By David Jesse, Education Writer
The Detroit Free Press
As a red light district forms this year in cyberspace using new .xxx domain names, universities and other groups are mulling strategies for keeping their trademarks from becoming adult websites.
The University of Michigan took a direct approach and grabbed 21 .xxx website names, some on Tuesday when sales of XXX URLs opened to the general public. Now, no one else can use those addresses.
“This is viewed as a rational and practical step to protecting our image,” said U-M spokesman Rick Fitzgerald.
But Michigan State University isn’t buying any — instead choosing to monitor the situation, promising to pursue anyone who uses its trademarks or images on a non-university-approved website.
Experts say universities need to be particularly concerned because of the adult entertainment industry’s long history of producing material with college themes, including issues of Playboy that feature female students from specific sports conferences.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers allowed universities, businesses and other organizations with registered trademarks to have first dibs in October at buying addresses that contain their trademarks, such as mgoblue.xxx, maizerage.xxx and umonline.xxx.
U-M spent $2,800 to reserve 14 names for 10 years. Typing in the URLs sends Web surfers to a black screen that says the site name has been reserved.
None of the .xxx names will be used by U-M. It’s part of a strategy already in place at the school. Of the roughly 470 domain names the university owns, about 50 were bought to protect them — the university doesn’t use them for anything.
Central Michigan University purchased three XXX domain names, as did other universities, including Penn State, Purdue, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Indiana. Grand Valley University bought gvsu.xxx.
On Tuesday, ICANN opened up sales to the larger public. In that round, U-M reserved seven names or phrases for $99 a year that are not technically trademarks but are associated with the university, such as hailtothevictors.xxx.
Other Michigan public universities — including Lake Superior State, Saginaw Valley State, Wayne State and Western Michigan — have not reserved any XXX Web addresses, though officials from several schools, including Michigan Technological University, said they were considering the idea.
MSU and LSSU told the Free Press there are too many website names to buy.
They prefer watching the Internet for abuses of trademarks and going after the culprits with warning letters and possible legal action to make them stop.
“There are potentially thousands of domain names the university could try to protect, making this an IT Whac-A-Mole problem that is not practically or financially viable,” said MSU spokesman Kent Cassella. “Instead, we focus our efforts on infringement. If we find someone using our name or marks without permission, we pursue them.”
But pursuing them on a case-by-case basis could be too little too late if a brand is already sullied by its unwanted association with adult content, said Mithu Bhattachorya, an assistant business professor at the University of Detroit Mercy.
She said going after those who improperly use trademarks on adult sites could be time-consuming and expensive. Someone would have to monitor websites and then try to chase down the companies behind them, she said.
“I think it’s a good idea to invest in the names,” she said. “Preventive is better than reactive here, I think.”
Experts say universities and other businesses are executing a common digital strategy of protecting their brands on the Internet. In a university’s case, positive brand awareness can lead to higher enrollment and a larger endowment.M.
Premptively buying up .xxx Web names could also prevent consumers, especially children, from stumbling onto adult content while searching for a university-sponsored site, said William Jones, a marketing professor at Wayne State University’s business school.
“Given so many unknowns with what will occur as a result of similarly named .xxx websites and the apparent low-cost of acquiring ownership of these domains, it just seems like a no-brainer to me,” he said.
