I read somewhere that some company was charging $75 for pre-registration.. (probably a scam I'm sure). If ICANN decides to charge premium rates for these domains, then I'm pretty sure there will be less takers.
I think that separating the adult side of the Internet has some benefits, but it's almost like segregation if it then means that the TLD gets generally blocked on most computers/ISP's/servers etc (ISP's love to offer those kind of 'features' to their customers).
No, we don't want children seeing porn, NO-ONE wants that, but we also
want people to be able to access the sites without difficulty. Freedom of expression and all that ;)
Considering the new 2257 Regs coming in to play, imo, this new TLD is just another step in the 'Obscenity' direction to remove porn (as much as possible) from mainstream and bury it back into the 'dark corner/redlight district' so to speak.
Porn and adult material is becoming more and more mainstream with each passing year; hell, Playboy and Jenna Jameson have each released video games within the last year, and look at how much publicity and celebrity Paris Hilton got from her notorious sex video.
EVERYTHING is gearing towards sex these days, it feels like we're in another 'sexual revolution' era (it seems to me anyways) and of course the government doesn't really like it that much, since they're still of the archaic opinion that porn is bad and leads to crime.
Interestingly I read a thread the other day (yesterday I think) where someone quoted a survey conducted in Europe (and I believe some other countries) where they determined STATISTICALLY from FACTS that in those countries/regions where porn was legal, and more
forms of porn were legal that the statistics on Sex Crimes (assault/rape/etc) were significantly reduced. It seems if you give Joe Blow public what he's looking for then he'll be less likely to just try to 'GET/TAKE' what he wants in whatever way he can.
Having the .XXX domains will at least enable people to easily recognise that the site they're about to view is of an adult nature, but it will mean a LOT of paperwork for a LOT of people, and a LOT of changes if it is to REPLACE the regular .com/.net/etc that is currently used.
Also, will SEO techniques necessarily work the same for a XXX domain? Things like that should definitely be addressed, let alone the big question of who has the right to what domain. If you own the .com and someone else owns the .net, and both sites are successful with good traffic etc, and have been around for the same amount of time, then who is the RIGHTFUL owner of the .XXX URL? There are lots of important questions that need to be properly addressed regarding the .XXX implementation.
My personal opinion is that this is just going to add more confusion and stress to the adult webmasters life.
