Idiots
For only 180K they could have had xxx.gay.
The internet address gay.xxx has been sold for $500,000, making it the most expensive domain name sold in an extension that is not yet publicly open for registration. The deal was made as part of the Founders Program offered by .xxx operator ICM Registry. The buyer is Liberty Media Holdings, aka Corbin Fisher, a Las Vegas- …
"...the sunrise rules state that applications must be for an exact-match string only, excluding non-compliant symbols, so the owner of a trademark on "example.com" would only be able to block "examplecom.xxx", not "example.xxx"..."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/29/mistakes_rife/
How can any .XXX domain be purchased before the sunrise period ends on 28th October? And how can you block gay.xxx under the sunrise rules unless the address owned is www.g.ay
Can anyone explain that please?
Because your trademark can/should be for "Example", not "example.com". Hence you can get hold of $TRADEMARK.xxx == example.xxx.
e.g Starbucks. I bet they trademark both Starbucks and Starbucks.com, but they'd only need to use the former, more normal, bricks&mortar version to block starbucks.xxx.
ICM Register, the operator of .XXX reserved, sold, and delegated as part of the their publicly announced "Founders Program." There are a number .XXX websites, that were part of that program which are already live including: desi.xxx, casting.xxx, live.xxx, inked.xxx, ifriends.xxx and quite a few others. You can google site:.xxx to see what sites are already online.
The domain owners agreed to develop the sites and many paid very hefty price tags for their domains. Like all things: you snooze, you loose. I wish these early adopters/risk takers the best, especially the new owners of gay.xxx.
Not all live .xxx sites are in google yet. I've been setting some up over the past month on our servers and none of them are in google yet. Of course this will all change once we link them into the rest of our sites.
Right now they're not linked by anything until we're ready to launch in the coming weeks.