Taylor Swift’s company seeks control of the .taylorswift domain

A name reserved at the internet’s edge

TAS Rights Management, a Tennessee company that manages Swift’s intellectual property, brand and trademarks, filed its application with ICANN on October 7. It proposes using .TAYLORSWIFT as a branded domain.

Only organizations connected to Swift would be eligible to register addresses, under terms set with the registry. Trademark licensees could also potentially qualify, subject to a strict approval process.

The idea has a precedent. In 2015, just before domains became available to anyone, Swift bought TaylorSwift.porn and TaylorSwift.adult to prevent them from being used abusively. That move came after ICANN expanded the list of available domain endings, prompting public figures to secure their names in advance.

The stakes have changed since then. AI agents have made it easier to create websites, including addresses such as official.taylorswift, giving impersonators more ways to present themselves as legitimate.

A longer fight over identity

The application follows a 2024 wave of pornographic deepfakes depicting Swift. The scandal preceded a broader spread of nonconsensual AI-generated intimate images and drew responses from major technology companies. It also became a subject of political debate ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Swift’s team is also pursuing trademark protection for her voice and appearance. In April, she filed three US trademark applications; all remain under review. The submissions included a photograph of Swift onstage and two audio recordings in which she introduces herself.

Actor Matthew McConaughey filed eight trademark applications a few months earlier, submitting video and audio of himself looking into the camera, smiling and speaking. He told The Wall Street Journal he wanted to ensure that his voice or image would be used only with his approval, and to make consent and attribution the norm in an AI world.

ICANN said on Wednesday that it had received more than 1,600 applications for new generic top-level domains since the start of the year, including 333 from brands. Other applicants include adidas, Bank of America, TikTok and Shopify. Meta-owned Registry Holdings filed 15 applications, including .aiglasses, .instagram, .metaglasses, .muse and .whatsapp.

Community feedback on .taylorswift is expected to continue through March 2027. ICANN expects approvals in the first half of next year.

The limit of a controlled address

I think the domain is best understood as a defensive layer, not a solution to impersonation. Restricting who can register a name under .taylorswift could make official sites easier to identify, but it cannot stop copies from appearing elsewhere.

What I’d want to know is how the approval rules will work in practice, especially for licensees. The application describes a gate; the harder question is how much confidence that gate can offer when creating a convincing imitation is getting easier.