The ICANN Board just voted to approve the new gTLD program to a standing ovation to those in attendance.
The vote took place as promised on the first day of the ICANN Singapore meeting.
The vote now allows the process under which hundreds of new domain name extensions can be applied for.
Applications for the first round will open on January 12, 2012 and will close on April 12, 2012.
According to a chart posted in the Board meeting room, it looks like no new gTLD’s will be operational until November 2013.
Only one Board member voted against the proposal and one voted to abstain.
ICANN has previously placed a limit of no more than 1,000 domain name extensions in any round.
The only remaining major open issue for the ICANN Board on the new gTLD program is the registrar-registry cross ownership rules.
Based on objection of the GAC as well as the United States Department of Justice, it appears that ICANN is going to have to put back into place some restrictions on cross ownership.
But that discussion is going to be put off for another day.
In the meantime the new gTLD program is a reality and the domain name world has changed forever.
Anyway you slice it there will be hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into the domain name space.
No doubt you will see thousands of stories from all over the world in every major publication on domains.
Yes the domain name world has changed forever.
test
I can hear the money being sucked out of people’s pockets already.
Well it now it was approved by ICANN, did they open Pandora’s Box?
My consolidated thoughts on the new gTLD program –
I think there are A LOT of legal hurdles and challenges to still be cleared.
1.) If multiple parties want the same extension, what happens?
Do they go to auction? What about BS TMs already for new extensions that don’t exist?
Should the high bidder for a generic extension be able to block any competitors from owning a domain.
For instance Sony is the high bidder for .MUSIC, should they be able to block any competitor from using it?
2.) What about confusingly similar extensions, typo extensions, etc.
What happens if someone wants .CON, a great .COM typo extension?
What if someone wants an extension that is confusingly similar to a current ccTLD?
Should .USA be allowed to exist when .US already exists and is the ccTLD of the United States? I think that whole extension would be “confusingly similar”.
As far as I was aware, one of the foundations of this program was to not introduce any extensions that are confusingly similar to current extensions.
3.) Should potentially offensive extensions like .porn, .sex, .gay, etc be able to legally extort brand owners for payment like .XXX has done?
If people think this is a “fresh start” they are dreaming.
You really think the people putting out millions to obtain and promote a registry are just going to hand out the best keywords for free or cheap? Yeah right.
This program needs to be rolled out in a very measured manner. Starting with less debated extensions.
There needs to be a process for how generic keyword extensions are handled and policies regarding them. IMO a company should not be able to acquire a generic keyword gTLD, and use it to block competition.
The process needs to be transparent and well regulated.
Brad
Sad day of wasted effort. Jon Postel is crying in his grave.
Will ultimately prove to be a big .Fail
Did ya catch that they won’t go into effect until 2014??????
Haaaaaah!!!!!!!! Well, if .COM hasn’t yet solidified it’s lead, that should give it sufficient time to do so, eh?
Seems clear to me that .COM is the real winner here.
““Some claim that icann stands to profit from this new program. this is not true. the program will be run on a cost recovery basis as designed by you, the community, and as approved by the icann board. if approved by the icann board.
As CEO, I have neither advocated nor opposed this program. now that this phase has been completed, i will be raising my hand to vote”
So who then is the $185,000 application fee being paid to? Is it not being paid to ICANN?
$185,000 x 1000 possible extensions. Do the math.
How exactly does ICANN not stand to profit from this program?
Brad
The $185K gets paid to ICANN but they say its a cost recovery fee which is revenue neutral to ICANN but of course no one believes that.
Big money for ICANN plus ICANN per domain registration fees will be much higher for new gTLD’s not to mention the tens or hundreds of millions that ICANN will get from winning auction bidders for contested extensions.
Brad,
They will of course profit. Registrars will profit and perhaps most registries will profit. Overall domainers will lose in my view. They are the opposite side of the equation. There will be a wealth transfer from domainers to the three parties previously mentioned.
The key thing in my mind is why shouldn’t 1000s of new extension be brought in? Ok there is all sorts of allocation issues to be sorted out and these extension probably aren’t “needed” but at the heart of it, what is really wrong with .anything?
@ MHB
So ICANN is going to take $185,00 for 500-1000 extensions and somehow be “revenue neutral”. Does anyone really believe that? Honestly.
Not to mention the auction feeds for contested extensions + ICANN fees.
Since this is supposed to be “revenue netural” is ICANN prepared to donate any “profits” to charity?
That statement is honestly about the biggest load of BS I have seen in quite awhile.
