Now that .XXX is up and running we see all the registrations that were purely defensive.
Take this story from the Edmonton Journal:
Many domain-name buyers that include the University of Alberta and Grant MacEwan University have no intention of using the sites they have acquired, such as “UniversityofAlberta.xxx” and “MacEwanUniversity.xxx.”
“We have registered five domain names,” MacEwan University spokesman David Beharry said Tuesday. “Of course, the reason we would do this as an institution is to protect our reputation.
We wanted to make sure we had the proper combinations of Grant MacEwan, MacEwan, MacEwan University, so that we would be able to control these sites.”
MacEwan University is among thousands of brand owners worldwide who used an early application period in September and October to preregister their trademarks and to block others from attaching their brand name to a triple-x site.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the general public could start buying any remaining dot-xxx domain names on a first-come, first-served basis.
Grant MacEwan University paid $375 U.S. for each of its five domain names, Beharry said.
Now would it not be great for Verisign if they could charge all these universities a fee to block their UniversityXXX.com and .net.
Just about every company I have seen register their .xxx have the xxx.com version available.
Now many .com owners will say that the new tlds will be great for the .com owner.
Sex.shop will be great for the owner of Sexshop.com the theory goes. Bars.nyc will be super for the owner of barsnyc.com.
If that premise is true, all these organizations should be worried about their NameXXX.com being registered. If they are not worried, did they waste a lot of money when their name is available in the most popular extension in the world?
It depends what side of the table you are on. If you believe .com is the end all be all, then these organizations wasted money because their name with xxx was never taken in .com.
Its still available right now. So what they were worried about with .xxx could still play out in .com. They paid protection money to ICM, so should they protect the same in XXX.com?
If you are on the other side of the table and that right of the dot is the future, then these companies were right to protect against .xxx and there is no need to have the XXX.com.
What is your take on this?
Weg says
Interesting hypothesis
Mikael says
Where is David Castello when you need him ?
rob says
It’s definitely protection money these universities have paid out, it is unfortunate that ICANN did not demand the .xxx registry to provide blocked defensive domains for free.
It’s equivalent to a university having to pay hookers to stop soliciting business on campus. But as we know they don’t have to do this, as laws and regulations already afford the universities that protection. Money is in short enough supply for charities and organizations without having to pay out money to the .xxx registry to protect their good name. Shame on ICANN, shame on the .xxx registry. It’s bloody ridiculous, any good law firm should be able to get back the defensive registrations either against ICANN or the registry, they are both benefiting from this disgusting practice.
Steve says
I believe a key part of your argument is missing…
Using the Sex.shop case as example — you are correct there will be ‘bleed’ from Sex.shop that is picked up by SexShop.com BUT ONLY if an active website is built out on Sex.shop. There will be no/little ‘natural’ type-in traffic to Sex.shop (and therefore no ‘bleed’ to SexShop.com). The main reason traffic might go to Sex.shop is if an active website is built out & promoted (in which case, people trying to direct navigate to Sex.shop are likely in some cases to mistakenly type SexShop.com).
So, in the case of Universities who have blocked (domain will NOT resolve) their ‘University.xxx’ domains; since NO active sites will be built on those domains NOR any promotion of those domains, therefore there will be NO bleed onto the corresponding UniversityXXX.com domains (and thus no reason to worry about them).
HybridDomainer says
Thank you everyone for the comments.
Steve you make an excellent point, my point was more that maybe and I said maybe, these organizations wasted money, because if someone wanted to build a site that used the University and XXX, they might have regged UniversityXXX.com.
I do agree with your point on needing a website for the other extensions mentioned.