New ICANN TLDs May Cause Internet Land Rush 443
wiryd writes "A new ICANN proposal would allow applications for almost any TLD. From the article: 'Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop. "Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for," says Paul Levins, ICANN's vice president of corporate affairs. "It could translate into one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history."'"
Alternative viewpoint: (Score:5, Insightful)
"Tourists probably won't find information about the Liberty Bell at a site ending in .philly just like they don't, for example, find anything useful at sites ending in .info."
If you see a company snap up a new TLD at the recommendation of their marketing department, it's time to sell their stock. Unless somebody comes up with a novel technical use for an entire TLD, this is going to be a massive flop.
Oh great. (Score:5, Insightful)
My dad still gets confused when an address ends in something besides, ".com".
Epic Security Problem in My Opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly.
Or maybe .pa or maybe even .penn or maybe even .hist or maybe even .bells or maybe even .revwar? Or maybe tourists will have to check all of those since they're all valid categories? And maybe the site www.ushistory.org/libertybell/ will have to register in all of those categories?
A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop.
Or maybe .music or maybe .ryhme or maybe .lyric or maybe .album or maybe .songs or maybe .r for "Rapper" or maybe .rap? Or maybe I want to target fans of said rapper and register his name dot whatever on one of those and post it all over message boards. On the site would be a link saying "click here for the latest album free!" where they enter their address and name? Then I Google bomb said rappers name on forums and boards with my site so that it shows up as number one in Google. If I get sued for it, just give it up and dream up another TLD that could dupe a fan. Let's not even get started on my vast collection of www.google.cmo, www.google.ocm, www.google.moc, etc.
... what exactly is the point of this again? An ICANN get rich quick scam?
I'm just going to throw out the idea that TLDs were never intended to be a complete ontology of all things. And you're making a whole lot of problems (security and logistical) for people so that you can make clever domain names. Is this really necessary?
The article makes them sound ridiculously expensive
ICANN has a business model. (Score:5, Insightful)
What a business it is. And you never really can "own" a domain, you simply lease it. Miss a payment and a squatter owns your traffic.
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless somebody comes up with a novel technical use for an entire TLD
From the article,
To beat a competitor to the punch, a company might decide it needs to control a new generic domain, such as .cereal or .detergent, but it would be costly. The currently proposed application fee is $185,000, says Levins, plus an annual "continuance" fee of $25,000. If more than one company wants a suffix, there could be a bidding war.
So ICANN has reinvented the .com bidding war and they're the money makers because they missed out on auctioning cereal.com and cereal.org etc. Also, if the company's dropping $185k on the application fee, I think I would sell my stock anyway.
More like (Score:5, Insightful)
Impossible to overstate the SPAM opportunity ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently, if you receive a spam email selling you (insert favorite spamming product here), you can look up the domain name that is being spamvertised, and generally figure out who is responsible for the operation. With that information you can contact the registrar and the hosting company regarding the activity that is going on. And currently, if the registrar does not react accordingly, you have some (though very limited) choice of action through ICANN if the registrar is blatantly in violation of their obligations to maintain accurate records.
However, ICANN's obligations end with the most common TLDs (.com,
This will open the floodgates in a way we have not seen before. I discussed this a while ago [slashdot.org] when they first brought up this horrendous idea. But they will keep with it, because it will make some fast money. The rest of us can all go to hell with our email.
Forget the land rush. This will cause a spam rush that could potentially make sub-prime mortgages look like a good idea.
Worthless idea .... (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the biggest reasons to have a specific domain name is because it's memorable enough and relevant enough so people will use it in lieu of a search engine.
(EG. If I don't know the URL for McDonalds restaurants, am I going to Google for it, or would I just try www.mcdonalds.com first?)
When you make the TLD an "anything goes" deal, vs. a distinct few possibilities - you make it MUCH harder for people to find you that way. (Initially, people will keep trying .com, knowing that's the "standard" ... and as time goes on, all the people registering random, new TLDs will cause those .com based searches to be increasingly worthless. They'll go back to doing searches for you, vs. taking random stabs as to what TLD you might be under.)
Re:ICANN has a business model. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I could see spammers with a real economic use for dot.corn (look carefully - dot - c - o - r - n, not c - o - m)
~tomhudson (not logged in)
Time for a new Internet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps it's time we revolt and set up a new Internet with a non-commerical clause so we can get back to using the Internet for what it was intended for, making us smarter rather then selling us shit...
Rule of thumb: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:5, Insightful)
Just get a domain name that's slightly relevant to your topic or service
Why make it even slightly relevant? Amazon didn't. Google didn't. Ebay didn't. I'm sure there must be counter examples of people making a success out of 'relevant' names, but I suspect they're in the minority.
