Brands stiffed by .xxx briefs' cock-ups
Half of all attempts to protect trademarks from the new .xxx internet extension could be failing due to lawyers' inability to RTFM*. That appears to be the conclusion of one company handling applications to prevent trademark-infringing use of the new adults-only top-level domain. The .xxx extension, operated by ICM Registry, is …
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block "examplecom.xxx" ??
Well, that seems like a totally dumb idea. If I want to go to example.com how likely is it that I will type examplecom.xxx instead?
.com trademarks
I find it rather odd that some company names include ".com" on the end ; "BigCompany.com".
If your business traded on the high street, would you call it "Big Company.On the High Street"? Probably not, because that would be silly.
An Example
The annoyingly advertised "Go Compare" have registered "gocompare", "go compare", "go-compare" and "go-compare.com". See:
- http://trademark.markify.com/trademark-owner/ctm/gocompare.com+ltd/272882
The XXX shakedown promises to be quite expensive for them.
Why not buy com.xxx? Then a great opportunity to re-sell.
This seems like a good racket
I'd like to set up the .xxxxxx top level domain (twice as hard! - so registrations will cost twice as much obviously).
Pointless
" the owner of a trademark on "example.com" would only be able to block "examplecom.xxx", not "example.xxx"" So there's no point to this process what so ever. It's a case of buy the .xxx domain that mirrors yor .com, or just ignore it. I would suggest the latter.
Crazy rules
I know you should really think about the trademark process and trademark both mycompany and mycompany.com, but really daft rules...
RTFM, in the context of .xxx domains ...
Sounds like some of the lawyers were only looking at the pictures!
Money graaaaabbbbb!
Of what practical use is this cynical move to anyone but the registries and lawyers?
Everyone knew already
That whole .xxx thing is a racket, we already knew that; it is very likely to be completely ignored by the "legitimate" adult industry (if they are not banned from normal TLDs). I bet it will be populated almost exclusively by scam sites and paid-for blocks by companies who don't want to see websites such as oracle.xxx where you could see Ellison gang-banged by the whole of Autonomy's PR department.
No, what is more worrying, even downright scary, is that someone felt the need to explain what RTFM means. On El Reg. The end is nigh!
Apocalyptic icon /de rigueur/
>it is very likely to be completely ignored by the "legitimate" adult industry
Don't bet on it. I would expect quite a number to register domains at .xxx, even if they simply redirect them back to the .coms they already use. And over time, I think we'll see a shift towards smut generally basing themselves there as people get used to seeing it, and as the prices inevitably fall.
The 2 big fears at the moment are prices and filtering risk... Both are silly.
Prices as they are now ARE expensive. But for a legitimate business, it's nothing. And I imagine they will come down over time anyway like the rest of the domain name world has.
As for filtering/censorship - well it's already happening without the .xxx. This domain does make for one easy rule to apply, but it's not going to increase filtering. Those who want to filter already do. Those that want porn will get porn.
I'm Confused
Why did arXiv need its very own domain? And why are companies paying to stay out of it?
browser behaviour?
I thought I saw some browsers try appending .com .org etc onto unresolved names to try to make things easier.
I doubt they'd be updated to try .xxx though.
Anyway, I suspect that died when DNS servers started serving "default" answers when there was no resolution for a name.
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