Concerned schools and businesses buying up .xxx domains
by Steven Mostyn - Dec 12 2011, 00:30
Image: Buy.xxx
A number of schools and businesses in the United States are moving to protect themselves against unwanted association with the porn industry following the official ICANN approval and impending proliferation of .xxx web addresses.
Specifically, an AP report has revealed that The University of Kansas and several higher education institutions throughout Indiana have been buying up thousands of .xxx domain names between them since .xxx was given the green light.
Covering a gamut of possible address combinations, these names include the likes of KUgirls.xxx, KUnurses.xxx and hoosiers.xxx—all of which could possibly cast a negative light if taken up by those within the world of adult entertainment.
“Down the road there’s no way we can predict what some unscrupulous entrepreneur might come up with,” outlined Paul Vander Tuig, trademark licensing director at the Lawrence, Kan., school, in the report.
According to Florida-based ICM Registry, which has been selling .xxx domains ahead of this week’s public introduction, some 80,000 names have already been purchased by businesses and schools.
These include Pennstate.xxx, Harvard.xxx, Pepsi.xxx, Target.xxx, Walmart.xxx, Adidas.xxx, Apple.xxx, Blockbuster.xxx, Bestbuy.xxx and Hooters.xxx.
The introduction of .xxx website domains is supposed to enable the clearer labeling of pornographic destinations so that Internet users don’t land on potentially malicious sites accidentally.
The use of .xxx addresses should also enable parents to protect their children from questionable content by better filtering Internet searches and placing definite blocks on any and all .xxx websites if they so wish.
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