As you may have heard

As you may have heard, .XXX launched September 7, 2011 for trademark holders and will launch for non-trademark holders, December 6, 2011.

If you’re a small business owner and not selling products or services related to the adult entertainment industry, why should you care? In this article, you will find out what .XXX is intended for, why you should protect your brand and what options are available to you to protect yourself.

What is .XXX

.XXX is a sponsored top-level domain name designed for use by the adult entertainment industry. The Registry (ICM) has been lobbying for years to get this domain name approved and after many years, the ICANN board of directors voted 8 for, 3 against, 4 abstain at board meeting in San Francisco in March 2011.  Advocates of .XXX say it is designed to facilitate online responsibility and best practices for the global online adult entertainment Industry. The intention is that the new domain extension identifies websites with adult content, allowing them to be easily filtered out by internet users who don’t want their children or themselves to see adult content. In addition to identifying adult content, .XXX aims to protect consumers of adult entertainment from threats such as viruses, credit card fraud and identity theft.  

 

On the other hand we know that sex on the Internet is huge business and has been for many years, accounting a massive portion of revenue on the internet per year. Will all of the existing sites self regulate and move to .XXX? -Probably not. Will cybersquatters continue to take advantage of popular brands and trademarks and aim to profit from registering .xxx names? -Probably so.

 

Time will tell in terms of how .XXX will play out and how successful it will be in segregating adult content but for small businesses, we must all be one step ahead.