The internet address gay.xxx has been sold for $500,000, making it the most expensive domain name sold in an extension that is not yet publicly open for registration.

The deal was made as part of the Founders Program offered by .xxx operator ICM Registry. The buyer is Liberty Media Holdings, aka Corbin Fisher, a Las Vegas-based gay porn production house.

The site associated with the domain is not yet live. When it is, you can be very assured of its NSFWness.

ICM does not plan to sell .xxx addresses to regular punters until December. It is currently in the midst of a “sunrise” process that allows reluctant trademark owners to claim or block their brand names in exchange for a fee of about $200.

It has also blocked the names of about 4,300 famous people from the domain.

The Founders Program saw ICM sell or otherwise allocate about 1,500 .xxx names to 35 companies, raising over $4m. The first to go live, back in August, was casting.xxx.

According to ICM, nine of these domains sold for over $100,000 each.

The previous top price for an address in pre-launch extension is believed to be the $350,000 that Overstock.com paid the Colombian .co registry for o.co in June 2010. Overstock is in the process of making O.co its primary brand name.

Before that, flowers.mobi sold to a domain investor for $250,000 in 2005, a purchase widely considered to have been an enormous mistake.

Porn addresses selling for big money are not without precedent. The most expensive domain name sale of all time is widely believed to be sex.com, which sold for $13m last year.

According to the Corbin Fisher website, the company is a member of the Californian porn trade group the Free Speech Coalition, which has been ICM’s most outspoken opponent.

The FSC lobbied against the approval by ICANN of .xxx for years until March this year, and has since called for a member boycott of the extension.

As well as being concerned about the high price of .xxx names (roughly $100 a year) the organisation continues to fear that having a dedicated porn-only domain is an invitation for censorious governments to mandate or block it.

ICM plans to auction more .xxx domains at domain investor conferences and other venues over the coming weeks. A “landrush” phase – which will enable anyone to take a shot at a “premium” address – will kick off in November.

from www.huffingtonpost.com – The internet address Gay.xxx was recently purchased for $500,000, making it “the most expensive domain name sold in an extension that is not yet publicly open for registration” reports TheRegister.co.uk.

Liberty Media Holdings, better known as gay production company Corbin Fisher, scooped up the NSFW address. In the coming months more domain names with the .xxx extension will go on sale, but the Gay.xxx deal was already completed as part of “the Founders Program” operated by ICM Registry.

In March the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet’s naming system, approved the creation of the special extension for pornographic websites. Soon after India became the first country to ban .xxx.

A press release on Marketwatch.com regarding the Gay.xxx sale reads in part:

“This is also the 5th highest sale price of any domain name sold in 2011 and one of the top 30 most expensive domain names sold in the last 3 years…

ICM has now sold nine premium .XXX domain names for $100,000 or more, which is unparalleled in any other domain launch and reports that there are many other similar deals in progress…

Domain names in most other TLDs typically sell for 1-10% of the value of their .com equivalent. The .XXX names are already selling for 30-40% and we are just getting started,” said [Stuart Lawley, CEO of ICM Registry].”

The next auction will take place at the upcoming T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Conference later this month and titillating addresses like Juicy.xxx, Orgy.xxx, and Blondes.xxx will be sold to the highest bidder.

TheRegister.co.uk notes that before this deal, the largest amount paid for a pre-launch extension was $350,000 by Overstock.com for the address O.co in June 2010.

A press release from Corbin Fisher lays out the gay porn company’s plan to use the Gay.xxx address as “a game-changer for the industry” and promises “if it has to do with gay sexuality — news, comics, advice, chat rooms — it belongs on Gay.xxx.”

Porn sites can bring in big money and expensive Internet addresses are commonplace in the industry. Last year Sex.com went for $13,000,000.