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Universities rush to claim .xxx domains

Colleges across have started snapping up .xxx domains, but not for the reasons RedTubers would hope.  

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Jordan Valinsky

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If you’re looking for sexy co-eds from a certain school or mascot porn, adding a .xxx to the university’s web address won’t help your kinky ways.

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Several universities nationwide, most notably University of Missouri, are registering .xxx addresses as not only as a defensive technique but to protect their reputation.

“We don’t want someone coming across our trademark on a porn site. God only knows what they’d come up with,” said a Mizzou official to STLToday.com. The school also registered missouri.xxx and missouritigers.xxx, both of which will likely redirect to the school’s homepage.

Washington University in St. Louis also purchased a few sites with the .xxx domain, like washu.xxx, to thwart racy comparisons. For example, there’s a racy cartoon named WashuHakubi—obviously not associated with the college—in Japan that goes by the nickname “Wash. U.” and could possibly harm the university’s online footprint, noted CBS News.

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It only costs universities around $200 to register the .xxx domain for universities, a far scream from the $500,000 porn studio Corbin Fisher paid earlier this year for gay.xxx.

Websites have been able to purchase .xxx addresses since this summer. ICM Registry, who is auctioning off the domains, is in a “landrush” stage until December—meaning only websites from an adult ‘sponsored community’ can purchase the domain.

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The Daily Dot