Taylor Swift buys TaylorSwift.porn to prevent...well, you know

The star joined other brands and famous people in getting first dibs on buying adult domains in their names

Published March 23, 2015 2:22PM (EDT)

Taylor Swift  (AP/Evan Agostini)
Taylor Swift (AP/Evan Agostini)

Come June 1, TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult will enter the world as new Internet domains, and both sites have a proud new owner. It's Taylor Swift.

The star scooped up both domains after the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the expansion of generic top-level domains (gTLDs), decided to offer famous people and #brands first dibs at purchasing new domains affiliated with their names. The expansion of gTLDs, which will increase the number of descriptive domain suffixes well beyond .com and .net, means we'll be seeing more websites that end in .deals or .money or .legal -- but it also means, yes, more .porn and .adult as well.

Bidding on these new domains goes into a full-on free-for-all come June 1, so ICANN decided to help out those who are most likely to be affected by the expansion before the auction. Swift, clearly, was on the list. So too was Microsoft, which reportedly bought Office.porn and Office.adult.

It's unlikely we'll see anything done with any of the purchased domains, but it's interesting to see ICANN's acknowledgement of why someone such as Swift would want to own the porn site in her name. It's because -- surprise! -- we live in a world where people are quick to take advantage.

"At the end of the day, a TLD is really a brand," Steve Miholovich, SVP of marketing at the domain registrar and website advisory firm Safenames, told CNN Money. "People who have bad intentions are going to do what they're going to do and there's nothing to prevent that."


By Jenny Kutner

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