[QUOTE]ST. PAUL, Minn. – The University of Kansas is buying up website names such as [URL="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_hi_te/storytext/us_internet_domains_xxx/43861304/SIG=10ocone73/*http://www.KUgirls.xxx"]http://www.KUgirls.xxx[/URL] and [URL="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_hi_te/storytext/us_internet_domains_xxx/43861304/SIG=10pbk2ls6/*http://www.KUnurses.xxx"]http://www.KUnurses.xxx[/URL]. But not because it's planning a Hot Babes of Kansas site or an X-rated gallery of the Nude Girls of the Land of Aaahs.
Instead, the university and countless other schools and businesses are rushing to prevent their good names from falling into the hands of the pornography industry. Over the past two months, they have snapped up tens of thousands of ".xxx" website names that could be exploited by the adult entertainment business.
"Down the road there's no way we can predict what some unscrupulous entrepreneur might come up with," said Paul Vander Tuig, trademark licensing director at the Lawrence, Kan., school.
The university spent nearly $3,000 in all. It plans to sit on the .xxx names and do nothing with them.
The brand-new .xxx suffix is an adults-only variation on .com. The .xxx name went on sale to the public for the first time this week, promoted as a way to enable porn sites to distinguish themselves and a means of making it easier for Internet filters to screen out things parents don't want their children to see.
ICM Registry of Palm Beach, Fla., is the exclusive manager of the .xxx names and sells them through a dozen middleman companies such as GoDaddy.com for an average of $100 a year.
Indiana University spokesman Mark Land said the school spent $2,200 to buy [URL="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_hi_te/storytext/us_internet_domains_xxx/43861304/SIG=10p74fj5r/*http://www.hoosiers.xxx"]http://www.hoosiers.xxx[/URL] and 10 other such names. Other Indiana schools took the same step, including Purdue University and[B] Ball State University[/B].:v:
"This is just a modest cost of doing business in the world we live in," Land said.ICM sold .xxx names for the past two months exclusively to companies and others that wanted to protect their brands from the porn industry. During the so-called sunrise sale, ICM registered nearly 80,000 names, said chairman and CEO Stuart Lawley.
A search of ICM's database finds prominent brand names — including Nike.xxx, Pepsi.xxx and Target.xxx — among those purchased.
"Target has applied to block a number of the .xxx domains that correspond with our registered trademarks," said Lee Henderson, a spokesman for the Minneapolis-based store chain. He added, dryly: "We do not plan to use the domains.
"The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which the U.S. government established in 1998 to run the Internet's address system, authorized creation of .xxx earlier this year.
The strongest opposition to the suffix has come from the adult entertainment industry. The Free Speech Coalition, the industry's trade group, lobbied against its creation, complaining among other things about the registration fees.
Allison Vivas, president and CEO of Pink Visual Productions, an adult website operator in Van Nuys, Calif., said her company and others like it were also given the chance to buy up .xxx sites matching their existing .com addresses, but Vivas and many others opted not to.
Vivas said she doesn't think her company — or any organization, adult-oriented or not — should have to pay to protect its trademarks. Otherwise, "it kind of becomes extortion.
"Lawley said ICM will take steps to protect existing trademarks even if companies or schools fail to lock down certain website names.[/QUOTE]
This sounds reasonable. It is a shame that schools had to go to such lengths to protect themselves though...
Too late Harvard, ya got to pay up for this
[url]www.harvard.xxx[/url]
Who gets the money from all this? They must be raking it in at the moment.
Didn't they have a list for this so you could register your name so it wouldn't be used in .xxx sites?
as I said in another thread, this .xxx shit is nothing more than a giant scam to extort money from small businesses, major corporations, and even governments and universities. No one who gets their porn on the Internet is going to make an effort to make sure they're on a .xxx site. Moreover, almost every company that already pays the ICANN money for their domains now has to go in and essentially buy a .xxx domain so cyber-squatters can't.
