December 13, 2011 | Online

Universities now buying .xxx domains

Hoping to keep their good names untarnished by naughty images, universities have started buying .xxx website addresses.

The schools started purchasing the domains two months ago, when ICM Registry gave trademark holders the chance to block their names from being used. And it only cost $200 per address.

The University of Kansas, for example, purchased the rights to several addresses including kansas.xxx and rockchalkjayhawk.xxx and jayhawks.xxx.

Then, when open registration was permitted, the same university bought more domains including kustore.xxx, kugirls.xxx and jayhawk.xxx.

"We settled on the ones that we thought it would be reasonable for us to protect," said Paul Vander Tuig, the university's trademark licensing director. "It's truly a preventative blocking measure, blocking others from doing it."

Michigan, Penn State, Purdue, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Indiana have all done the same thing.

"I think it's a smart thing to do," added Terry Robb, from the University of Missouri.

ICM Registry is the exclusive manager of the .xxx names, selling them through middleman companies such as GoDaddy.com for an average of $100 a year. Its new slogan: ".xxx, the only domain companies are forced to own."

Universities block triple-X domain names [USA Today]