Universities block triple-X domain names
— -- Universities have gotten into an unlikely business: buying .xxx website addresses.
New .xxx addresses became available to the public last week, but some schools didn't wait that long to secure important addresses, as a way to prevent adult content providers from profitting off them.
Beginning two months ago, ICM Registry gave trademark holders an opportunity to pay $200 per address for a one-time blocking charge to ensure that it not be used for adult content. At that time, the University of Kansas purchased the rights to several addresses including kansas.xxx and rockchalkjayhawk.xxx and jayhawks.xxx.
Then, last week when the public sale began, the college bought several more—including kustore.xxx, kugirls.xxx and jayhawk.xxx—bringing its total to nearly two dozen. "We settled on the ones that we thought it would be reasonable for us to protect," says Paul Vander Tuig , the university's trademark licensing director. "It's truly a preventative blocking measure, blocking others from doing it."
Across the country, other colleges including Michigan, Penn State, Purdue, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Indiana did the same thing. The University of Missouri secured the addresses missouri.xxx, missouritigers.xx and mizzou.xxx. " I think it's a smart thing to do," says Terry Robb of the university's information technology department.
Internet domain group Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved the .xxx domain earlier this year; ICM Registry originally submitted a proposal in 2000.
What is confusing is that current adult content sites are not required to move from .com or .net addresses, says ICANN's Brad White. "Half the porn industry likes it and half doesn't."
What the .xxx domain does do "is to clearly signpost adult entertainment on the Net. For those people who want to find adult content, they can easily find it," says ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley. ", and for those who wish to avoid this kind of content, not only can you see that it has the .xxx as a suffix visibly … parents can set their browser settings at home and on mobile devices to filter this content out automatically."
Also before putting .xxx addresses up for sale, certain key addresses were sold, most notably gay.xxx for $500,000 to the gay film production studio Corbin Fisher.
As with universities, other trademark holders such as companies took advantage of the "defensive registrations," Lawley says. "A lot of famous brands did that."
Along with www.kansas.com, addresses such as www.disney.xxx and www.marvel.xxx indicate they have been reserved.
Acquiring the addresses as a defensive move makes perfect sense, says Barbara Brooks, co-senior partner at The Strategy Group. "It's to preclude anybody else from using their good name in an inappropriate way."
Once addresses become available to the public, cyber squatters can snatch them up and hold the sites for high-dollar ransom. "It's an unfortunate part of what one does today in order to do business and maintain the integrity of the institutional name, the brand name, the organization, the students, whatever it is that one has built the equity in that what we have to do in this digital age."
Contributing: The Detroit Free Press
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