4,000 celebrity names banned from porn domain .xxx

It was announced back in March that the Board of Directors of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had approved the use of the .xxx domain name for porn websites. This has been met by mixed reactions from the owners of adult websites as they do not wish their brand names to be associated with this new domain name. Another issue that could be a matter of concern is that one can use celebrity names with this domain name. The firm managing these domain names, the ICM registry, appears to have resolved this issue to an extent with more than 4,000 celebrity names being blocked from being associated with .xxx

According to a report by the Guardian, more than 4,000 celebrities from Angelina Jolie to Donald Trump have had their .xxx address blocked by the ICM. Stuart Lawley, the Chief Executive of ICM Registry says that there is a prohibition on anyone registering a first or last name that doesn't belong to them. The reason for the ban is that with celebrities' names, it is very difficult to trademark their names. Lawley said, “We didn't want to have the embarrassment of AngelinaJolie.xxx coming up at the launch of the new domain.”The report states that 1,500 .xxx domain names have already been allocated with 35 porn companies. Lawley estimates that number of websites with .xxx web addresses could reach up to 500,000 by January or February. The official launch of these .xxx websites is December 6th, of this year.