On September 8, the ‘sunrise’ period for a new top level domain (TLD) began, and brand owners worldwide are taking note. The .XXX top level domain will go live in the next few months; the ‘sunrise’ period allows certain brand owners to pre-register certain .XXX domain names to essentially block anyone else from gaining ownership of them . As you can imagine, the .XXX domain name is targeted at adult industries.
Who is eligible to pre-register? Owners of adult website domains and trademarks, as well as owners of registered trademarks in any industry who wish to block names from use in .XXX.
In order to submit a pre-registration claim during the sunrise period, an application and payment must be submitted to a qualified registrar no later than October 28, 2011.
Beginning December 6th (after an auction of premium .XXX domains), the unsecured adult domain names will be available to the general public.
I strongly urge brand owners to consider the potential value of the pre-registration of the .XXX domains corresponding to their brand(s). Brand tarnishment, trademark infringement or cybersquatting issues could be far more expensive to manage than the domain registration costs. Not to mention the burdens and blemishes that could be created if someone registers and uses a .XXX version of your website or brand and appears high in the search engine rankings.
Since I practice what I preach, I have submitted a sunrise claim for tm4smallbiz.xxx. I have also submitted an order to register erikpelton.xxx as soon as it becomes available. I certainly don’t intend to use these domain names – I just want to be sure that no one else uses them in an unsavory manner, which could force me to spend far more money to deal with the situation and cause me to worry about my brand’s image.
Of course, it is possible that the .XXX domain name fizzles out and will be no big deal. After all, there are plenty of adult websites existing with .com and other domain extensions. Besides, did anyone ever use the .NAME and .PRO top level domains after they launched?
For more information about .XXX, see http://www.icmregistry.com/about/
