Porn-Industry Outsiders Fear 'Shakedown' In .XXX TLD

The long-debated .XXX top-level domain opens this week; reader SonicSpike sends a snippet from the Washington Times about what may turn into a hornet's nest of anger at how the new domain is being used: "Some adult-entertainment companies are balking at the entire scheme, saying that ICM Registry LLC, which is overseeing .xxx registrations worldwide, does not have permission to sell the .xxx version of trademarked names and brands. In addition, the Florida-based company is raising eyebrows — and charges of 'shakedown' — by trying to get non-porn companies to pay to prevent their brands from being registered as .xxx sites. After all, what maker of baby food or children's movies, for example, would want to have sites such as gerber.xxx or disney.xxx floating around the Internet?"

Comments

Welcome to capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

We hope you enjoy your stay.

His is this any different from other TLDs?

[msobkow]

I don't see how this is any different than worryabout trademark registrations for .edu, .net, .org, or the country code TLDs.

If you really want to protect your trademark, you have to register an awful lot of TLDs just to cover one variation on a name.

Fortunately the convention seems to be that whoever registers for a .com, first implicily has the rights to that name in other .TLDs.

Re:His is this any different from other TLDs?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It isn't fundamentally different(which is, in large part, why those horrible 'arbitrary-string TLD' people must die); but I suspect that .xxx is slightly worse than some, in that(unlike .net) it is largely useless to 'mainstream' trademark holders except on defence, and (unlike .edu) there aren't substantial restrictions on who can register for .xxxes, and, (unlike weirdo country-code TLDs) .xxx is likely to be more recognizable than the obscure ones; but not useful for subsidiaries/marketing in the major-market ones. Just a pure shakedown.

Re:His is this any different from other TLDs?

[Trepidity]

It's similar in a way, and they already have been trying to push that (all the registrars nag, sometimes insistently, about registering variants). At first glance this raises the stakes by putting forth the possibility of someone not only squatting on a variant of your name, but an "unsavory" version of it. disney.info is squatting, but disney.xxx maybe would damage the brand. Like if there were a .felon domain name and someone registered your full name dot felon or something.

On the other hand, it's long been possible to convert a non-offensive domain name into an offensive domain-squat by just putting up unsavory content on the domain, like in the ol' whitehouse.gov/whitehouse.com thing.

Re:His is this any different from other TLDs?

[Ihmhi]

Easy answer. A domain squatter is someone who owns a domain and doesn't have nearly as much money as the person who wants it.

Re:His is this any different from other TLDs?

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. Remember mikerowesoft.com? The guy's name was Mike Rowe, and he had a software company. He had every right to that domain name and company name, but Microsoft forced him to give it up.

Re:This has already been discussed

[characterZer0]

A couple hundred bucks so something bad does not happen to you (wink wink) is a shakedown, regardless of how much money the shakee has.

Worst of both worlds?

[jensend]

I'd like to see a scheme like the .xxx tld work well- simplifying things for people who don't want to encounter internet smut without error-prone filter setups and without futile attempts to keep that kind of stuff off the web entirely. But it looks like this is being done in the worst way possible.

Exorbitant registration fees will make it so this will never serve its intended purpose- most smut will be hosted on normal tlds just to save on fees. And the claimed "shakedown" racket makes no sense. If there's going to be porn which (ab)uses your trademark, it's not like registering a domain will wipe it out or even make it significantly harder to find. The best route for normal businesses would be to just ignore everything under that tld. It's not like the old whitehouse.com problem- if somebody says "I went to gerber.xxx and was SHOCKED to see what was there! For shame!" there's the easy rejoinder "What exactly were you doing looking up gerber.xxx, and what did you expect to find on an .xxx domain? Why would you think that's affiliated with us at all?" But this greedy registry wants to wring extra dough out of people by playing on their trademark paranoias.

Re:Worst of both worlds?

[tomhudson]

You can protect the tradmark by sending them a C & D. No need to fall for this extortion scam.

Re:This has already been discussed

[gstrickler]

If a trademark owner has to pay again each year to prevent their registered trademark from being used in each TLD, that sounds like a "protection racket" to me. And when they keep adding new TLDs, the cost and effort keeps rising each year. I don't know what the solution is, but the current system definitely resembles "paying for protection".

Re:Disney.xxx ? isnt there already such a site ?

[betterunixthanunix]

Disney does wield an enormous amount of power over our culture. Think about the millions of children who grow up watching Disney films, which represent a particular set of values and ideals that are being drilled into the heads of those children. Whether or not this is comparable for pornography is another issue entirely, but it is not as if there is nothing to the argument that Disney is indoctrinating children into a particular culture (nor is it a stretch to think that Disney is subtly using this power to its advantage).

Re:Gerber.xxx?

[betterunixthanunix]

Not nearly enough money there to offset the loss of business from social conservatives boycotting Gerber. Pornography is still frowned upon in America, and there are vast swaths of the country where the 1950s sentiments about pornography and family values are not a thing of the past. People still believe that pornography turns men into rapists and child molesters, and you can bet that Gerber does not want anyone to associate their corporate image with that sort of thing, even if there are a minority of people who have an adult-baby fetish.

In other news

[Mensa Babe]

In other news, Verisign is trying to get non-stupid companies to pay to prevent their brands from being registered as company-is-stupid.com sites. After all, what serious book publisher or university, for example, would want to have sites such as amazon-is-stupid.com or mit-is-stupid.com floating around the Internet?