Big in the news today is people like Taylor Swift purchasing .porn, .suck and .adult domain names. (Source CNN Money) The reason being the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has decided to expand the top-level domain (example .net, .com, .gov) which will include the .porn and .adult.
While this makes it easier for the adult and porn industries to help people to find their products, it also puts businesses and celebrities in a bit of a bind. For example, you may want to look for some information on Microsoft Office. Normally you would get various websites such ending in .com or .net either selling the product or having other information about Microsoft Office.
However, come June 1, you could also get websites ending in .adult or .porn. The information you would find would be not so much related to Microsoft Office, but in the realm of adult or pornographic entertainment.
In an effort to prevent this, companies such as Microsoft and celebrities are buying these domains so such incidents to not occur. Hence, Taylor Swift now owns the domain TaylorSwift.porn.
So does this mean I should run out and buy the domains for CatholicTechnoGeek.porn and CatholicTechnoGeek.adult? On the damage control side, it would seem to make sense. Why risk having someone create a site that could be potentially damaging to my site?
At the time of this posting, I could not buy these domains, but I could buy 207 other domains. The prices ranged from $6.99 to $69.99 per domain per year. Anyone one of these domains could be used to damage my this website. So I could pay somewhere between $1,389.00 and $13,998 for damage prevention for any of these 207 domains. If I try to protect myself from just the two (.porn and .adult) domains, I most likely would $140 (or more) per year. Since my income from this site is, $0.00, I have to pay for these domains out-of-pocket. So, financially it isn’t the most prudent decision.
If I was a celebrity or a business where image affected my bottom line, I definitely would do it. If I had a huge volume of web traffic, I would consider doing it because I could be a target for someone making a duplicate site. However, a small website like mine, it is unlikely someone is going to try making a CatholicTechnoGeek.porn site.