It wasn’t that long ago when anti-porn and religious-oriented groups were up in arms about the release of .xxx domains, and it might be time for them to brandish their pitchforks and torches again. The ICM Registry, who controls the sale of .xxx domains, is in the market to buy a few more domains: .sex, .porn and .adult.
With the upcoming expansion of allowable domains, ICM is hoping to cash in on these new adult-focused suffixes, just like it did with .xxx, though there could be competition for the domains and that worries ICM. The back-end registry company claims it is trying to set the the industry standard when it comes to top level domains. That’s why ICM is desperately attempting to obtain the rights to the .sex, .porn and .adult domain names, not money. In fact, any site that already has a .xxx domain, will automatically be given a .sex, et al domain, too. Here’s how the whole thing will work: The owner of blahblahblah.xxx would automatically have a .sex, .porn and .adult suffix reserved for them.
Ideally, this would lessen some of the fears that were associated with the .xxx domain names. Many large institutions–including universities and colleges like University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Central Michigan University–bought several .xxx domains to protect their brand. There would be no need to do that with the .sex, etc. domains because they would automatically be given to them. We live in a world where its very easy to defame someone online, but ICM’s automatic registration of its new suffixes is a great way to prevent that.
New domains aren’t just getting more risque, though, they’re getting laugh-out-loud funny – literally. The .lol domain is coming to the web and the world’s biggest internet company wants to control it. That’s right, Google wants to run the .lol domain name. But these are just a few of the new domains Google and other companies have applied for as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) received more than 1,900 applications for new domain names.
What domain names are you interested in seeing pop up online? I for one am excited to go to www.google.lol.
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