Risks of .xxx cybersquatting are minimal.
Yesterday I met with a group of entrepreneur friends and I explained the upcoming .xxx Sunrise B to them.
Sunrise B allows non-adult trademark holders to pay a one time fee to block their trademark from ever being registered in .xxx.
After explaining the process an inevitable question came up: “So, Andrew, do you think we should participate in Sunrise B”.
My answer was no. Unless you have a huge brand, I don’t see why you’d bother.
Concerns about cybersquatters picking up every equivalent .com under .xxx are unfounded. The main reason: .xxx domains are expensive. It’s unlikely someone would pay $75 or more to cybersquat on a small business’ brand. After a couple years they’d tire of paying the renewal fees.
There are other reasons I don’t think cybersquatting will be a big issue on .xxx, including rapid takedown and sponsored community requirements (assuming they are enforced).
But the big deterrent is price.
That said, here are some businesses I think should participate in Sunrise B:
– intellectual property law firms. It shows that you’re on top of your own IP.
– large businesses. That way you don’t have to explain to your CEO why you didn’t spend a small amount of money protecting your brand against a (rightly or wrongly) perceived risk.
– colleges and universities.
Kevin Murphy says
Another category you might want to add to that list: celebrities.
Josh says
Another group to possibly add: companies that get a lot of complaints or who often skirt controversy. I can envision an angry customer possibly using brand.xxx over brandsucks.com for a complaint site.
John Berryhill says
“I can envision an angry customer possibly using brand.xxx over brandsucks.com for a complaint site.”
Non-commercial commentary or criticism is not a legitimate use of a .xxx domain name. Unlike the gTLDs, .xxx is chartered for commercial use.
You will note that this defense to UDRP disputes is notably absent from the ICM Rapid Evaluation Service (RES).
Tom Barrett says
“I met with a group of entrepreneur friends”
Its a bit of a stretch to extrapolate from a “group of entrepreneur friends” to say “most businesses can skip .xxx sunrise”.
Most entreprenuers probably don’t have registered trademarks and certainly have not built up their business to the point where they are concerned about cyber-squatting in alternative tld’s.
I know I didn’t start protecting “encirca” in other tld’s right away.
tom barrett
encirca.com
Andrew Allemann says
@ Tom – I think it’s clear my point is that this got me thinking about if businesses can skip .xxx sunrise.
That said, most of these guys have multi million dollar businesses and some of them have participated in previous sunrise/defensive registrations. I still don’t think they need to participate in this one.