Universities register porn domains

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ST. LOUIS, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- Universities across the United States are registering Web sites with the new domain system for pornography providers in attempts to protect their trademarks.

As the launch of the new address system for porn Web sites gets closer, colleges such as Washington University and the St. Louis College of Pharmacy are registering .xxx site names to protect their trademarks, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

"We don't want someone coming across our trademark on a porn site. God only knows what they'd come up with," said Terry Robb, director of information technology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, which has registered mizzou.xxx, missouri.xxx and missouritigers.xxx.

With the launch of the .xxx top level domains to take place this year, every entity with a trademark had a chance to reserve names during what is called a "sunrise phase," which provides protection for organizations against domain prospectors. Each domain name costs about $200.

Some experts say there's not a lot to worry about for most institutions.

"Then again, it's just a couple of hundred bucks. So I don't see any reason not to do it," said Greg Jackson, vice president for policy and analysis at Educause, a non-profit that promotes the use of technology in higher education.

In many case, organizations will buy .com, .net and .edu extensions and set them up to all point to the same Web site, but will more than likely not do so with the .xxx addresses.

"In this case, they won't point to anything," said Karen Daubert, the Washington University's trademark and brand manager. Washington University registered washu.xxx, washingtonuniversity.xxx and wustl.xxx.