ICANN Wants To Change Rules For GTLDs 127
An anonymous reader writes "The May 10th deadline for comments on the .net registry agreement renewal has arrived with new domain name dispute changes that aid corporations. Instead of UDRP, the new agreement proposes adding the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) process to the .net TLD. The URS is a quick $200 process for a trademark holder to disable and take ownership of a domain. URS also reduces the panel size from 1-3 people to a single person. You can still comment on the proposal by sending an email to ICANN (net-agreement-renewal@)."
Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
So it only takes $200 and a single bribe to take someone's domain. Thats efficiency!
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$200? There must be countries where it's cheaper than that to register a trademark. And since it's a global TLD, there wouldn't be any bias towards accepting US trademarks over Albanian ones, would there?
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think he means, say we have an American company and an Albanian company. They both own trademarks on "ACME" in their respective countries. The Albanian company gets acme.net first. The American company then comes along and gets the domain hijacked from a perfectly legitimate claim holder and it costs them so little its barely an item in the ledger.
Also, vice versa, the Albanian company could pull that same maneuver on the American company. Also, what if someone registers a trademark in a foreign country where it's easy to get one. They could then, as a "trademark holder" hijack a domain name that they have their eyes on for whatever purpose.
Whether that'll actually happen or not, I have no way of knowing. But this whole plan wreaks. I suspect the public comment period is just for show anyway. Not that it matters, as there appear to be so few public comments that they'll have no reason not to proceed.
Wreaks vs. Reeks (Score:2)
But this whole plan wreaks.
The fun thing about this misspelling / misuse of yours here is that it works both ways -- both as the word you wrote, "wreaks", meaning to avenge upon or inflict, as in wreaks havoc, and as the word you likely intended, "reeks", meaning to smell extremely strongly, as in reeks of ripe and runny cheese.
</linguistic_pedant_hat>
Cheers,
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Well, puns being the lowest form of comedy, they are uniquely suited to Slashdot posts.
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Surely there are lower forms of comedy -- slapstick or shock, for example.
Poorly executed puns are horrid, I agree. But a well-executed pun, with insightful double entendre, can be a magical thing to behold.
Then again, a golden pegasus that shits caviar and pisses wine would also be a wonderful thing to behold, and I haven't seen one of those yet, either.
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Well, puns being the lowest form of comedy, they are uniquely suited to Slashdot posts.
"I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man." - Charles Lamb
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Well, puns being the lowest form of comedy, they are uniquely suited to Slashdot posts.
Sure, it's not like anyone ever thought that sarcasm was the lowest form of wit.
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I would be more inclined to call it the efficient dismantling of the free web.
We're doomed (Score:2)
Incoming department of homeland security, protectin us for the terrrists.
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Big government looking out for big business. The little guy is fu#k@d over.
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Re:We're doomed (Score:4, Insightful)
The little guy was always fucked over. You're just hearing about it these days because they don't worry about hiding it.
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"Disinformation Wants to be Free"
Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks guys. Now I can't register shit on
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It's been advised for as long as I can remember to proactively trademark your domain name. Anybody who's done that previously shouldn't have anything to worry about. The people that do have something to worry about either didn't trademark it or are running fan sites.
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How do you register a trademark on a domain?
Last I check domains covered the globe, your trademark doesn't.
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If you file in the same country as the registry you're fine. Just because you can access a domain from anywhere in the world, does not mean that you need to have a trademark that covers the whole world. You're not going to have a court in Venezuela or Sweden with the power to issue binding orders on domain registrars operating out of the US. Which has caused a lot of trouble for some European nations with bans on the trade of Nazi memorabilia.
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So if I'm in Australia and my Registrar is in the U.S. am I eligible to trademark the domain?
Verisign being the registry operator of .com and .net are also in the U.S. but .com and .net are officially country independent top level domains.
Sony? Think Nissan (Score:2)
They have been trying for years to take away this guy's [nissan.com] domain. So far, the courts have sided with the rightful owner.
I suppose the idea now is to take away the site from the first person who had the idea of registering a site with his name and give it to a corporation that happens to have the same name.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
> However, this would not prevent something like Geohotz.net from being anti-Sony.
