Facebook v. Facebook Of Sex

Image via CrunchBaseAfter a lawsuit was filed by social media giant, Facebook, the site known as FacebookOfSex.com has been taken offline.

Facebook's latest lawsuit hardly comes as much of a surprise. In fact, Facebook has been filing similar lawsuits against other sites, not all of which are adult-related. For example, Facebook has filed lawsuits against the websites Teachbook, Placebook, and Lamebook. In each instance, Facebook appears to be asserting claims against these other sites, in large part, because they use the word "book" in their names.

Watch out Fuckbook!

Not only does Facebook appear to be asserting legal rights to the use of the word "book" in domain names, but it is also potentially extending its legal claim to the word "face" as well.

It's Official - There Is Now A .XXX Domain

In the last several days, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) finally voted to create the much-debated .XXX domain.  Although it is not yet a domain that can be used immediately on the Internet, pre-sales are moving forward.  Already, some 300,000 .XXX domain names have been pre-registered.

Feelings about this new domain extension run high on both sides.  Free speech and open Internet advocates joined with many in the adult industry to oppose final approval.  In addition, weighty evidence against approval of the new domain was presented by government stakeholders at the ICANN Conference in San Francisco.

For an alternative discussion of what .XXX means to the adult industry as well as some words of caution  about how to view some of the opinions flying around the WWW, take a look at this article from XBiz.com.

Related articles

• ICANN Approves .XXX Domain for Adult Entertainment Industry (pcworld.com)
• .XXX porn domain approved (mobile-ent.biz)
• XXX Gets Own Domain: For Child Protection Or Cash? (searchenginewatch.com)

.XXX And What It May Mean To Adult Websites

This week, the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is meeting in San Fransisco. Among other things, ICANN is responsible for assigning and regulating domain names.  ICANN is responsible for .com, .net, .biz and so on.

This week, ICANN may be handing down a decision creating .XXX.  Under the proposal, all adult sites would be required to have the extension. 

At first glance, this might seem like a good thing, but FreeSpeechCoalition.com (FSC) thinks otherwise.  According to an XBiz article, FSC is joining forces with adult industry stakeholders on March 17 to protest final approval of the new domain extension.

FSC argues that a .XXX domain extension would make it much easier to filter or block adult sites.  This would be very bad news for the adult industry. 

In addition, the .XXX domain extension would be considered a "top level" domain, and its price would reflect that "distinction."  It is unclear at this time whether the new proposal would include blogs operating as non-hosted sites.  Presumably, however, a site such as JSJ, which has its own domain, would be required to get a .XXX domain extension.

This move by ICANN comes at a time when a House Committee has voted to roll back the FCC's Net Neutrality guarantees, essentially leaving all power in the hands of mega-corporate ISPs.  A required .XXX domain, together with the unfettered discretion of these ISPs to control content (effectively what happens when we lose Net Neutrality), might result in adult sites being completely blocked and made inaccessible. 

Only time will tell, but if you are interested, near San Francisco, and would like to be a part of the protests, they are taking place on Thursday, March 17, at 12:30, in front of the Westin-St. Francis Hotel located in Union Square, in San Francisco.

Related articles

• Pr0n stars to demo against .xxx (go.theregister.com)
• .xxx Domain Approved [.xxx] (gizmodo.com)