Why Fortune-500 firms are booking porn domain names

Reputed organisations including several governmental and non-governmental organisations are queuing in to buy and block domain names ending with .xxx. No it is not because of their sudden interest in pornography, but to protect and safeguard their identity against possible misuse.

More than 200,000 domains have already been registered for the .xxx domain ever since the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the use of triple-x sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) with the ICM Registry.

The ICANN Board of Directors approved the .xxx domain stating that the porn industry could be totally transferred to the suffix and freed from other domains such as.com and .net and thereby more effectively regulated.

Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry, a Florida company that acquired the rights to manage the .xxx suffix from ICANN for $25 million, is reported to have confirmed that 70 per cent of Fortune-500 companies are among those who registered .xxx domains since registrations started on September 7.

According to reports, ICM expects to earn a minimum of $200 million annually from the sale of .xxx domains, and see between 3 million and 5 million domain registrations as companies defensively register their domains.

Among those who have registered are various non-governmental organisations, schools and colleges and airlines. Emirates 24|7 did a search on the availability of some of the names and found most names of international airlines including Emirates and Etihad apart from many budget airlines, and schools and colleges were already registered against the .xxx suffix.

According to media reports in the US, many educational institutions have registered multiple domains to protect their school identity.

“Penn State has bought four addresses: pennstate.xxx, psu.xxx, ThePennsylvaniaStateUniversity.xxx and Nittanylions.xxx… Across the nation, hundreds of colleges, corporations and non-profits have locked down .xxx domains as a hedge against cybersquatters, protecting their good names from look-alike sites that might give you a bit more Nittany Lion than you bargained for,” said a report in The Morning Call that is published from Pennsylvania.

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