Companies keen to prevent their brands from ending up in the ‘red light district of the Internet’ will be given the chance to block their names from use with the new .xxx top-level domain (TLD) from today.
ICM Registry, the company running the adult web domain, said that registration would open at around 4pm BST today. Companies both inside and outside the adult industry will have until 28 October to either register their .xxx domain name or exempt themselves, blocking anyone else from creating a .xxx URL using their brand name.
The idea is that the .xxx TLD will be used to flag sexually explicit material on the Internet. Under an agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and ICM Registry, ICM will use a portion of the fees collected to fund efforts designed to keep children away from online pornography.
During the 50-day “Sunrise” period, companies and individuals that do not want their name associated with pornography will be able to pay a one-off fee of between $150 and $300 (£100 to £200), depending on which company they register their domain with. Conflicts over exact matching names will go through an arbitration process.
The so-called Sunrise period was recently extended from 30 days to 50 days due to the volume of interest; the company reportedly received nearly 900,000 expressions of interest for .xxx domain names during its pre-reservation process.
After the sunrise period is over, a “land rush” period will run for 17 days, allowing prospective adult sites to register for the remaining .xxx addresses. The domains will be distributed on a “first come, first served” basis.
The .xxx domain was given the green light by ICANN earlier this year – in spite of warnings that it would become “the red light district of the Internet”.
The TLD’s activation drew the support of 16 of ICANN’s board members, but none of the governments participating in ICANN’s policy process supported the plan. The issue has also divided those in the sexually explicit media industry, with some fearing the domain will make it easier for sites to be censored.
“This decision represents a difficult, careful balance, weighing the extensive community advice both for and against,” ICANN stated at the time.
British regulator invites feedback on major partnerships Microsoft and Amazon have struck with smaller AI…
Another 20 staff have been fired by Google over Israel protest and their “completely unacceptable…
Censorship row brewing down under, after the Australian Prime Minister calls Elon Musk an 'arrogant…
Financial regulator asks New York judge to impose $5.3 billion in fines against Terraform Labs…
Lightweight artificial intelligence model launched this week by Microsoft, offering more cost-effective option for Azure…
ByteDance protest falls on deaf ears, as Senate passes TikTok ban or divest bill, with…
View Comments
Anna Goss, UK Country manager at NetClean, commented:
“It’s great to see that ICM has taken steps to prevent the registration of sites offering underage images on the .xxx top level domain (TLD) by not allowing commonly used underage sex terms to be registered. However, the fact remains that abusers will still find ways to distribute child sexual abuse images and videos. Abusers are well aware of the illegality of their activities and are using increasingly technologically sophisticated means to share abusive content without detection.
"Attempting to regulate the internet for child sexual abuse content is a near impossible task. The .xxx domain name is invaluable in clarifying what to expect from a site and will help webfilters to block content explicitly identifying itself as adult content, but we cannot hope that abusers will be so forthcoming in identifying themselves.
"The solution to identifying abusers remains in ability to monitor and regulate from the end-point. Web-filters and blocks can easily be bypassed and as such sophisticated technology to prevent and detect the distribution of these images needs to keep pace with those who are looking to evade capture.”