XXX Domains: Anyone Smell A Rat?


The new triple-X “porn” domain Landrush began today at 11am. Those in the industry now have a couple of weeks to be “first in” on the claiming of adult industry domain names. But there are going to be surprises for many because the ICM Registry, who controls the release of the new top level domain, has already blocked out the most popular sites. And XXX registrars are poised to take your money and keep it regardless of whether you get the domain name you are after or not.

Other than the minor  issues highlighted in yesterdays XXX domain blog, here are two major problems we forsee for the adult community in the weeks and months that follow:

1.)   Premium domain blocking.

During the pre-registration phase, thousands of names were logged into the ICM Registry database by those wishing to “pre-register” their interest in various triple X domain names. Well, it turns out that this meant nothing, did nothing and counted for nothing in terms of securing your requested domain names. All we effectively did as a community was alert ICM which were going to be the most popular and therefore the most valuable XXX domains so that they knew which ones to block during the Sunrise, Landrush and general purchase phases.

The adult community basically got suckered into performing what would have amounted to hundreds of hours of research for ICM by flagging every domain that would be sought after in the months to come in a multitude of languages, thereby putting a premium on many that would have never attracted a premium at all. 

That data has now been used to block the best domains from being sold during the initial phases and instead put into an auction database where they will eventually be sold to the highest bidder. This includes thousands of names in scores of different languages that ICM could hever have figured out for themselves. Now that they have it, those ICM Registry logins have been cancelled.

So if you’re smarter than the average porn baron and you type “hungry teen sluts” into the little box at your favourite triple X registrar’s website in Urdu or Cantonese or even Swahili, you might get a surprise. Even if you’re the first, you might just find that domain has already been earmarked for even more than the original $200 price tag (source: GoDaddy) that you were about to eat.

It’s genius I tell ya.

2.)   Pricing.

So GoDaddy are charging roughly$200 for each XXX domain name you want to take a run at. That’s $100 for the name and $100 fee which they claim is the doing of ICANN which they can’t control. So what? That’s just the cost of being in the ever so lucrative porn business. And if you don’t get the domain name you want, you just get your money back right?

Wrong. If you don’t get the domain name you want, GoDaddy will only refund half of that money to you. The other half is retained… that’s $100 for every domain name you type in and don’t get.

Let’s do the math here. If you type in a modest ten triple-X domain names at $200 a piece that’s a cool grand you will be charged up front on your favorite credit card. And if even one other person has the same idea as you, then all ten will get dumped into auction and go to the highest bidder (assuming you don’t have any grandfathering or trademark rights under Sunrise A or B). And for the simple privelige of typing in those ten porn names, you will lose $500 unless you take part in the auction, win and pay through the nose for the domain name.

Now do the math with 100 domain names – not uncommon for those looking to start a portfolio. Unless you picked a bunch of obscure names that nobody else thought of because they were useless to start with, then you could easily have just lost a cool ten grand. For what?

We smell a rat. And we predict seven shades of shit hitting the fan when unsuspecting adult business men and women find that they didn’t read the small print and just lost more money than they can possibly afford to.

Our advice? Don’t speculate on names you don’t want and can’t afford to lose. And find the XXX registrar who has the best return policy – if you can. But don’t expect too much competition because it’s pretty much a closed shop out there.

Watch this space. You have been warned.

3 Comments

  1. john says:

    Those guys are going to make MILLIONS on this domain release… lol… they must be laughing all the way to the bank.

  2. jacob says:

    Yes you are right… I just checked “schwule” which is slang German for ‘gay’ – it’s blocked… how many people would have known that?

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