Re:Sure. Anybody... (Score:4, Insightful)
I ahve said for a long time now, the best PR move the porn industry could do was all use an .xxx domain.
People who want it, can find it, people who want to block it can do so easier.
It won'[t stop teens from getting to it, but it will be the next important step into mainstream acceptance a a legitimate business.
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:3, Insightful)
The age of the domain name is over in my opinion. People find information by going through search engines, I would guess a very small population still types www.whatiwant.com when surfing. They would have learned their lesson a long time ago that that's not a smart idea.
Just get a domain name that's slightly relevant to your topic or service, and you're fine. Google magic will do the rest.
No one ever looked for information at www.whatiwant.com unless it was already known that www.whatiwant.com had the answer. However, Newegg having a short, easy to remember URL means people are more likely to go directly there for a computer component that to competitors, because Newegg will place highly in search engine results AND a substantial fraction of customers actually go to Newegg by url. The same is true for Wikipedia, Amazon, and a bunch of other sites.
Also, when searching I suggest www.scroogle.org over google.
Re:Welcome to the age (Score:3, Insightful)
[...] Everybody can now claim google.philly or google.hiphop and companies can do nothing about it(or start countless lawsuits). [...]
In order to avoid a massive influx of lawsuits from corporate lawyers all over the globe any half sane TLD operator would run a sunrise period for tradename owners to grab any domains their claims cover. But that in itself will defeat the whole purpose of introducing new TLDs. Google, Coca Cola, BMW et al. will simply grab their domains under any TLD they can get and sue the living sh... out of anyone who beats them to those domains. Well, just as they have done with domains under existing TLDs.
Totally pointless, really.
Re:Welcome to the age (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree, domains with what you'd think would be a small target audience can do surprisingly well.
Case in point: .cx
Re:Impossible to overstate the SPAM opportunity .. (Score:1, Insightful)
Spammers deal with a lot more money than that.
Yes, they do. But that $185,000 is per gTLD. Why would they spend $185k per domain when the current system works just fine at literally thousandths of that price? They are out to make money, not piss it down ICANN's drain. Furthermore, having their own gTLD makes them more easily targeted and controlled. If a spammer registers .spam and it gets spamvertised, how long do you really think it would be before .spam is listed as a whole on every major URIBL?
Second, I was referring to the spamvertised domain, not the domain that the email came from. The money is in the domain being spamvertised, not the domain that is relaying the mail.
Spammers using their own gTLDs will have a much larger problem with URIBLs. The way spammers get around a URIBL listing is by simply using throwaway domains. If your entire top-level domain just got URIBL'd, you'll seriously reconsider dropping another $185k on a new one.
Re:check your inbox (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure I understand, but wouldn't it be great if spammers all started using .pillz or .softwarez domains? Then I could just block everything coming from those domains regardless of what their whois information says.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to be so lucky as to see spammers all put themselves under a unique TLD. But if they did, it'd probably be worth it for us all to start a collection and buy it for them.
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:3, Insightful)
think email messages - yourbank.corn needs you to click this link now and login before we delete all your money!
Re:Rule of thumb: (Score:2, Insightful)
Liliana Gil, director of global marketing services with Johnson & Johnson, doesn't see the common suffixes being overtaken but believes, "This could be a fun new way to communicate a message digitally. ...You could have tylenol.children, tylenol.pm."
To start with, .pm already exists. It's the Country-Code TLD (ccTLD) for "Saint Pierre and Miquelon". So this clueless person could register "tylenol.pm" today for J&J's website, if the name conforms to the namespace rules of the ccTLD registry and J&J, as a business, meets the "eligibility" requirements as well (e.g. they might require that your business has a "presence" in their country, or be on the offical local "registry" of businesses). Regardless, adding new gTLDs per this new ICANN policy has zero effect on the ability of J&J to register tylenol.pm or not.
OK, so then this person also muses about registering tyenol.children. Do they think that Johnson & Johnson would have sole control of the .children TLD, for the benefit of one subdomain (or maybe a handful, if J&J has "children's" versions of more than one of their drugs)? No, it seems far more likely that .children will be registered by some other organization, a children's rights group, for instance (cue all the lame Slashdot "think of the children!" quasi-jokes now), and then J&J would need to go begging them for a delegation for their "fun" new website's name. Whoever held the .children TLD could then charge J&J an exorbitant fee for that delegation. Marketing opportunity? Sure, whoever makes out well on the initial "land grab" is going to make tons of money, but is J&J going to benefit? Probably not. These new "marketing opportunities" will probably impose a new "tax" on those of us who market regular products and services on the Intartubes, while benefiting the "land-grabbers". Dollar for dollar, J&J's marketing budget may be far more effective in more "traditional" channels rather than pursuing these new "fun" -- but likely very expensive -- arbitrary-TLD opportunities.