Do Not Enter- It’s XXX
There is now a central place for the surfers to dwell in a forbidden cyber land of adult fantasies, sex, dark rituals and total taboos. Finally, ICANN gave up under the pressure and now has tossed a big rock across the turbulent e-commerce ocean. It has approved a new suffix, “.xxx” for adult-only porn sites, creating ripples and debates in ever so confusing global cyber branding times where cyber global domain name challenges are being fought in the complex earthly trademark realities. Three things are bound to happen
There is now a central place for the surfers to dwell in a forbidden cyber land of adult fantasies, sex, dark rituals and total taboos. Finally, ICANN gave up under the pressure and now has tossed a big rock across the turbulent e-commerce ocean.
It has approved a new suffix, “.xxx” for adult-only porn sites, creating ripples and debates in ever so confusing global cyber branding times where cyber global domain name challenges are being fought in the complex earthly trademark realities.
Three things are bound to happen.
Segregation and polarization
The most profitable sector of the Internet are still adult websites. Though XXX offers a great branding opportunity to most adult sites, it still raises some serious questions and demands some viewing strategies. Currently, most sites will go through a frenzy to secure the already existing names with the new suffix and also there will be a series of new names ending with xxx. This suffix has a great appeal for adult contents. Most will use this new suffix while keeping all the other various existing suffixes, including dotcom. This has happened each time when a new suffix was introduced, though fizzled down very quickly as the public at large had no time to figure out the new suffixes for being so overwhelmed with the commonality of a dot com suffix.
Blocking and access
For the first time, adult sites will have a visible and a clearly identifiable component to the very specific nature of the site, unlike dotcom which is so general in nature. This would mean various search engines, portals and individuals would be able to sort and select by this suffix, allow or block such sites and emails.
Monetizing and marketing
This will bring added revenue and put some sparks for the registrars. The registration will become a fast money making process of millions of new registrations, changes modification, squatting and new legal disputes. The domain management industry will be humming for a while.
In the coming days and beyond, once the dust will settle down there will be three key questions
Enforcements? Is it possible that there will be a requirement by law to move all adult stuff to xxx? This would demand a more serious debate on the definition of what is an adult site, is it for selling guns, discussing philosophy, Alzheimer, sexual diseases, or just raw sex? If it is then why not introduce a new suffix .sex? The issue of freedom of speech will be right at the center and there is no easy way for this to be legislated. It will become a Pandora’s box.
Privacy? The exposure of the three x’s would take away the privacy from the users, as they may be reluctant to be seen with such highly visible identity. Today most adult sites are nicely camouflaged into name brands like PersianKitty.com or BlueRiver.net etc. The same names with xxx will make it too obvious.
Squatters? Squatters and others players may find a moneymaking angle by creating embarrassment and exploiting legit business site names by registering them in the xxx suffixes. This would be embarrassing to a legit business for having to explain that it has nothing to do with them, such as www.Disney.xxx www.dell.xxx www.lg.xxx www.sony.xxx Only properly structured and clearly legit and globally strong trademark holders would be able to protect themselves the rest with generic business names based on dictionary words, geographic names or general type surnames would have little protection.
ICANN, has always moved in a very unpredictable manner since inception and randomly creating additional Top Level Domain suffixes called TLD’s doesn’t help either. Each time a new category is added, it opens a wide debate. Basically it requires a clear policy whether ICANN would open certain TLDs or not and under what situations. It can either work with only current suffixes and close the book, or have a system like the yellow pages. Introduce suffixes for each of the industry like; Hotels, Airlines, Libraries, Marketing, Real Estate, Doctors, and Dentists, Employed and Unemployed etc. adding some 5000 such international categories.
Two problems. Firstly, as long as there are no requirements for any proof or identification to a particular business or activity, any body could use any suffix and simply jump into any category of choice. Secondly, searching would fail, as there will be no way of knowing who is who. Under the present registration set up this process of identity and control can’t be policed.
The cost of registrations and domain name management would become a nightmare as most would like to cover all the bases and a have as many registrations in as many different suffixes as possible. The end user would be seriously frustrated to remember if it should type a Hospital, doctor or medical suffix to find help.
Recommendations
What other non-adult businesses must do is stay clear of this forbidden area unless directly engaged in the adult business. Secure good trademarks and make sure to have very solid dotcom names. In this brand name driven economy only properly executed corporate and product naming with five star standards accompanied with cyber-branding will survive. Furthermore, dotcom is still the king and rests of suffixes are names on life support, names which had no chance as dotcom in the first place and were forced into other suffixes like, biz, info, net etc. Customers all over the world recognize a dotcom as a high profile operation versus .net, .biz or. info. It is still very easy to get a dotcom name with a globally protected trademark as long as you have the right expertise on the global naming issues.
Obviously, holders of professionally created and properly managed globally trademarked names with matching dotcoms are the lucky ones.
Keeping adults-only business aside, engage your entire organization on domain name management issues and discover the power of real e-commerce via global cyber-branding. It is still the cheapest medium and yet ignored by 97% of the corporations worldwide. Most corporations are convinced that once they have acquired a few websites and few emails they are now fully engaged in the art of ecommerce. Now doesn’t this sound like children-only business?
By Naseem Javed
Naseem Javed, author of books “Naming for Power” and “Domain Wars”, is recognized as a world authority on Global Name Identities and Domain Issues. He introduced The Laws of Corporate Naming in the 80’s and also founded ABC Namebank, a consultancy established in Toronto and New York a quarter century ago. Naseem conducts exclusive executive workshops on image and name identities issues via web conferences. www.azna.com/tech.htm
Source: Naseem Javed
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