Schools Reserving .XXX Domains To Protect Good Name
Schools Reserving .XXX Domains To Protect Good Name
Posted 11/14/2011 at 3:30pm
| by Ryan Whitwam
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Later this year, the much-debated .xxx top level domain will go live, but the domain name gold rush is already on. The .xxx domain is being presented as a sort of “red light district” for the internet. But before all that happens, individuals and organizations with a trademark are being given the opportunity to snap up .xxx domains to protect their brands. It turns out that one group taking advantage of this is higher education.
Many schools are seeking to lock down the .xxx version of their domain names in order to stop any clever pornographers in their tracks. A University of Missouri-Columbia official was quoted as saying, "We don't want someone coming across our trademark on a porn site. God only knows what they'd come up with." The adult industry has been critical of the planned domain, with some believing that they will eventually be forced to restrict their activities to the .xxx domains.
It costs $200 per domain for Universities to lock down the .xxx site. Most schools have said they will not forward the .xxx link to the .edu one, but perhaps a snarky IT admin someplace will make use of the forbidden address.
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someuid
November 14, 2011 at 4:23pm
This should not be allowed to happen.
By that I mean you should not be able to get an xxx domain that is the same as any kind of business, person or organization's name. The only people that can get, say Harvard.xxx should be Harvard. They should not have to get it and pay $ for it to keep anyone else from getting it.
There needs to be some serious regulation in the domain name space.
d3v
November 15, 2011 at 3:55am
TLDs like .xxx are released primarily to make money off defensive registrations by trademark holders. So I don't think ICANN is going to shoot itself in the foot by allowing free registration or domain "reservation" for trademark holders.
Incognito
November 14, 2011 at 5:56pm
I somewhat agree, except that if they (Harvard, in your example) want to use it (such as to redirect traffic) then they should have to pay for it like anyone else. However, if a company just wants to prevent somone else from using their name for a porn site ICANN should reserve the domain name for free if a party requests it, assuming they have a legitimate claim to the .com/.org domain name. This would prevent someone else from snatching the .xxx domain name and should be free of cost to the holder of the .com / .org domain name.
Holly Golightly
November 14, 2011 at 9:31pm
I think the adult websites should be forced to use the .XXX domains while ICANN should protect .com/org from having their names and trademarks used for pornography. Although, if adult websites were not allowed to have .com and .org then eventually it will become common sense to the consumer that those sites mean non-porno while the .xxx does. This also makes filtering networks that much more easier. But until then, type one wrong letter, and you will end up in a pornography website. It really is a damn shame.
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