LAST WEEK ONLY TO FIND THAT THEY ARE PROTECTING OTHER BRANDS FOR FREE
Scum of the earth these guys
The real problem is that ICANN acts like a profit-seeking company. It simply creates confusion by creating so many suffixes. We all know that this so called defensive registration problem is not a new issue limited to .xxx suffix only. Now schools are “wasting” money for porn things. It will be recorded in a history book as one of the nonsenses in 21th century.
All this gets really “messy”.
ICANN would have lots of trouble next couple of months and maybe years to come!Those lawsuits last for long time!
I have registered a higly sought after domainname which is taken in all tld’s.
Now this can be related to the adult industry perfectly , but the .com is owned by and named after an Ice Hockey Team…
Let’s see what happens
I do entirely agree with you regarding defensive registrations, except for specific cases.
Otherwise, the only defensive registration I recommended, since one of my areas of interest are religion-related domain names, was for domain names related to one’s religious beliefs, when a possible offensive use could otherwise take place. The ICM Registry actually withheld some religious names (e.g. one couldn’t register Christ, Jesus or Islam), but there were many other ones not withheld (not forgetting variations in other languages, e.g. Christus in German, that has been registered by somebody in Switzerland now).
Regarding denominational names, “Muslim” was withheld, but not “Protestant” (registered by a Christian media group in Switzerland now). Puzzling is the fate of “Catholic”: it will be “awarded after an auction”. I would have expected it to be withheld like “Muslim”. But maybe the registry is less afraid of Catholic reactions…
The article is kinda right, however all the .com good ones are gone, and now, there is a chance for new business makers to do a business. Anyway I wouldn’t say it’s a problem to protect a brand name, by registering .xxx to avoid the brand goes in adult business, but the truth is, ICM Registry should make the price more “affordable”. On the other side, it’s just a business again, because the premium names .xxx are reserved for the future auction, and that is not right.
@Alvin – Flyers.com is NOT owned by the hockey team. It is a fan site and the hockey team uses philadelphiaflyers.com and flyers.nhl.com.
@rs , ok thats great, so a new business opportunity for a flyer company! Thx rs for clearing this up for me.
Since “.com” is used for porn also. I have a feeling the .xxx name will also be used for regular commerce for example Vitamins.xxx
When the phone system ran out of 1-800 number it started to use 1-888 and 1-900
I think the .xxx opens up a whole new marketing strategie , like the flyers.xxx
extra colored, extra glossy and extra cheap!
Or it could stand for a large variety of all sizes and shapes.
I say XXX is a great new tld hahaha