.xxx sales spike 1,000% during discount

ICM Registry saw an over 1,000% spike in .xxx domain name registrations in May, during which it offered new registrations at a steep discount over its regular price.
The numbers were still relatively small. The registry saw 13,136 adds during the period, compared to 1,131 in April and 1,836 in May 2012, according to ICANN reports published today.
Average add-years rose sequentially from 1.34 to 1.88 (compared to a gTLD industry average of 1.23), according to TLD Health Check, with total add-years up over 1,500% to 24,663.

For the whole of May, ICM offered .xxx domains — which usually carry a registry fee of $62 — for the same price as .com domains. The promotion applied to any length of registration, from one to 10 years.
There were 747 10-year registrations in May. A small number, but exactly 100 more than ICM saw during its first month of general availability in December 2011. There were similar numbers of three and five-year sales, and over 1,100 two-year registrations.
The company ended the month with 120,409 domains under management.

Report names and shames most-abused TLDs

Newish gTLDs .tel and .xxx are among the most secure top-level domains, while .cn and .pw are the most risky.
That’s according to new gTLD services provider Architelos, which today published a report analyzing the prevalence of abuse in each TLD.
Assigning an “abuse per million domains” score to each TLD, the company found .tel the safest with 0 and .cn the riskiest, with a score of 30,406.
Recently relaunched .pw, which has had serious problems with spammers, came in just behind .cn, with a score of 30,151.
Generally, the results seem to confirm that the more tightly controlled the registration process and the more expensive the domain, the less likely it is to see abuse.
Norway’s .no and ICM Registry’s .xxx scored 17 and 27, for example.
Surprisingly, the free ccTLD for Tokelau, .tk, which is now the second-largest TLD in the world, had only 224 abusive domains per million under management, according to the report..
Today’s report ranked TLDs with over 100,000 names under management. Over 90% of the abusive domains used to calculate the scores were related to spam, rather than anything more nefarious.
The data was compiled from Architelos’ NameSentry service, which aggregates abusive URLs from numerous third-party sources and tallies up the number of times each TLD appears.
The methodology is very similar to the one DI PRO uses in TLD Health Check, but Architelos uses more data sources. NameSentry is also designed to automate the remediation workflow for registries.

ICM price cut sees 10 times more .xxx sales

ICM Registry saw 13,348 newly added .xxx domain name registrations in May, a period during which it and its registrars were offering the names at .com prices.
That’s more than 10 times the volume it shifted in January, the last month for which official numbers are available.
ICM dropped the registry fee for .xxx from $62 to $7.85 for the whole month, ostensibly (though not actually, I suspect) as part of its antitrust settlement with PornTube owner Manwin Licensing.
Registrants could register names for periods of up to 10 years at the promotional pricing, and registrants appear to have taken advantage.
The number of add-years for May was 25,733, according to ICM, an average of 1.9 years per name. That’s compared to its January rate of 1.37, when the .com average, for comparison, was 1.24.
About a quarter of the newly added names had been previously registered at full price and later allowed to drop.
The .xxx namespace now holds over 122,000 domains, still off its December 2012 peak of 142,000, according to the company.

Porn.com owner buys porn.xxx

PimpRoll, a pornography publisher and owner of porn.com, has bought the domain name porn.xxx from registry manager ICM Registry, it has just been announced.
The domain is already live. The site appears to be distinct from porn.com, but PimpRoll said it plans to build another “tube” site there.
The price of the domain was not disclosed, but PimpRoll is known to have paid $9.5 million for its .com address.
I’d guess we’re talking about low six figures for the .xxx, which was reserved by ICM as a “premium” name.
ICM said in a press release that the buyer will also automatically qualify for porn.sex, porn.porn and porn.adult under ICM’s Grandfathering Program, should it be awarded those gTLDs by ICANN.

