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Schools Buy .xxx Domains In Trademark Panic
bs0d3 writes "Schools nationwide, including The University of Missouri and Washington University, are snapping up .xxx domain names to avoid people making porn sites with their names in the url. The new .xxx domain will be launched later this year, and before that, everyone with a trademark will have the opportunity to reserve names during what's called a "sunrise period". Someone is promoting the possible horrors of what could happen as a way to sell these domains, which cost up to $200 dollars per domain per year. Even though these schools may already be protected from defamation and trademark infringement, they still feel compelled to buy these names."
there goes a business plan have a girls of X school / college web sites.
We-el, unless the school also buy up girlsof.xxx ...
It isn't ICANN that is the driver behind this craze, it is the US schizophrenia that is driving this thing. What you see is the happy marriage of "Brand is EVERYTHING" with "Save the Children" and "Sex is dirty".
and you have ICANN finding that every time they allow another .* TLD, people scramble to buy them all up.
so they release .xxx and all hell breaks loose, and a lot of registrars make a lot of easy money for no added benefit.
If you don't defend a trademark, you lose it - even if you're not aware of it being used by someone else. So, I don't agree that it's the school's problem, the problem is the entire trademark system.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What we really need is a free (or extremely cheap) option to block domains from being registered if there is a valid trademark. Of course, this would eliminate the profit motive of introducing new TLDs, so it would stop happening.
This is something that needs legislation to solve.
Would this take into account the possibility of two or more businesses having the same name, but operating in totally different fields? If not, then a movie studio calling itself Acme Entertainment could then just register acme-entertainment.com and then prevent an arcade machines distributer also called Acme Entertainment from ever having a hope of taking acme-entertainment.(whatever other tld would be acceptable). They are in effectively different fields of business, so neither are infringing on the other's trademark.
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Trademarks are used to identify products or services. If you don't own a product or a service that deals in porn, you don't need to defend it.
...than the lawyers later. Even if the schools' names are protected by trademark and/or defamation law it's likely to cost considerably more than $200 to find infringing domains and get them revoked.
Besides, when the school gets hard up for money they can rent their .xxx domain out for pron.
Or they could just give it to their cheerleaders...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I guess it's a "no brainer" if you're paying with someone else's money.
Yes. Since .com, .net and .org started being free-for-all domains rather than being used for their intended purpose, the system of multiple generic top-level domains has been a scam which inconveniences everyone to benefit the registrars.
The solution to protecting a trademark is to register domains in every possible TLD. This message brought to you by GoD*ddy.
If you don't defend a trademark, you lose it - even if you're not aware of it being used by someone else.
I'm still interested to know how you defend your trademark when you're not aware of it being used?
How about we stop caring about this kind of crap? If people want to go to universityofsomeplace.xxx then that is their business and the university shouldn't really care. Our legislators have enough crap to do (or undo...) without focusing on this "think of the children" nonsense.
Why don't you consider one of the following:
[ ] mypsu.xxx
...
...
...
[ ] sexypsu.xxx
[ ] girlsofpsu.xxx
[ ] sexinpsu.xxx
[ ] gaypsu.xxx
[ ] psushowers.xxx
Come on, it is almost 2012, everyone should have understood a long time ago that people don't search for content based on the domain name.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
there are laws for this but it costs more to file lawsuits to defend your rights in court than pay to register a few thousand domains
The fact that he can't come up with a better system doesn't mean he can't criticize the current one.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Pity that that program had to be cut. I believe that it would have been great.
--
Signed, Jerry Sandusky
Penn State.
On top of that, I dare say that if a potential student is stupid enough to think that schoolname.xxx is the school's official website when it's obviously a porn site that the university doesn't need that student. They'd just flunk out in short order.
Ah, but you're forgetting the Dumb Old Person Problem. There are many parents (and, more likely going forward, grandparents) who have approximately zero understanding of the internet and will ardently refuse to believe that schoolname.xxx could exist as a porn site without the school's direct involvement or at least permission -- and these people will try to funnel their (grand)children to other schools.
People are always thinking of the children, but what about Little Richard?
Your "little dick" is of no concern to anyone but yourself