courtesy theregister.co.uk
ICM Registry, which runs the controversial .xxx top-level domain, today revealed that it has applied to ICANN for the gTLDs .porn, .sex and .adult.
The Florida-based company hopes to avoid "shakedown" accusations this time around - last year it faced severe criticism and a lawsuit when it raked in millions of dollars in defensive registration fees from companies buying .xxx addresses for their brands before cyber-squatters got hold of them.
Under ICM's proposal to ICANN, anybody owning a .xxx domain name by a certain cut-off date will have the matching .porn, .sex and .adult address automatically reserved.
Porn sites and trademark owners would not have to pay two, three or four times just to defensively re-register their brands, in other words. If you already owned example.xxx, you'd get example.porn, example.sex and example.adult automatically put aside for free.
However, ICM said it would charge a "nominal fee" to cover its costs if customers decided to activate and use their reserved domains. The exact price to buyers would be set by its registrar partners (companies such as Go Daddy and eNom), but ICM president Stuart Lawley told us ICM's cut would be a "small fraction" of the $60 a year it charges for .xxx addresses.
"We chose to submit applications for additional TLDs to spare .XXX participants from needless expense and to ensure the TLDs will be run in the same trustworthy and appropriate ways that .XXX is today,” he said in a statement.
ICM said it has already invested almost $2m (£1.25m) in the three applications; $550,000 of which will have been blown on the ICANN application fee.
But the company is by no means guaranteed approval. One or more of its proposed gTLDs are likely to be contested by other applicants, possibly entities from the same parts of the porn industry that objected so hard to, and continue to oppose, .xxx.
The irony of today's news is that ICM is having to reinvest some of the profits it made from defensive .xxx registrations to try to defend its de facto monopoly on porn-centric gTLD strings.
The .xxx gTLD has been criticised by pornographers due to its relatively high fees and for its promise to introduce policies that could restrict how .xxx domains are used. Now would-be competitors have the chance to offer a cheaper and unrestricted .sex or .porn domains and eat ICM's lunch.
ICANN plans to announce the full list of gTLD applications, possibly including other porn-oriented strings, on 30 April. Its deadline for submitting applications is today and the next opportunity to apply is not expected for at least a few years.
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