Sure it would. Behind some closed doors SONY incorporates a new company, say GEO HOT Z vacuum cleaners. Then it pays the $200 fee and takes down Geohotz.net . Done. No warning, no judicial review. Geohotz is gone. Sure they can fight it. Lawyer up buddy!
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Assuming the process will actually be halfway fair, it wouldn't work that way.
Sony could incorporate a new company, but establishing trademarks is harder. A trademark has to be actually used to be legit. Therefore, they'd have to make and sell some vacuum cleaners, and convince the hearing officer that this was for legitimate purposes.
Any process can be abused, and this looks like it's one dishonest person away from abuse. It isn't automatically an abusive process, though.
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There is *ONE* hearing officer doing all of this for every domain and every request.
One person.
I'm sure he's going to do all the appropriate due-diligence making sure the complainant is a legitimate company who actually sold some vacuum cleaners. Perhaps even a site visit to be sure.
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There is *ONE* hearing officer doing all of this for every domain and every request.
One person.
I'm sure he's going to do all the appropriate due-diligence making sure the complainant is a legitimate company who actually sold some vacuum cleaners. Perhaps even a site visit to be sure.
This.
It will end up like the DMCA take-down process in that bogus domain-seizure filings will be rampant and there will be little or no oversight to punish or prevent abuse by those with money & a team of lawyers on retainer.
Just another step on the way to turning the internet into the digital equivalent of "The Shopping Channel".
Strat
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Nope. You don't understand the domain ecosystem.
In the world of domain disputes, currently it's a $1500 UDRP action that takes weeks and has some serious deliberation and analysis. This is appropriate to figure out the messy cases like peta.org and wwf.org.
That's not what this is for.
This is for egregious violations. Say you're frobozz.com and you make keyboards. A year later somebody comes along ad grabs fr0bozz.com and sells keyboards labeled "frobozz". And they're not selling real frobozz keyboards, they
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Sony assigns one person (like an intern) to work on a new game, "George the Hot's Zeppelin Racing", and registers a trademark on the abbreviated form of that name. It then files one of these complaints about the domain. Once it has the domain, it cancels the project and reassigns that intern.
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
You're fucked no matter how much right to your domain name you have.
Nissan Computer Corporation owned by one Mr Uzi Nissan
http://www.nissan.com/ [nissan.com]
Nissan motors sued him, his company and a third company which had nothing to do with their trademark simply because he was a shareholder.(yes nissan motors is that scummy)
Last I heard it's cost him a million bucks to defend his domain name.
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I guess because he spent all that money on lawyers he hasn't been able to afford a web designer since 1996?
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Nissan motors sued him, his company and a third company which had nothing to do with their trademark simply because he was a shareholder.(yes nissan motors is that scummy)
Oh, thanks for the head's up. No LEAF then.
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Nissan have no right to the domain nissan.com
Wanting a domain does not entitle Nissan Motors to it.
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Apple Computer owned the Apple trademark in the context of computers, while Apple Corps owned it in the context of music
And that was one of the more acrimonious disputes, thought I guess emotions ran rather high with the 'A Paul Corporation' in contention. I guess these days they'd just register moc.daedsilu.ap if they were still putting out music.
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Whoever registers it first.
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Thinking of Contacting ICANN? Don't Bother... (Score:3)
The best you can do is find what will replace this broken registry system, and invest in it. Of course, eventually the ICANN idiots will end up in charge of that, and break it, too.
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Of course, eventually the ICANN idiots will end up in charge of that, and break it, too.
But at least that will give us a few years of freedom on the net. When it happens, rinse, lather, repeat.
Re:Thinking of Contacting ICANN? Don't Bother... (Score:5, Insightful)
ICANN Stopped being about the common good many years ago.
The only goal that ICANN has is to make money for ICANN and the registrars that support it.
Re:goal (Score:3)
You almost made me write a new sig, but I'll hold off for now.
"The only goal that ICANN has is to make money for ICANN and the registrars that support it."