Three gTLDs that Google doesn’t treat as gTLDs

Google this week reportedly updated its Webmaster Tools service to treat more ccTLDs as non-geography-specific, but it still seems to be overlooking two gTLDs altogether.
According to its refreshed FAQ, only 19 gTLDs are treated as “gTLDs that can be geotargeted in Webmaster Tools”.
The list does not include .post, which has been in the DNS since August 2012 and available to buy since October, or .xxx, which was delegated and went to general availability in 2011.
While the .arpa gTLD also does not appear (for perfectly sane reasons), the list does include tightly controlled and restricted gTLDs such as .int and .mil, however.
Google treats .asia the same as the ccTLD .eu: a “regional top-level domain” that can be geo-targeted in the same way as a regular gTLD.
The rules appear to apply to the geo-targeting function in Webmaster Tools, which allows webmasters to specify whether their site is designed for only a certain nation or region.
Assuming the list, which was updated this week, is accurate, it’s just the latest example of Google dragging its feet on gTLD acceptance.
One would assume, with Google being an applicant for almost 100 new gTLDs, that before long its gTLD team will be able to affect change elsewhere in the company in a more timely fashion.

ICM sees 20-fold increase in registrations after sharp price drop

ICM Registry says its rate of domain registrations increased 20-fold during the first day .xxx has been on sale at .com prices.
The company took 1,000 registrations at the new $7.85-a-year registry fee since it revealed the price drop yesterday.
While that’s not an earth-shattering number, .xxx’s average daily take is 40 to 50 names, according to ICM CEO Stuart Lawley. The company had roughly 110,000 names under management before the offer started.
Some registrars have only started pushing the names today, he said. Retail prices are roughly the same as those for .com, with Go Daddy, for example, currently selling .xxx for $14.95 a year.
The reduced fee only applies for the month of May, but registrants can lock in prices for up to 10 years.
According to Lawley, domains registered in the last 24 hours were almost exclusively either for one year or 10 years, with an average of 2.3 years.
Almost half (48%) of the new names had been previously registered but allowed to expire over the last few months, he said.
Examples include valentine.xxx, students.xxx, hdmovies.xxx and plenty of others with somewhat more NSFW keywords. ICM actually maintains its own list of dropped porn-related keyword domains here.
One customer yesterday registered .xxx for the new retail price that would have cost him $88,000 on the secondary market for the equivalent .com, Lawley said.

YouPorn spanks ICM as .xxx prices slashed

YouPorn owner Manwin Licensing scored a PR coup in its lawsuit against ICM Registry today, when the .xxx registry agreed to steep financial concessions in order to settle the case.
One of the effects of the settlement, at least according to Manwin, is that .xxx is slashing its registry fees from $60 to $7.85 a year for any new domains registered in May.
That brings .xxx into line with .com pricing, temporarily.
The discount only lasts for a month, but it applies to any length of registration up to 10 years. A 10-year registration would see ICM get $78.50, as opposed to the usual $600.
ICM said it will offer price reductions in future years too.
According to Manwin, this reduction is part of the settlement of the anti-trust lawsuit that it filed in November 2011.
“One of Manwin’s key motivations was to make .XXX pricing lower and more competitive,” the company said in a press release.
However, ICM told its registrars about the price reduction over a month ago, so Manwin’s claims might not be as straightforward as they seem.
What’s less open to interpretation is ICM’s agreement to donate $2 from every new .xxx domain created into “a fund designated by Manwin to support the adult entertainment industry”.
In return, Manwin has agreed to drop its boycott of .xxx — ads for .xxx sites will now be allowed to appear on its highly trafficked “tube” sites.
According to a Manwin press release, ICM has also made the humbling admission that “websites hosted on their adult-specific TLDs are not the only responsible and safe adult content websites.”
The lawsuit originally claimed that ICM and ICANN acted anti-competitively by introducing .xxx. ICM counter-sued saying that Manwin’s boycott was illegal.

