After a decade of back and forth, the web will finally see a red-light district form thanks to the advent of the .xxx top-level domain. The porn industry — ahem, adult entertainment industry — is the obvious target for the new domains, which governing body Icann finally approved last year. The initial rush of registrations will be managed by Florida-based ICM Registry, and bidding for domains with .xxx suffix begins today. Pornographers will have a 50-day “sunrise period” to bid on the first batch of .xxx URLs, and highly sought after domains like “sex.com” are expected to command quite a premium. Read on for more.
Stuart Lawley, head of ICM Registry, expects a “gold rush” as reward for six years of legal battles to make .xxx domains a reality. Since Icann caved last year, “The phone has been ringing off the hook,” Lawley told The Independant in an interview. Lawley logged 900,000 requests for 650,000 unique domains immediately following the approval of .xxx. The 50-day sunrise period for adult entertainment companies begins September 7th, and they will then have free rein over unsold domains for 17 days beginning November 8th. After that, .xxx registrations open up to the world.
