.XXX: To Protect or Not?

Someone asked a question on DomainQuestions.com that I’ve been hearing quite a bit lately: “Should I protect myself by buying the corresponding .xxx domains?” People have seen the .XXX brand protection advertising and are wondering if they need to protect their brands.

Generally speaking,  I’ve  recommended  that people apply for .XXX domain names to correspond with their important brands, only if the .XXX domain names could legitimately be used as an adult website. For instance, DogWalker.xxx wouldn’t make much sense to be used for an adult site, but Dating.xxx would make sense and could potentially be confusing once the general public knows more about .XXX and uses it more regularly.

Some more conservative brands or organizations should probably protect their brands regardless, so they don’t have to explain a .XXX site to constituents or customers who may hear about the .XXX site through the grapevine.

I’m not too worried about this for most of my brand names, so the few I want to protect, I will do my best to reserve at General Availability, which begins on December 6. For me personally, I didn’t want to spend a $60 non-refundable application fee, when I didn’t see much potential for confusion with my brands.

.XXX landrush ended yesterday, and the auctions for the domain names that have more than one entity applying for them will begin on December 12 at Pool.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

8 COMMENTS

  1. Hi,

    Many colleges recently have been in many news articles, proactively registering .xxx domains names.

    IMHO, most are really missing the ‘mark’ as they are most all just registering the schools name and and maybe a few other versions of it.

    But, IMHO… most of the top schools are missing one main fact in their ‘thinking’ on the subject.

    Most all your big colleges are known mostly by their ‘sports programs’…mainly ‘football’

    IMO, they should be registering the domain names of what their ‘team’ names are. As this is what they are best know as…in many cases

    Example,

    USC might rig this and USCTrojans, but they should try and reg ‘Trojans’…may have a battle with the company that makes a ‘product’ of the same name 🙂

    Anyway,

    Plenty of ‘generic’ team domains… that may end up in the hands of people, that may put up website content, the schools may not care for.

    Duke
    Ducks
    Crimson Tide
    Vols
    Volunteers
    Bruins
    Cardinals
    Beavers ( Oregon St)
    Indians
    Wildcats
    Celtics
    Magic
    Eagles
    Bears
    Cowboys

    List goes on and on and on.

    This could and does apply to pro sports also..

    Just a ‘little food for thought’ for them and maybe for some enterprising ‘domainer(s).

    Peace!
    Dan

  2. If your not involved in the porn business theres no reason at all to purchase a .XXX domain.

    .XXX should be blocking regular company names free of charge. So them charging hundreds of dollars to people not involved in pornography is a scam.

    Definitely do not throw away your money with .XXX.

  3. @Alex “So them charging hundreds of dollars to people not involved in pornography is a scam”.

    I prefer to call it legal extortion.

  4. Depends where your clients/business are/is located. If you are in the Middle East, well the ISPs have already blocked the extension altogether. Same thing goes for India.

  5. Hi,

    Colleges Protect Their Image with .XXX Domain Name Buy-ups

    http://www.educationnews.org/higher-education/colleges-protect-their-image-with-xxx-domain-name-buy-ups/

    ____

    ” The University of Missouri-Columbia has recently registered missouri.xxx and missouritigers.xxx, for example.”

    As an example to my point I made in my first post above: whom ever registers “tigers. XXX” and gets some current or/and recent Grads (girls) from the school
    to provide, lets say photos of themselves…not much they are going to be able to do, I do not think.

    They think they are ‘covering themselves’ (sort of speak) 🙂 but the ‘generic’ team names may just end up giving them more than ‘fits’ of rage.

    And they think $200 is expensive now…

    Peace!
    Dan

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