ICM’s claims against Manwin thrown out of court

ICM Registry has suffered a blow in its ongoing lawsuit with porn merchant Manwin Licensing, with a judge this week dismissing all of the registry’s counterclaims against the YouPorn owner.
ICM was sued by Manwin on antitrust grounds in late 2011, but returned fire last October with is own set of allegations, which also included claims that Manwin’s boycott of .xxx was anti-competitive.
But the judge in the case, Philip Gutierrez, on Tuesday granted Manwin’s motion to dismiss all of ICM’s claims.
Gutierrez ruled that ICM had failed to argue it had standing to complain under competition law, stating: “Harm to ICM only is not sufficient to constitute antitrust injury. It must allege harm to the competitive process.”
He also granted Manwin’s motion to strike ICM’s claims under California’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) laws, which are designed to protect free speech.
The judge decided that Manwin’s boycott of .xxx was protected under the anti-SLAPP statute.
ICM is now entitled to re-draft and re-submit its counterclaims; if it does not do so it will have to pay Manwin’s legal fees in connection with the anti-SLAPP action, Gutierrez ruled.
“The judge has granted us 30 days to amend our counterclaims. We are exploring all options open to us,” ICM CEO Stuart Lawley said.
Manwin’s owner, Fabian Thylmann, was arrested in Brussels last December and extradited to Germany to face charges of tax evasion.

IFFOR targets new gTLDs with policy service

The International Foundation For Online Responsibility, which sets policy for .xxx, wants to broaden its scope and is to launch a “Policy Engine” service for new gTLD registries.
Kieren McCarthy, who has been working for IFFOR as its public participation manager for the last year, has been tapped to lead the organization too, taking over from Joan Irvine as executive director in April.
IFFOR is the sponsoring organization for .xxx, independent but created by registry manager ICM Registry as a way to demonstrate to ICANN that it planned to operate the porn gTLD responsibly.
It’s kept a bit of a low profile since .xxx launched, only emerging to distribute some small grants to worthy causes, but McCarthy says that it’s built up substantial policy-making and compliance expertise.
Now, it wants to let new gTLD registries outsource these functions to it.
“Broadly, the Policy Engine service lets gTLD applicants outsource their policy issues to an independent body,” McCarthy said.
IFFOR reckons plenty of new gTLDs will want such services, especially given the increased interest from governments in how new gTLDs are operated.
As the organization is currently set up to deal only with .xxx — it’s funded $10 a year from every .xxx sold — only three of its nine-member Policy Council are not members of the adult entertainment industry or connected to ICM.
Additionally, ICM’s general counsel is on its three-member board of directors.
But McCarthy said that the Policy Council, which also has substantial expertise in privacy, child protection and free speech issues, usually uses sub-groups to come up with its policies.
“The majority of what we do is applicable across any top-level domain,” he said.
McCarthy is the former journalist and ICANN staffer, current CEO of .nxt. When he takes over from Irvine in April, she is expected to stay around as a consultant.

ICM seizes on Google’s porn algorithm change

Grasping the opportunity for a bit of easy publicity, ICM Registry has seized upon a recent Google algorithm change to promote its .xxx gTLD’s brand.
It was reported earlier this week that Google has made it harder to accidentally stumble across sexually explicit imagery in Google Images by making its Safe Search filtering mandatory in the US.
The company defended itself from cries of censorship by pointing out that porn could still be found, as long as you are a bit more “explicit” about what it is you’re looking for, telling CNet:

If you’re looking for adult content, you can find it without having to change the default setting — you just may need to be more explicit in your query if your search terms are potentially ambiguous.

Now ICM is plugging .xxx as a “workaround” to this problem, saying in a press release today:

one can simply type a description of whatever porn one wants into any search bar followed by the letters “XXX.” Results are instant and on target. For example, if one is looking for adult content that includes a mainstream generic word like “Toys,” simply enter the search term “Toys XXX” and problem solved.

ZDNet gave similar advice in an article this week, and ICM says that traffic to its own search engine, search.xxx, saw a 50% spike in the last 24 hours as a result.
Could this be a portent for changes in user search behavior in the age of niche new gTLDs?