Celebrities have moved swiftly to block their names from the .xxx domain, which is meant for websites that offer pornographic content.
According to The Register (opens in new tab), thousands of celebrities have contacted ICM Registry to put their names on the permanently reserved list so that no one will be able to start offering porn under their name.
There was a huge chance that cyber-squatters will require celebrity domains like Britney.xxx and Beyonce.xxx to send traffic to their websites. But now, that is not going to happen.
Also, celebrities won’t be forced to protect their brand names from cyber-squatters or have to fight lengthy legal battles.
The domain registration company, ICM Registry, failed to give out the list of domain names it had blocked nor it is willing to tell how long the list is.
The Register managed to reverse engineer the list using Whois tools and informed that everybody from Angelina Jolie to Amy Winehouse is protected.
Surprisingly, while David Cameroon’s name is protected, his wife, Samantha Cameroon will quickly have to do something about get her name on the blocked list before it is too late.
OsamaBinLaden.xxx has been also blocked and we assume the Al Qaeda would have demanded to reserve the domain.
