In the coming days, I expect to see quite a few notices like this one I received today (I won’t be posting any/many). A new website billed as “India’s sex forum” was launched on the domain name, Masala.XXX. According to a few sources, “masala” means spice in Indian, so I suppose this is an appropriate place for the adult forum.
Interestingly, Masala.com is popular website about Bollywood, and the site is essentially news about India’s movie industry and celebrities. The site has an Alexa ranking in the 5,000s in India and in the 30,000s overall.
As more of these sites go online, it will be interesting to see how owners of the .com domain names react to their .XXX counterparts.
Press release follows:
(Delhi, India) MASALA.XXX is the first website designed for India on the adult domain extension .XXX. MASALA.XXX, a free infotainment forum that offers adult visitors a safe environment to openly discuss sex, went live today.
“At MASALA.XXX, we believe that sex is a beautiful thing, not a dirty secret,” said the website spokesperson. “MASALA.XXX will not only entertain adult visitors, but also provide them with helpful information about sex.”
Upon launch, the site features discussions on multiple topics including: sex advice, sex scandals, safe sex, women’s issues, and homosexuality. New topics and discussions will be introduced by site members and moderators.
The privacy of site members and participants is of serious concern to MASALA.XXX, therefore names and email addresses are kept in the strictest confidence. To offer visitors more security, MASALA.XXX features daily virus scans provided through an agreement between ICM Registry, the operator of .XXX, and McAfee.
The website was allocated as part of the ICM Registry Founders Program, an innovative strategy by the new registry to get quality sites immediately developed on .XXX.
“We are thrilled to be the first .XXX website live for India,” said the spokesperson. “MASALA.XXX is proud to be the first site to showcase .XXX as a diverse top level domain that can be used for adult infotainment in addition to pornography.”
MASALA.XXX’s sister site, DESI.XXX will be launching next week.
Good luck with that. I reckon it will be a matter of days before it will be blocked by authorities in India.
lol this will keep so many lawyers busy as a priority and less time for other frivolous and vexatious actions in the spurious tm udrp space :p
This is gonna be some seriously nasty stuff.
Didn’t India openly stated their intention to block .xxx ?
I am not so sure these folks will be involved in any legal disputes. The term masala is literally as generic as they come and used in many other sites, some more popular than masala.com. The entire .XXX space will not be one big lawsuit. This is a smart move. Great reporting Elliott!
I think this domain will become popular and the owner can easily sell a domain like that for $5000 in future