Nothing says “adult-themed” quite like “sex.” Or, on the world wide webbernets, “.sex.” And don’t forget .porn and .adult, as well as the already existent .xxx. The company that successfully launched .xxx is now going after the golden geese of Web domain name suffixes, and it’s ready to duke it out with any other contenders.

Although religious organizations and a porn industry trade group fought against .xxx launching, ICM Registry was able to bring it about in December. It wants its piece of the adult pie, and has joined a list of applicants in proposing new domains.

ICM says it’s got the chops to beat out any competition, because of how it handled the .xxx situation.

“We’ve been very careful and responsible in what we did with .xxx, and we don’t want someone to take over what we’ve done as the incumbent,” said its CEO Stuart Lawley. “We’re trying to produce clearly identified content that doesn’t confuse consumers.”

ICM would be the registry that operates the new domains, but if you wanted to buy say, SomethingRacy.xxx, you’d go through a front-end registrar like GoDaddy or Moniker. Those sites then pay ICM an annual fee per domain.

If ICM does nab the domain name suffixes, anyone who already has a site at .xxx would be grandfathered in — so SexySite.xxx would have a site reserved automatically at SexySite.sex, SexySite.porn, etc.

ICM will find out on June 13 if it has competition, which it likely will. Companies can try to negotiate between themselves, or the name will go to auction. After all, there can be only one winner in the game of domains.

After .xxx, here come .sex and .porn sites [CNNMoney]

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