XXX Domains Being Acquired by Non-Porn Businesses Out of Fear

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The .XXX top-level domain recently launched in order to create a red-light district for the adult industry. But given concerns about their brands being abused, businesses are now snapping up .XXX domains to protect their names.

We earlier reported on ICANN’s approval of the much-disputed .XXX top-level domain. The effort, aimed at providing adult entertainment companies their own namespace on the Web, has met with resistance from both conservative groups and even porn producers themselves. Conservative groups say that .XXX will promote pornography online. Meanwhile, the adult industry says .XXX will make it difficult to search for their content. The administrators of .XXX say that providing an online red-light district will make adult sites more visible to those looking for porn, but easily blocked by people who don’t want it.

There is an interesting turn of events, however, as other businesses and educational institutions start buying .XXX domains. The University of Kansas, for instance, has acquired names like KUgirls.xxx, KUnurses.xxx and the like, and they say this is to protect their KU name from being used by pornographers. Indiana University has reportedly spent $2,200 on hoosiers.xxx, in reference to their school’s athletics team name. But, of course, they’re not planning on placing adult content here.

Likewise, big brands are also buying their own domains, such as Target. Even GoDaddy, in its .XXX registration page, recommends that even non-adult websites buy an .xxx domain to protect their brand.

Perhaps you’d like to create an adult entertainment website. Or maybe you’re here to keep your brand from being registered as a .XXX by someone else …

But do these indicate a failure of the .XXX namespace? If non adult companies start snapping up their own xxx domains just to protect their name, then it would be just like other TLDs that companies would want — or need — to buy even without being part of the adult industry, for which the domain name was intended. Some observers even say the creation of the new domain namespace has resulted in anxiety for legitimate businesses who find the need to buy domains just so their brand names are not used by pornographic sites. These fear-based purchases are surely good business for the domain registrars, but are an extra expense for legitimate businesses.