Taylor Swift buys domain name to thwart smut obsessives

A quick bit of background to today’s news that Taylor Swift has bought the taylorswift.porn and taylorswift.adult website names.

A few years ago the body that controls the bit at the end of the website name (.com, .net, .uk etc) massively expanded the range to create, among others, the .porn, .xxx and .adult options.

The idea was to coral the web’s naughty bits into one identifiable location (which could then of course be “easily blocked” by the porn filters which we’ve already shown to be deeply flawed).

In fact, the changes have simply created a cash cow for the companies that sell website names: high profile brands (such as Taylor Swift) were given until 1 June this year to buy the porn version of their brand’s website, before it is made available to the drooling smut obsessives queuing up to purchase them.

Admittedly, the price of snapping up two websites probably hasn’t left Taylor Swift short of lunch money. But it still seems a pointless purchase when you look at the kind of sex scandals that have actually engulfed other celebs over the last few years: iCloud accounts hacked, sex tapes leaked, paparazzi long lens photography….

Yes, she has avoided the risk that her name might appear on a website full of nudey shenanigans. But I have a sense that Ms Swift has become the latest high profile victim of a bizarre phenomenon that borders on blackmail. It’s just a feeling, but I can’t quite shake it off.

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