Ron JeremyNo animals were harmed in the making of this pornographic website. In the wake of new top-level domain option .xxx’s release, animal-rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) announced today it is launching its own .xxx site to save the critters.

“A lot of organizations were gun shy about the triple-x domain, but when PETA saw it we thought this would be triple-extra effective,” Lindsay Rajt, director of campaigns for PETA told VentureBeat.

Reuters reported the story, saying the anti-animal cruelty organization is staking its claim to peta.xxx, which will serve as an animal cruelty awareness and pornography site. Peta has pushed the limits of its animal cruelty ads often in the past with near-nudity, racy slogans and a lot of shock value. Indeed, shock value seems to be PETA’s way of waving its arms for attention. This porn site is no exception.

“As soon as people land on the site they will see some explicit content, those tantalizing images they they’ll be hoping for,” Rajt said of the site’s content. As they go deeper into the site, however, visitors will find graphic images of animal abuse. It seems the .xxx site will serve up both violence and sex.

“It can be a pretty depressing subject,” Rajt said about animal cruelty, “We hope it’ll grab people’s attention, get them talking, and ultimately get them to ask questions.”

Rajt believes that PETA generates awareness for all kinds of people, and thinks this is just one avenue to reach a subset of its potential audience.

The .xxx domains are open to the public in a “sunrise period,” where companies have 50 days to bid for its domains.

PETA has met a lot of opposition before, with anti-PETA groups forming around its cause. These groups include PETA Kills Animals and Vegans Against PETA, which is specifically “concerned about the misogynist…tactics used by PETA.” Even the Superbowl rejected a PETA advertisement claiming “vegetarians have better sex.”

Perhaps now we’ll find out.

See below for a PETA produced video of famed porn star Ron Jeremy talking animal cruelty.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvH61en_GZY]

[Photo provided by peta.com]

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