
Lock Down Your .XXX Domain Before The Land Rush Begins - Kavan
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/07/lock-down-your-xxx-domain-before-the-land-rush-begins/
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Harkins
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...

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sek
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.

~~~
compay
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.

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

~~~
T_S_
odd.ly, xxx.ly is still available.

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

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Kavan
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.

~~~
SwellJoe
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.

~~~
Kavan
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.

~~~
SwellJoe
"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.

~~~
Kavan
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.

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mruser
Can I get extortion.xxx?

