Just as a follow-on to this topic, there is a promotional e-mail going around from Network Solutions. One of the "Hot Deals" this message promotes is preregistration of "your .XXX".
That seems rather different, since .XXX actually exists, and barring political surprises, there's no reason to doubt that it will be accepting registrations soon. All those others like .MUSIC are pure speculation. Nobody knows if or when ICANN will start accepting applications, nobody knows how long the process will take if it starts, and nobody knows which applications might succeed and which ones might fall afoul of one of the many conditions and evaluation processes. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly