.xxx plans very strict registration policy

ICM, the future .xxx registry, will soon sign his contract with ICANN. Once this is done, ICM will become responsible for the management of the .xxx extension. At the moment they are already working on a registration policy for anyone who wishes to register a domain name under .xxx. And clearly ICM is working on a very strict policy. 1) Severe identity check

ICM will check the identity of everyone who wishes to register a .xxx domain very profoundly. In order to do so, they’ll probably cooperate with a third party who will be given the task to verify if the data entered in the Whois-information match with a real person. Email addresses and IP addresses will also be checked. These rules are implied to prevent cybersquatting. However they also imply that the registry knows all information about the owner of a .xxx domain. This isn’t the case for other gTLD’s.

2) Rapid suspension

Obviously ICM takes into account that they will receive complaints from people who thinks their trade mark is being infringed by another person who registers this name under the .xxx domain. With other gTLD’s this person can then start a procedure to sue the registrant. However this method takes a lot of time. ICM has decided to act much quicker and they introduce the  Rapid Takedown. This means that when ICM receives an email in which someone claims his/her trade mark (for instance cocacola.xxx) or a variation on this trade mark (for instance cocaocla.xxx) is being infringed and that the person who has registered this name isn’t acting in good faith, a special team will immediately check this complaint. If they decide the complaint is well founded, the name will be deactivated within 48 hours.

3) Limited number of complaint against you

ICM clearly doesn’t want cybersquatters to abuse the new extension. Therefore one of their policy rules will be that a cybersquatter can only have a limited number of complaints against him.  If you gather more complaints you will be banished eternally from the .xxx domain. So it will become absolutely impossible for you to register a .xxx domain name. Therefore it’s very important for future registrants to keep their portfolio clean. If you get banished you’ll also loose your complete portfolio, including the names which weren’t infringing a trade mark.

4) Extra restrictions

If you’re not active in the porn industry, you basically can’t register an working .xxx domain. However you can block a name under .xxx (so he won’t function). Like this you can prevent that some else would use your (known) trade mark under .xxx to point to a website with which you won’t have anything to do. For instance Nickelodeon isn’t waiting for someone else to register nickoledeon.xxx. However this imply that a known trade mark which hans’t got anything to do with the porn industry is forced to register a domain name under the .xxx extension. Of course the registry understands that trade mark owners won’t be very happy to yearly pay the full registration fee for a .xxx domain name just in order to prevent someone else from using this name. That’s why the registry considers to offer such names at a cheaper price. So if you only register your name in order to block him, you wouldn’t have to pay as much as when you register a name you do want to use.

Of course you’ll always have speculators who’ll register names at a cheaper price hoping they can sell them for a much higher price. So like that you’ll run the risk that someone registers a name, block this name and tries to sell it to someone who is interested in using this name actively. The registry already took this into account. It is possible to unblock blocked .xxx domain names anything. The name will then become available for registration. From then on, the first come, first served principle applies. Therefore it’s impossible to sell a blocked domain name to someone who wish to use this name actively afterwards.