Lock Down Your .XXX Domain Before The Land Rush Begins | Hacker News Reader

Lock Down Your .XXX Domain Before The Land Rush Begins

techcrunch.com

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This is nearly the entire business case for running your own gTLD, trademark owners are compelled to protect their marks. I worked on the .pro registry a few years ago, a motivation for the business to run it (because it wasn't big) was the hope that it would build the experience and infrastructure to support more gTLDs as ICANN opened up the creation process. But that didn't happen nearly as fast as possible and the company I worked for moved develoment offshore, so I sort of doubt I'm giving away anything they're still planning.

Running a small domain registry is an easy job. There are good RFCs for all the technology, your customers are a few dozen tech-savvy registrars, and you have low scaling demands. There are some availability concerns, but the knowledge for doing that right is now common. You hire a coder/support engineer to keep the servers humming and a business guy to create and maintain registrar relationships and otherwise just print money.

I thought about getting into the business in '07 but realized the entire thing depended on ICANN advancing the gTLD expansion and was a bit too risky. Four years later with minimal progress (.xxx isn't one of these, it's been kicking around over a decade) I'm glad I didn't start that business. Though ICANN has moved that along this summer...

What a genius move, that is only reason for this domain. No porn provider will use this, because it will be banned on so many places. It didn't make any sense, but now it does.

Super expensive and you don't want your company reputation to be damaged. I bet in the end there are only the venturers who dream from the days of sex.com and the ones who pay to lock their domain down.

I believe the larger adult businesses will in fact use it, if just for the branding, and to make a case for their legitimacy by having their site on an easily filtered TLD.

I bet all those startups who used their tld as part of their name are all giddy they can't get extorted like this.

odd.ly, xxx.ly is still available.

I would assume that's because using a .ly domain for pornography is a violation of the terms and conditions, and Libyan law.

I think we almost have to. If you don't grab your trademark now then someone else might, and you don't want someone squatting on it with dodgy content :/

They are super expensive though, 10x the price of a .com.

> They are super expensive though, 10x the price of a .com.

Not unless a reseller has the .com. This assume you aren't going for something clever though.

Trademark does not require you to own every TLD to protect the mark. If someone does something that is confusing with your trademark, you can sue them.

It'd be stupid to waste money on every TLD; there are going to be hundreds of them eventually. There's no reason to voluntarily give your money away for no benefit to you. If someone tries to extort you by abusing your trademark, cross that bridge when you come to it by suing the offender.

It can be super costly to legally gain control of a domain that contains your mark (tens of thousands of dollars). And there is no guarantee you will win it back. Trademarks are registered by country/territory, so even though you may have the mark in the US, it doesn't mean that someone else can't use it in another country.

My concern is that many people on HN are building brands, and the last thing you want is someone buying yourbrand.xxx and covering it with porn.

If you have an established brand, you almost have to buy the .xxx.

"It can be super costly to legally gain control of a domain that contains your mark (tens of thousands of dollars). And there is no guarantee you will win it back."

Why would you want to "win it back" in the case of yourbrand.xxx? It's worthless to a non-porn brand.

"My concern is that many people on HN are building brands, and the last thing you want is someone buying yourbrand.xxx and covering it with porn."

Why would this be a concern? It's not worth anything to a pornographer to, for example, register virtualmin.xxx and cover it with porn (except maybe for extortion value). I could see "google.xxx" or "twitter.xxx" being a problem, but in those cases, they'd want to sue for trademark infringement. The domain name is irrelevant.

"If you have an established brand, you almost have to buy the .xxx."

If so, it's a license to extort money. I'm just not going to participate in that sort of scam, and I don't think anyone else should, either. All the people that do are funding further efforts in the same direction.

Household brands like Twitter, Google, Nike, Zara, Walmart, Ford and KPMG will IMHO pay. This is not binary, it is a continuum. Will TechCrunch buy theirs? Will AirBnb, Path or Zaarly?

It is a risk decision for these businesses.

For a relatively small amount of money companies are removing the potential brand and legal cost risk of not owning their .xxx. The more important your brand the more likely you will be to pay.

I totally agree with you that this is 'extortion', but just because it may not be right, doesn't mean we won't be affected by it.

Can I get extortion.xxx?

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