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Colleges, businesses snap up .xxx domains

Porn-oriented .xxx domains went on sale to the general public this week, and institutions and organizations are grabbing them in the hope of protecting their reputations and brands.

Edward Moyer Senior Editor
Edward Moyer is a senior editor at CNET and a many-year veteran of the writing and editing world. He enjoys taking sentences apart and putting them back together. He also likes making them from scratch. ¶ For nearly a quarter of a century, he's edited and written stories about various aspects of the technology world, from the US National Security Agency's controversial spying techniques to historic NASA space missions to 3D-printed works of fine art. Before that, he wrote about movies, musicians, artists and subcultures.
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icmregistry.com; screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET

Playboy's frequent portfolios of college women across the U.S. are bad enough--never mind the prospect of porn sites with names like "www.USCleazy.xxx."

That seems to be the thinking employed by colleges that, according to the Associated Press, are grabbing .xxx domain names to keep them off the market and prevent the sullying of their collegiate reputations.

The AP offers up the example of the University of Kansas, which, it says, spent nearly $3,000 to lock down names like "www.KUgirls.xxx" and "www.KUnurses.xxx."

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Businesses, too, are buying domains to prevent the defilement of their brands. Blog Fusible reports that Google bought the domain "YouTube.xxx" earlier this week. The company is also sitting on "Google.xxx" and "Blogspot.xxx," Fusible says.

Domain-name governance body ICANN--the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers--gave the .xxx domain its official approval earlier this year, and registrations for the domains began in September.

A "sunrise" period kicked things off, giving companies in- and outside the porn industry 50 days to register for or block themselves from the domain. A "land rush" period followed, with businesses having access to remaining .xxx addresses.

Domains became available for purchase by the general public earlier this week--on a first come, first served basis.