Let's rework that famous quote:
"At first I didn't care because I thought it was about a buck for ICANN. Then I discovered the abuse potential but TFA said it was for battling squatters and scammers. I pointed out the potential damage to Your Rights Online but an AC appeared and told me to take off my tinfoil hat. Then the worst case scenario became signed
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This is the problem with privatisation. If you give something over to a private interests to manage, they will relentlessly manage and re-manage the company in an effort to extract as much remuneration in bonuses,etc for themselves as they possibly can. Instead of simply following their brief and running the quiet, efficient operation they promised you, a private company will cut corners, invent new side businesses, change their brief, and eventually derail the organisation from its original purpose. They w
Then versus now... (Score:2)
The entire operation that is now ICANN, all its basic briefs and functions, was once run by one man, Jon Postel. Now you can spin it any way you want, but even with the growth of the network since 1994, ICANN should consist of an office with perhaps 20-30 people to perform the same task today. That would be an efficient operation.
I think you hit the nail on the head there; ICANN is bloated and mismanaged. However I think one could also make an argument that not only is ICANN doing a lot of functions that it didn't do before, it is also doing almost none of the functions it did originally.
There was a time when if you had a complaint to level against a registrar, you could do it through ICANN. They had the power to strip a registrar of their right to sell domains. Now, ICANN is - as you point out - run by business goons who ca
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welp, looks like people will be pushing to take control away from ICANN even further. I knew people were working on a replacement DNS system but way to push that along even faster.
goddamn.
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How would you make internal domains?
How would you make test domains?
How would you support having multiple roots?
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You can still add as many levels of subdomains as you want. I would just get rid of the confusing and useless .com / .net / .org distinction.
http://test1.devel.disney/ [test1.devel.disney]
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Those are subdomains. I did not say test subdomains, I said test domains.
Maybe I want to have my.company.ops. Would I now need to register fakecompany, just to do some testing?
The distinction is not useless, you just do not understand the use.
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No tasting implies that I want domains that other folks can resolve. I want domains that only my internal set of DNS servers know about. I want to replicate all of my company.com stuff to company.int and use that for internal QA testing. No one outside my lan would be able to resolve or talk to those machines.
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Well what would be stopping you? .com .org and .net in the wide world stop you from setting up your testing domains?
You are right, I don't understand the problem.
If you control your DNS server you can resolve anything. company.int, company.whatever.the.hell.you.want.
Why would the lack of
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Because they could conflict with valid ones. I want a tld that cannot be valid for testing purposes. It honestly sounds like you don't really understand DNS. If each domain was its own tld, than my use of .int would conflict with a real existing tld of some company. Three letter tlds would all be used.
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int, internal, lan, intranet, print, printer, printserv, printserver, fileserv, fileserver, email, mail, extranet, irc, chat, private.
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Why is this so hard for you to understand? Use your own domain as the rightmost component and use subdomains. Is that so hard? Or if you just cannot get over that on an aesthetic level, pick a testing tld that you don't care if it conflicts, such as 'test-domain'. Yes, you won't be able to resolve the "real" test-domain if there is one.
There appear to be safeguards in URS (Score:3, Informative)
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Read the IRT report, URS is scary (Score:3)
Have you read parts of the ICANN PDF (second link from this overview page [thedomains.com])? Start on page 25, but pay attention to page 29. First, your domains are frozen by the registry, and your registrar is obligated to freeze your whois information. You have two weeks to respond -- hopefully you don't receive email at a frozen domain! Also, hope that the authoritative nameservers any of your domains (URS targeted or not) use are not frozen!
The UDRP process was more transparent, often used larger panels of arbiters, and
Time to change the whole basis (Score:3, Interesting)
It's time to change the whole basis of domain trust relationships. Or, in other words, let's try again to establish a completely separate domain infrastructure.
This is fully possible because there is nothing in the design of the internet protocols that confers power to ICANN and it's corporate teat suckers to own the domain name space. That trust relation exists in a combination of what domain name server each computer chooses to use (in /etc/resolv.conf for Unix/Linux users), and the root zone hints file in the domain name server itself.
Oh, but wait ... the nay-sayers will argue that this will fragment the internet.
And I agree, it will fragment the internet. And that's a GOOD THING. Fragmenting the internet would mean we don't have to deal with corporate B.S. so much. This would then be the people's network. Let the corporates and all their loony lawyer types talk to themselves over the corporate network. We don't want to be bound by stupid rules (like trademarks, patents, and copyrights) that give others the power to take even our very thoughts away from us.
