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Ahem! Well, on a serious note, you might have heard about the new adult industry orientated sponsored top-level domains (sTLD).
As part of this, the domain registry managing this sTLD, ICM Registry, are implementing a phased launch to allow those with Intellectual Property trademarks and domain names to either secure their .xxx equivalent domain or to place a block on their IP being used as an .xxx domain.
The people over at ICM Registry have produced a pretty reasonable flow chart to guide you through the process over at their launch page, http://www.icmregistry.com/launch/:
(Click to open this image full screen in new window)
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
In essence it comes down to this:
If you are an adult industry wanting a .xxx domain, you can register a matching domain (.com, .net etc) as .xxx already, also manufacturers of adult products can register their trademarks now too. This is known as Sunrise A.
If you, like most of us, are not involved in the adult industry, then you are probably looking at a Sunrise B block. Here you can protect your domains and trademarks from becoming .xxx domains.
For example, a fictional Bob’s Widget Co making an aftermarket add-on product, Widget2000 with a site on the domain bobs-widgets.com, could secure bobs-widgets.xxx (their equivalent domain) and widget2000.xxx (a trademark) and this would prevent any other entity registering these as .xxx domains.
Also, the 10-year registration block is non-refundable and non-reversible.
This all sounds well and good, but there are often things to watch out for and this process is no different.
Importantly, it doesn’t count as a domain registration, so you can’t redirect visitors to the .xxx domains to your real sites elsewhere, not the end of the world, I guess.
The cost of the block is also quite high, as with a lot of sponsored domains; the blocks cost £125 for 10 years, about double what you can pick up a 10-year full registration of a .com domain.
Protecting Your Domain Name
I think it needs to be said that protecting domain names shouldn't be a concern for local businesses.
Is someone really going to register your trademark as a domain name for up to £150 a year? Because this is what a full .xxx registrations appear to cost. Sony.xxx might be targeted but, locallawfirm.xxx? I hardly think so. Brands such as Which? might want to protect their domain, as which.xxx can have some real-world value.
Also it has to be noted that the .xxx domain might not last...
With the adult entertainment industry’s trade association, the Free Speech Coalition, campaigning for a boycott of the .xxx sponsored TLD, any domain registration or block might be an extremely short lived investment.
I guess the adult entertainment is upset with a third party wanting to profit by charging disproportionately high fees for a domain. This is magnified when the company has multiple domains, the adult site kink.com reportedly has about 10,000 domains and simple maths would show that it could cost them in the order of £1.5M to secure their .xxx related domains. I don’t think that it’s a profitable move for them, after all, they’re still likely to be kink.com instead of kink.xxx.
I hate to tell of impending doom, but I just can’t see mileage in this sTLD.
Other sTLD’s are about, but has anyone been to britishairways.aero? If you do, you’ll get a helpful redirect to britishairways.com. So much for that sTLD too!
My suggestion is for businesses to:
- secure branded domains in each of their territories (.uk, .fr, .de, et al.)
- possibly think about some generic TLDs (such as .com, .net) as well
- register both hyphenated and non-hyphenated domains if applicable
- implement a redirect so people who use the wrong domain find where they want to go
- just leave all the nonsense TLDs alone
And, whatever you do, please don’t spam register or squat on competitors domains, its just not clever and presents a poor underhand image of your business...
