.XXX domain name which recently goes on for public sale proving to be one of the hot commodities on the net. Since the first .xxx URLs were released on restricted sale in September there have been some 100,000 purchases of the domain names. According to ICANN .XXX sites supposed to be a safer alternative to those available online at present and that they will benefit from daily malware scanning from security protection software. But a lot of expert believes that this creating a “monopoly” and is “anti-competitive”.
In theory grouping porn sites together under the .xxx domain for the purpose of providing simultaneously protection of porn-viewers and the protection of those who don’t want porn is certainly very welcoming. For instances it is easier to filter them out when they are under one single domain name extension, to prevent kids from accessing porn. And for porn lovers their sites will be less contaminated by malware & virus as all .XXX sites will be frequently scanned for malware & viruses. So the theory seems makes everyone happy. But alas the theory is less realistic than actual reality we face.
A lot of people did support .XXX moves, still a lot of people do support creation of .XXX. The numbers in favor s starting to diminish every minute, but why? .XXX isn’t living up to its true purpose of creation. Here are the reasons why .XXX is a failure:
- Monopoly: I strongly agree with the accusation that .XXX is creating monopoly. With a bit of scrutinizing inspection you will notice that .XXX domain cost about 10 times higher than the as usual .com domains. Yet businesses, hack even universities are spending fortunes to buy up domain names in the new .xxx red light district on the Internet in an effort to prevent pornographers from using their good name in ways that could be reputation blower. This so called “defensive registrations” putting a lot of cash on domain seller’s wallet but putting small business and individuals in embarrassing disadvantage. Like .EDU domain which are only allowed to be registered by educational institutions only after proving claim with proper documentation, .XXX should have been allowed to porn industries only which would have cease the needs for “defensive registration”. No individual or small startup wants to tarnish their name by associating themselves with porn industry yet now they are in risk, if they don’t spend 100 bucks to buy up an .XXX domain. Its kind of being extorted isn’t it? This is certainly a serious policy failure of .XXX domain name creation.
- · Lost purpose: Though the very purpose of creation of .XXX is to bring the whole porn industries under one single group, but there isn’t any strategy in place to do so. Porn sites are not obliged to switch to .XXX, which is voluntary and as well they got to keep their original .COM, .ORG, .NET etc. domains. So instead of grouping them together it seems .XXX is spreading them more. There are many reason porn sites are not willing to switch to .XXX, losing search engine ranking and index is being one of the main factors. Another top reason being fear of getting penalized or even worse excluded by search engines. ICANN failed to address these issues, before launching .XXX, which they should have. Now only a handful of porn site sites moved to .XXX and they still got their original domain, which makes double the porn and more scattered porn sites. In fact more non porn industries like bug banks, companies, universities bought .XXX domains in last couple of months than real porn site owners. So ultimately the purpose of .XXX domain creation turned into money making business for registrar rather than the reason it was intended to.
I like the way Lance Ulanoff of Mashable summarized the whole fact –
Instead of creating a solution, the ICANN’s apparently misguided efforts have spawned a new anxiety: "Your Brand Name in Porn." The fear is so strong that it’s got all these people buying up domains just so the wrong people can’t get them. As I see it, this could be quite a windfall for GoDaddy. The company should send the ICANN a thank-you note.
Without the proper strategy and solid policy in place ICANN created more problems and chaos out there by creating .XXX instead of making solution. Only people who are benefiting from .XXX are now the registries who are selling .XXX and the ICANN who’s getting their cuts for the sales.
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