Recent Posts
- Alibaba, Name.com among new RDRS opt-ins
- The Swiss can register .swiss domains from next week
- .ai up to 425,000 domains
- A million “free” .music domains up for grabs
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- New Vegas conference “Davos for Web3 interoperability”
- ICANN content policing power grab may be dead
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- Founders out as Com Laude gets equity injection
- PIR’s Diaz to leave domain industry
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- Internet could get one-letter gTLDs (but there’s a catch)
- .ai registry fights deadbeats with tweaked auction rules
- Amazon and Google among .internal TLD ban backers
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- GlobalBlock blocking 2.5 million domains
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- ICANN 79: anonymous trolls and undercover lawyers
- ICANN scores win in single-letter .com lawsuit
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- Governments back down on new gTLD next round delay
- Private auctions could be banned in new gTLD next round
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- .com is shrinking but Verisign raises prices again anyway
- D3 announces fourth crypto new gTLD client
- Donald Trump loses second UDRP case
- UK cybersquatting complaints hit record low
- No excuses! PIR to pay for ALL registries to tackle child abuse
- ICANN insists it is working on linkification
- Namecheap sues ICANN over .org price caps
- GoDaddy offers free Ethereum blockchain integration
- Epik reveals who is running the company
- Epik gets acquired again! The plot thickens…
- Airline gTLD crashes and burns
- First chunks of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook drop
- Epik to reveal its owners soon
- Another crypto firm to apply for a new gTLD
- Monster and Royce are NOT involved in Epik?!
- Nominet to overhaul .uk registry, turn off some services
- Russia blames DNSSEC, not Ukraine, for internet downtime
- Team Internet says revenue beat estimates
- Sold for over $20k, insure.ai and dog.ai back in .ai’s expired names auction
- .ai helps UDRP cases rise in 2023, WIPO says
- Freenom’s domains land at Gandi after termination
- .ru domains fly off the shelf as Western sanctions bite
- ICANN picks its first ever Supreme Court
- Lebanon’s ccTLD going back to Lebanon after ICANN takeover
- ICANN picks the domain it will never, ever release
- ICANN approves domain takedown rules
- Has Epik gone “woke”?
- First bits of new gTLD Applicant Guidebook expected next week
- ICANN bans closed generics for the foreseeable
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- After 14 years, ICANN practices what it preaches on IDNs
- Weak demand for private Whois data, ICANN data shows
- .ing doing way better than .meme
- DNS Women barred from ICANN funding?
- Dev releases free open-source TLD registry platform
- INCO flips a gTLD to Identity Digital
- Anguilla fears the .ai junk drop
- Five more gTLDs get launch dates
- $10 million of ICANN cash up for grabs
- Almost 50,000 .ai domains sold in a quarter
- ICANN threatens to regulate your speech [RANT]
- Life insurance company kills dot-brand
- ICANN finds new home for Lebanon’s TLD after founder’s death
- ICANN begs people to use its new Whois service
- Shiba Inu outs itself as crypto new gTLD applicant
- Over 50,000 .ai domains sold in three months
- Amazon planning new push into registrar market?
- Registries and registrars vote ‘Yes’ to new DNS abuse rules
- ICANN predicts flattish 2025 for domain industry
- Fast-growing Gname buys another 150 registrars
- GoDaddy service to let you block domains in over 650 TLDs
- Did I find a murder weapon in a zone file?
- ICANN drops the “man” from Ombudsman
- Have your say on police domain takedown powers
- Most registrars are shunning ICANN’s new Whois system
- Nominet to take over .gov.uk
- ICANN picks Istanbul for 2024 meeting
- ICANN’s private Whois data request service goes live
- .au regs slide on 2LD anniversary
- ICANN accused of power grab over $271 million auction fund
- A registrar is getting blamed for an Israeli war propaganda site
- Two more dot-brands bite the dust
- Google sells five-figure AI domain and six-figure .ing hack
- .blackfriday is still a bit rubbish
- Internet Naming Co acquires five more gTLDs
- Domain universe grows despite .com drag
What .xxx means for trademark holders
Trademark holders have been screwed over by ISP domain name wildcarding more than they realise, I’ve discovered from the .xxx contract documents.
ICM Registry is planning a novel approach to trademark protection if its application to launch the .xxx top-level domain is successful, but it’s been watered down compared to its original plan.
Hypothetically, let’s say you’re Lego. You really, really don’t want some cybersquatter snapping up lego.xxx and filling it with… well, you can imagine what Lego porn might look like.
At the same time, for the sake of your family-friendly brand, you don’t want to actually own a resolvable lego.xxx either.
And you certainly don’t want to be forced to to hand some pornographer over $60 a year for each of your brands. Some companies could see this as supporting pornography.
ICM had originally planned to allow companies in this position to pay a one-time fee to have their brand.xxx turned off permanently.
Personally, I like this idea. It would give the IP lobby a lot less to complain about in discussions surrounding the new TLD program.
But the company may now water down this plan, called IP Protect, due to the way that non-existent domains are increasingly handled by some ISPs.
As you probably know, ISPs worldwide are increasingly capturing NXDOMAIN traffic in order to show search results and advertising links to their customers.
It’s generally frowned upon in DNS circles, and it’s now likely to have the effect of making IP Protect costlier and more of an administrative hassle for brand owners.
You’re Lego again. You pay ICM the one-time shut-down fee, only to find that Comcast is now showing its users links to Lego porn whenever they type in lego.xxx.
ICM president Stuart Lawley tells me that one option currently being looked at is to have IP Protect domains resolve to a standard page at an ICM-controlled server.
The problem here is that ICM has to pay ICANN and its registry back-end provider annual fees for every resolving domain name, and that cost will have to be passed on to the registrant, in our case Lego.
Lawley says that ICM is “engaging” with the ICANN intellectual property community to figure out the best solution. It appears that both options are still open.
[…] holders to buy long-term, deep-discount registrations for non-resolving .xxx domains. As I’ve written before, Disney doesn’t necessarily want disney.xxx to point […]
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