Taylor Swift’s Adult Site — Country Singer’s Surprising Purchase Raises Eyebrows

Taylor Swift just purchased an adult material site — or, more accurately, a “.porn” domain name. Though the announcement is more than a little startling, and has people talking, the singer’s move isn’t unprecedented. The purchase was almost certainly intended to keep anyone else from grabbing the sites (yes, actually, there are two of them — in addition to taylorswift.porn, she also bought taylorswift.adult) and using them to profit from the singer’s name.

In fact, declaring a piece of intellectual or digital property as one’s own is a method that was used by many celebs targeted in “the fappening” — victims are often advised to have targeted photos copyrighted, so that they will have legal recourse.

Taylor Swift’s case isn’t exactly the same, since it isn’t a matter of copyright, but her ownership of the “.porn” and “.adult” sites will prevent another buyer from using them to promote any number of things — the reportedly fake nudes of Swift that circulated during the fappening, real or fake photos of her or anyone else, or any number of marketing, sales, or scam purposes.

According to Billboard, Swift elected to snatch the domains up before they would become available to the public in June.

Currently, both sites point to blank pages. Though there’s some speculation that Taylor Swift could find some use for them, they’ll most likely just remain blank.

This all comes about because, according to Ad Week, because of a move by Internet Company for Assigned Names and Numbers — ICANN. The org decided to expand the number of domain names treated as generic, and now websites in the names of celebrities, companies, teams, and more could be available, not only at “.porn” and “.adult” domains, but at “.sucks,” “.sexy,” and several more.

There’s no word on whether Taylor Swift has any plans to take taylorswift.sucks or taylorswift.sexy off the market.

Adweek raises another valid point, though. Buying “[company/team/whatever name].sucks” doesn’t prevent some troll from collecting “[company/team/whatever name]really.sucks.” Similarly, Swift’s recent purchase won’t prevent a scammer, fappenner, or harasser from buying any number of variations on “taylorswift.porn.”

She — or any celeb, company, team, or brand — could preemptively buy up thousands of domain names, and a determined schemer would simply add a number to the URL, or swap two letters around.

Still, Taylor Swift isn’t the only one moving to protect the most obvious new URLs — Microsoft is reported to have also bought “office.adult” and “office.porn,” before they go public, to protect its brand.

[Photo by: Larry Busacca/Getty Images]