from the ugh dept
Ever since ICANN announced plans to allow tons of new top level domains to enter the market, many have recognized that this was nothing more than a money grab -- as companies would feel compelled to buy up "their" names to keep them out of the hands of others. What's amazing is that TLD operators are barely even hiding this in their marketing material. Lauren Weinstein recently received
a "pitch" from the operators of the new .sx domain. .sx isn't one of the new "generic" TLDs from ICANN, but rather is a newish TLD from Sint Maarten (an "autonomous country" from within the Netherlands) similar to various other "new" TLDs built off of lucky country codes (such as .tv, .ly and .co). However, the marketing message for .sx is really quite incredible. Basically, they're saying .sx is quite similar to "sex" and, gee, you wouldn't want your brand associated with
sex, would you?
Dear *******
We would like to inform you that the Landrush Phase of the new .SX
extension of Sint Maarten has now closed and will be available next
Thursday, on November 15th, 2012 in the final phase called
General Availability
> From that date, you will be able to register .SX domain names on a
first-come-first served basis.
We would like to emphasize the importance of the .SX extension that
can be confused with or misspelled from the word
sex
registering your trademark or company names as domain in the extension
may thus protect your image and prevent from confusion with the adult
industry.
If this feels mighty close to the traditional "nice business you've got there... wouldn't want anything to
happen to it, now would you?" approach, that's because it's pretty clearly the idea behind this line of marketing. Pay up or something un-family-like might show up near your brand.
Filed Under: .sx, domains
