LOS ANGELES — Some adult brands are finding their domain name properties increasingly being besieged by cybersquatters who siphon off their traffic in bulk form.
Take, for instance, legal actions waged on behalf of the operators of the PornHub.com and YouPorn.comadult tube sites. The tube site entities recently recovered 14 domain names from a cybersquatter who used variants of trademarks in the domain names to redirect site users to separate properties and profit from the traffic and affiliate commissions.
Safenames Ltd., a brand protection company that represented the tube sites, said in the recent cases the 14 domain names all utilized the Italian ccTLD “.it,” and all were canceled prior by the registrant, Vito Longo, before heading to an Italian arbitrator for a binding decision.
The domains transferred included PornHub.it, Pornub.it, wwwPornHub.it, YouPorn.it, wwwYouPorno.it, wwwYuPorn.it, wwwYouPorn.it, YiuPorn.it, YouPorm.it, YouuPorn.it, YoyPorn.it, YpuPorn.it, YuoPorno.it and YuouPorn.it.
As the Italian dispute policy does not adopt the same principles as the UDRP, the process required a challenge of the domain names through the Italian NIC, Registro.it, according to Adan McManus, Safenames’ brand protection manager.
“The fact that many of the domain names were transferred so quickly, without the need to proceed to a UDRP decision, emphasises the strength of these brands, which time and time again dissuade cybersquatters from illegitimately registering domain names,” McManus told XBIZ.
McManus also said that last year his company recovered a few other cybersquatting domain properties — RedTubexxx.xxx and RedTubeHD.tv — that were both won through WIPO’s UDRP procedure. Three other domains names were retrieved by settlements. Those included RedTubePorns.net, PornHubFree.com and Tub8.com.
All told, McManus said, 19 domain names were recovered for the parent of PornHub, RedTube and Tube8 by Safenames.
“We are delighted to have retrieved these domain names for PornHub, RedTube and Tube8 and can only hope that their success this year will persuade others to think carefully when registering domain names that might infringe upon these well-known names,” McManus said.