We've been spending a lot of time around here lately discussing how insurers can protect their brands. Now comes yet another challenge for insurers and businesses of all types: the .xxx domain.

I don't want to encourage anyone to visit triple-X Web sites, but it might be worth a company's small investment to lock up their company's name with .xxx before the new domain goes on the open market and anyone can get their hands on it.

Fortunately, copyright holders get first dibs on their own name, so act fast, as TV hucksters like to say

For a limited time only (and As Seen on TV) holders of .com or .org domains will be able to protect their brand names for a relatively small fee.

The worry is that someone will use your brand name to advertise a pornography site and—if you let this opportunity pass—there isn't much you can do about it, except take part in some type of legal extortion by paying off whoever holds the rights to your company's name.

There's always the danger that someone could inadvertently type www.nationwide.xxx into their browser instead of www.nationwide.com. But if they perform that poorly on their keyboard maybe you don't even want them buying your insurance product.

Fortunately, though, browsers will continue to default to .com when you type in a word such as nationwide. But why even take a chance.

No one wants to see a respected brand name used by someone else, particularly if it gets associated with something like pornography, which apparently was the reason behind the .xxx domain, but obviously creating a new domain strictly for pornography might not have been thought through as well as it should have been.

We can all imagine our parents or grandparents shaking their heads at such foolishness, but that isn't going to make it go away. The simple strategy to protect your name? Pay the man.

Special Reports /

Keep it Clean: Protecting Your Brand From Porn Purveyors

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