Just start a whole new root zone. Start over with the domain name space. Ban "dot com" entirely (or more precisely, leave "dot com" to the trademark peddlers).
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Just start a whole new root zone.
No, roots are proven to be broken, can be taken over, and will attract power/abuse. Figure out something distributed - you've got a whole Internet to work with.
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roots are proven to be broken
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Actually, it wouldn't be that hard to implement a new set of root domain servers. These servers could forward unrecognized requests to the current domain system.
I'm not saying it would be easy, but getting IE market share down to 50% wasn't easy either, and has been slowly growing. You just need to get a small group of administrators to implement alternative dns servers, the provide a painless and easy way for end users to change their DNS to these new servers.
Of course, this is rife with opportunity for
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Actually, it wouldn't be that hard to implement a new set of root domain servers.
It's already been tried. Multiple times. [wikipedia.org] For some reason, people by-and-large prefer what we've got now.
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Yes, it's been tried before. It fails for largely social reasons. If there's enough impetus to change, then it can succeed. Previously, there hasn't been enough impetus.
If ICANN starts becomeing more dictatorial and taking peoples domains away on whims, then you will start to see impetus brewing. In general, people don't change unless there is an overwhelming reason to do so. Revolution (or Civil War.. the only difference is who wins) only happens when you have nothing left to lose.
By the way, thats gTLD, not GTLD (Score:2)
Say goodbye to your mailbox, and hello to higher prices for internet access (and all forms of internet business), once the gTLDs go up for sale to the general public.
Of course, if you know how to get in on the
Why would you even want to deal with that? (Score:2)
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Indeed, it's insane. My old domain was a word trademarked by several different companies in several different countries; how could anyone other than a court decide whether it violated any of their trademarks and, if so, which one of them had the right to it?
Good Thing? (Score:2)
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It's giving corporations a nuclear weapon to use on squatters and trolls, except there's no telling who the corporations will actually use it on.
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Perhaps, but using nuclear weapons against squatters, trolls and spammers has some appeal to me, no matter who does it.
Say that after you find yourself in the house next to the squatter (or the city next to them, for that matter). If we give them a tool to use against "the bad guys" they will simply redefine who "the bad guys" are every time they want to use it. Or do you trust them not to abuse this power in pursuit of their corporate anti-consumer agendas? Have you been paying attention to Sony lately?
What about squatters? (Score:2)
I think corporations are reasonably well protected already. But what about the average person who just wants to register a domain that is taken by a squatter, without having to go through the time and expense of obtaining a trademark?
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That's not squatting. And even if you applied for a trademark after the fact, (theoretically) it holds no water in the UDRP process.
Bottom line is if someone else registered the domain first, then you can either make him/her an offer to buy it, or pick another one. Similar to real estate, domain names are property and operate under the concept of capitalism.
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That's not squatting.
What isn't squatting?
Similar to real estate, domain names are property and operate under the concept of capitalism.
Domain names are IP [wikipedia.org] not RP [wikipedia.org]. Economically speaking, it is very different from real estate. Real estate is finite, expensive, and owned permanently unless transferred. Domain names are infinite, cheap, and are only available for rent.
It seems like almost every English dictionary word is registered as a domain right now. Any domain that expires is immediately snatched up by squatters. This is an unfortunate problem.
And even if you applied for a trademark after the fact, (theoretically) it holds no water in the UDRP process.
The UDRP [wikipedia.org] process is almost exclusively based on trademarks. While I'm
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That's not squatting.
What isn't squatting?
Simply put, squatting is limited to registering vreizon.com then putting up cell phone ads. Wanting cars.com just because you want it, doesn't make the owner a squatter (even if the domain is parked or has no content). Nor is the person who registers a domain, then someone else comes along and files a trademark on the term for UDRP purposes.
Similar to real estate, domain names are property and operate under the concept of capitalism.
Domain names are IP [wikipedia.org] not RP [wikipedia.org]. Economically speaking, it is very different from real estate. Real estate is finite, expensive, and owned permanently unless transferred. Domain names are infinite, cheap, and are only available for rent.
It seems like almost every English dictionary word is registered as a domain right now. Any domain that expires is immediately snatched up by squatters. This is an unfortunate problem.