It's a bullshit move and could even constitute extortion. The ICANN is going up to business owners, colleges, and major corporations and saying "that's quite a nice web presence you've got there.... it'd be a shame if something were to happen to it."
And no one's afraid to admit they're doing this... a lot of providers are actually advertising as such!
[img]http://filesmelt.com/dl/extortion1.png[/img]
[editline]10th December 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=Zedicus Mann;33649697]Didn't they have a list for this so you could register your name so it wouldn't be used in .xxx sites?[/QUOTE]
yes they do. It costs $250 per domain to "reserve" it from registration.
[QUOTE=SPESSMEHREN;33649700]as I said in another thread, this .xxx shit is nothing more than a giant scam to extort money from small businesses, major corporations, and even governments and universities.
[editline]10th December 2011[/editline]
yes they do. It costs $250 per domain to "reserve" it from registration.[/QUOTE]
It's not forcing them to buy it. If they are stupid enough to pay up then let them. If I accidentally went on pepsi.xxx and it was filled with porn I wouldn't assume it was actually associated and I wouldn't stop buying pepsi because of it.
Isn't domain squatting illegal?
No one has claimed [url]www.gagrefle.xxx[/url] yet.
[QUOTE=SoaringScout;33649769]No one has claimed [url]www.gagrefle.xxx[/url] yet.[/QUOTE]
Most of the women on the sets don't have one anyway
is it just me or is this completely retarded. If you are a porn company then you can call your website anything you want. It could be HotFemalesSuckingExtremelyLongPhallus123.xxx and it'd still be successful. Am I missing something?
What a fucking waste of money.
Buy as many cliche .xxx domains as you can
Sell in 3 years for major profit
Ball State University sounds like a great name for a porn site, what assholes.
Quick! Someone get sCumdevils!
Great use for tuition money, i sure am glad the colleges charge students a couple year's worth of work so they can squat on website names.
-snip-
This is amazing.
[QUOTE=squids_eye;33649747]It's not forcing them to buy it. If they are stupid enough to pay up then let them. If I accidentally went on pepsi.xxx and it was filled with porn I wouldn't assume it was actually associated and I wouldn't stop buying pepsi because of it.[/QUOTE]
LCD, always for the LCD.
Aw, goatse.xxx is taken.
This whole thing is idiotic though
[QUOTE=Zedicus Mann;33649697]Didn't they have a list for this so you could register your name so it wouldn't be used in .xxx sites?[/QUOTE]
You can also sue them
For a second, the title made me think that colleges were trying to combat porn in general. Then I read the article and I'm okay with what's going on.
For some SICK and TWISTED reason, I read the the title as "For dwarf porn, colleges are buying up .xxx sites."
Must be my morning eyes. :v:
I wonder if anyone has bought any domains with the names of horrible news sources like fox news.
[QUOTE=squids_eye;33649747]It's not forcing them to buy it. If they are stupid enough to pay up then let them. If I accidentally went on pepsi.xxx and it was filled with porn I wouldn't assume it was actually associated and I wouldn't stop buying pepsi because of it.[/QUOTE]
What if it was a Pepsi-themed porn site?
Damn and I got my hopes up we would see many new college goodie sites.
[QUOTE=Omali;33654176]What if it was a Pepsi-themed porn site?[/QUOTE]
I still wouldn't believe it was official and I'm pretty sure Pepsi could just sue if they made that.
[QUOTE=squids_eye;33654249]I still wouldn't believe it was official and I'm pretty sure Pepsi could just sue if they made that.[/QUOTE]
Pretty much. If you own a trademark to your title and someone else uses it, you can sue and you will win and their domain will be terminated/transferred to you.
[QUOTE=AceOfDivine;33654267]Pretty much. If you own a trademark to your title and someone else uses it, you can sue and you will win and their domain will be terminated/transferred to you.[/QUOTE]
Exactly, so why are people buying these when actually there is potential to sue and make money if they don't?
facepunch.xxx isnt taken.
apple.xxx
Counter-sue if they try something funny.
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