Unlike Indiana's other major colleges, Ball State University isn't trying to buy up possible school Internet domains names using a new suffix meant for pornography sites.

Officials at Indiana, Purdue, Notre Dame and Indiana State have all taken steps to secure site names using the ".xxx" suffix that was approved in March by the organization overseeing the Internet address system.

Ball State spokeswoman Joan Todd told The Star Press of Muncie that the school isn't doing anything with the triple-xxx naming rights but didn't give an explanation.

Other universities have paid for 10-year rights to domain names such as Purdue.xxx, Indianauniversity.xxx and Hoosiers.xxx to order to keep their names from being connected to pornography sites and to protect the schools' trademarks.

IU said it would pay $2,200 to buy 11 Internet domain names.

IU trademarks director Valerie Gill told the The Herald-Times of Bloomington that without the purchases, if someone else were to start using domain names with an IU connection, it would cost IU several thousand dollars to fight it legally.

The .xxx top level domain is aimed at giving adult content providers a natural place on the Internet, though the porn industry has been critical of the plan that some say is the first step in forcing them to move to the more easily blockable domain addresses.