cnet.com Chats About .XXX Domains & Gets It Wrong

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Cnet.com just published an article about .XXX domain names chatting about what domain names were taken and which are still available.

The problem is the article is incorrect.

The article entitled “These .XXX domains are ready to Hook Up”

The article cites such domains like Alabama.xxx and Nashville.xxx “are available to be registered for $100 a year”.

However they are not.

Before we blame the author of the report or the reporter, it looks like ICM could have done a better job on its whois reporting.

If you use the whois command off the Apple terminal lets call it the raw whois data (that is how I typically check the whois) those domain name show as “not taken”,  but if you check the ICM Registry whois directly, you will see both domains are pending in either a sunrise or land rush auction.

If you check the ICM site’s whois this is the message you get:

This name will be awarded after an auction.
Click xxxauctions.pool.com for more information”

As you know if there was more than one application was submitted during either the Sunrise or Land Rush period the domain goes to an auction.

However apparently whois on certain programs are returning a false positive.

The cnet.com article goes on to list hundreds of other domains that appear to be available, including Cornell.xxx and Salon.xxx just to name a couple more so many of the domains that appear to be available are not and are awaiting auction.

 

 

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. Acro says

    Mike, it’s not a false positive – it’s a result of running the whois command on the ICM Registry nameserver and it will return “Not Found”. However, these domains that are reserved for auction etc. are simply not on the zone files, hence the “Not Found” message that *appears* to make them available 🙂

  2. Cartoonz says

    Acro, that’s not the way the authoritative Registry whois server is *supposed* to work though..

  3. Acro says

    Cartoonz – it’s the same with every registry query from a linux box 🙂 As long as the domain is not in the zone file, it will come up as “Not Found”.

  4. Dan M. says

    Yawn. Big hairy deal, Mike. Who cares? IMHO, .XXX is destined to go the way of .mobi, .museum and .travel anyways.

  6. what says

    +1 for using port 43 and the terminal.

    right on.

    the fact icm cannot set up a proper whois service on port 43 is something to consider. icm is not a serious registry, imo. they just want to sell registrations. service is secondary.

    fx: i see no “hate” for .mobi. i think he was just saying .mobi is just not where the traffic is. and hence not where the market’s attention is.

    same will be true for any other new tld’s.

    new tld’s are created to sell registrations and enrich the registrars and registries and keep icann alive. but they generally don’t draw traffic so most people outside of domain name sellers and the few legitimate registrants who actually upload good content to sites in these extensions really don’t care about them.

  7. FX says

    i see plenty of love for .mobi. lotsa sites and domains get traffic.
    The only ones missing the boat on .mobi IMO are domainers.
    After all there is over 1m .mobi domains out there.
    thats 10x as many as .xxx and about as many as .co

    as far Cnet’s .xxx article. Great article and huge publicity boost for .xxx. You cant buy publicity like that.

  8. Steve Jones says

    Well it’s a mistake I would expect a mainstream news source to make since they’re not used to non-mainstream registries and their quirks and probably not used to false positives as a result.

  10. what says

    the other thing is the isdi servers they’re using have recursion enabled for authoritative answers.
    that makes no sense.

    and they have some .xxx domains in their zone, like sex.xxx gives an authoritative answer of 192.168.0.1 while listing the icm servers. this is braindead dns.

    there appears to be no port 43 whois service for isdi’s registrar. why is this not surprising?

    whether these sort of details signify dodginess or just incompetence is anyone’s guess.

    but it’s probably safe to say icm is not going to win any awards for service if they can’t even manage setting up their servers and records properly. pretty simple stuff.

  11. Muli says

    Because the domains are yet to be exist, finding te most legit source to find if they are indeed registered, is hard to find, as they are not all syncd up at same time.

    Should he done a better job, yes, but lets not judge him like that.