I was speaking in terms of how the courts view domains:
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-223597.html [cnet.com]
More recently, where all this is headed:
http://www.domainnamenews.com/ [domainnamenews.com]
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Simply put, squatting is limited to registering vreizon.com then putting up cell phone ads.
Right, that's exactly the situation I was talking about. I am confused because you said "That's not squatting" and I am trying to figure out what it was I said that is not squatting.
I was speaking in terms of how the courts view domains: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-223597.html [cnet.com] [cnet.com]
Good link: so was I. That court ruling states that domains names are intellectual property, not real property. The relevant difference here is that ICANN's rules forbid squatting, whereas squatting on real property is well-protected by the law.
As for the trademark thing, do not misunderstand what a registered trademark means.
.NET (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft should pay the $200 and seize the entire TLD.
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Microsoft should pay the $200 and seize the entire TLD.
You have a point there...
ICANN must be canned. (Score:2)
ICANN HAZ (Score:2)
ICANN2 (Score:2)
Soooo. (Score:2)
So, if you have a personal domain, get a trademark out on that domain before some bastard corp tries to take it off of you.
How much does a trade mark cost anyhow?
"Domain names"? (Score:2)
Was that something that had significance back before people found their information through search engines and used URL shorteners to provide compact links to people? Did people actually type significant domain names into address bars? How quaint.
Send an email! (Score:2)
So send one, already!
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The email bounces.
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Unfortunately I think the comment period ended.
pechora3.icann.org #... User unknown> #SMTP#
Had a domain forcibly taken.. (Score:2)
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Nonsense - there are plenty of legitimate uses for domains other than web servers.
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What do webservers have to do with domains?
My most heavily used domain has no server at root or www but that doesn't mean it hasn't been in constant use for the past 8 years. It's actually an integral part of all my online activities. Everything from email to OpenID to DNS and the list goes on.
Arrr! We don't need no stinkin' DNS! (Score:2)
Screw it. Let's see them try to trademark a dotted quad, or an IPv6 unicast addy. Too much to memorize? Most of us can run our own damned domain server on our LAN, and bypass this ICANNdy assed scheme. Hell, I'll hard code stuff into my hosts file if I have to. Or use a third party DNS, preferably with non-ICANN tlds, that are stable and not liable to being boarded by cutlass wielding trademark lawyers. (Arrr!)
If they wreck it, we can fork DNS. We can even ignore it. The Internet, so long as it isn't redesi
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Well yeah, Germany is a rich country and supposedly has always had a love for gadgetry, so it makes perfect sense.
Re:Why so many .de domains? (Score:5, Funny)
Why? Germany has a lot of websites for some reason?
Kinky porn and David Hasselhoff.
Re:Why so many .de domains? (Score:5, Funny)
it puts the cheeseburger in its mouth
ICANN has cheeseburger?
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I'm with the other commenter- that was a perfect parlay of a joke, Fred.
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Yes. For some reason it does. [verisigninc.com] [PDF]
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The German Wikipedia has the second most articles of the various language Wikipedias. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]
I have also read that German is second only to English in number of books published each year.
Pretty impressive when you consider only 3 countries with a total of a bit under 100 million people make up the traditional German language sphere.
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Only 3? Do you suck at counting?
The following have German as an official language.
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Italy (South Tyrol)
Switzerland
Luxembourg
Liechtenstein
Even if we only count ohe ones were it is the only official language, we get 4.
There are 120 million Native speakers. Another 80 million non-native.
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Maybe because they are the largest economy in Europe?
They have a high median income and per capita. They also spend tons on gadgets. So yeah they have a lot of websites.
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First my question wasn't intended to "bait flames". Second, I was surprised because I figured it would be China or Japan with the highest number. Or .biz or .tv
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"Hi there. Nice domain name. Pity if our Venezuelan Subsidiary might be infringing! However, if you pay us $5, we'll give you a nice Approved graphic that you can upload for a year!"
Sign of the times (Score:2)
Our society and economy is so messed up as a waste production economy I can see this actually happening. You are spot on that entire industries will form because of this decision. While it "creates jobs" it's depressing. What ever happened to genuine production of value? I can't be the only one who thinks this tower of interdependent jobs is artificial and unsustainable... Artificial market.