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opinion

Feeling the XXX-citement

It’s only been a few short days now since ICANN’s historic .XXX-enabling vote — long enough for the reality of this game changer to sink in, and long enough for operators to choose how they will respond.

Privately, ICM’s claimed 300,000+ unique domain name preregistrations illustrate how the adult entertainment industry will really respond to the offer.

Publicly, it’s another matter; as great howls of derision and damnation echo across the boards, stirring the masses with a clarion call of resistance, urging them to fight against this attack on our pocketbooks and our freedoms. After all, since “the industry” (despite those 300K pre-regs) didn’t want .XXX, why should it get “stuck” with it? Just say no!

If that’s your belief, then stand by it…

For a different perspective, I’ll note that some of your “friends” that are telling you to avoid the new adult domain extension, are speculators hoping to lessen the competition for premium .XXX names; while others are mere hucksters, seeking to profit by offering “an alternative TLD” — such as .adult, .porn, .sex or “dot-whatever-does-not-involve-Stuart-Lawley” — as if this sort of scam will lessen the need for operators to own .XXX, when clearly it will only add to the financial burden of further, unnecessary registrations.

While a lot has been said and written about “what a rip-off” .XXX is; the real rip-off will come from some of the efforts to “fight against .XXX” — efforts that are on the way.

I’ve warned you about this before, and I am doing it again: caveat emptor. 

In the meantime, the work at ICM doubtless moves forward and in a year from now, the “real” online adult entertainment industry may look very different than it does today — but that view may be a much better one, as well. Only time will tell.

Moving forward now, whether you like it or not, if you care about the longevity of your top performing properties, then you had better be taking a good, hard look at .XXX and its sunrise period. Nobody is saying “dump your dot-com,” but the .XXX version will be just as important for you to have — and the reasons for that will be played out far away from the self-congratulatory confines of adult industry message boards.

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