Brad
“”Did ya catch that they won’t go into effect until 2014??????
Haaaaaah!!!!!!!! Well, if .COM hasn’t yet solidified it’s lead, that should give it sufficient time to do so, eh?
Seems clear to me that .COM is the real winner here.””
I couldn’t agree more, in all seriousness. They won’t be released for 2 + years, there will be hundreds/thousands of them, they will be in all DIFFERENT LANGUAGES, run by all different people. Basically, .COM just became even MORE IMPORTANT than ever if you plan on targeting anyone beyond a local audience.
But congrats to the “Right of the dot” people and ICANN – at least someone will benefit financially in the end.
@MHB- you should apply for one and add to your powerhouse???
there will be a few winners probably but will say a good portion of them will fail imo.
also the values in the .com just increased in value imo
will this be the record breaking comment section here?
no more the business of speculating in domain names
kaching kaching kaching….money money money to Me….
and more money.
Time to start your engine- grab as much as you can.
@ emma
“no more the business of speculating in domain names”
If anything it will be worse with a bunch of newbies wasting money, and opportunities for shady backroom deals.
Brad
I think you are right in that this gTLD nonsense will prove to be a big .fail (which I wholeheartedly agree!)
I agree that .COM domains will need to go up more in value. Classic supply and demand curve at work here.
By making the new tld’s go into effect, they effectively put a lot of consultants back on the unemployment line.
What are they supposed to do for the next two and a half years? And that’s assuming the timeline remains intact (no way in hell!). It took six years just to get today’s vote to go through.
Every day that goes by is a nail in the gTLD’s coffin as .COM gets more and more and more (and more) solidified by large companies using it on a daily basis.
@ Brad,
Yes, it was Pandora’s Box. It should never have been opened. Gonna be a lawyer’s dream.
It is obvious that it will end up being a commercial .dud, but they say that fools and their money are soon parted so we’ll see. In the meantime, I’ll keep buying .com and suggest you do the same.
The new gTLDs are going to create a lot of new opportunities for people around the World, but there are a few issues that still need to be addressed and resolved. There is a lot more money involved in this new gTLD program than meets the eyes. The majority of the money that ICANN is going to make is going to come from the bidding wars that are going to take place amongst the big companies that are after the same TLD. Supposedly ICANN only need 40 million dollars to recover their cost, so after that maybe they should drop the application fee to like 5 or 10k .
As far as second level registrations on these new TLDs it is still unknown how ICANN is going to handle the top 1000 generic keyword TLDs that represent a whole Industry such as .Loan or .Home , if these are handed over to just a few companies (which will be the ultimate gift to any company in those markets) then there is a good chance that those generic keyword TLDs will be kept closed to public registration and will be wild carded so that all the traffic to those TLDs will go only to certain websites.
As I have said before I believe that the generic keyword TLDs that represent a whole Industry should not be given to any one entity as it will create more monopolies in the future. It might be best to start with TLDs that are a clear cut such as .nyc or .google and perhaps do some more studies as to what to do with the generic keyword TLDs such as .Loan or .Home , in my opinion these top generic TLDs should be run by a nonprofit organization on behalf of all the people for the benefit of the whole Global Internet community.
–
The end of the reign of Rick Schwartz, Rick Latona, Mike man, just to name few. Liberalization of any product or service bring competition and therefore the price down. Good job ICANN
“The end of the reign of Rick Schwartz, Rick Latona, Mike man, just to name few. Liberalization of any product or service bring competition and therefore the price down. Good job ICANN”
Well, .COM is and will be the prime real estate on the beach.
Creating a bunch of suburbs (new extensions) does not effect the value of prime real estate.
The Big 3 and respected ccTLD will continue to do fine.
Brad
Just have to put in a plug for the .Nxt conference.
If you are interested in learning more about hundreds of new Internet extensions, comes to San Francisco on 24-26 August
See http://dot-nxt.com for more information.
Kieren
I think it’s all very confusing…more gTLD in market….more confusing in trademarks and business.
Say one famous brand COCACOLA, the company needs to buy so many extensions to secure branding.
eg
cocacola.com
drink.cocacola
drink.dietcoke
drink.cola
cocacola.softdrink
cocacola.soda
cocacola.tv
and etc…
How confusing it is…
ANOTHER EXAMPLE…
qantasairline.com
airline.qantas
fly.qantas
travel.qantas
qantas.flights
qantas.airline
qantas.global
qantas.travel
qantas.deals
studentfares.qantas
etc…
SO CONFUSING….
This will make .COM the real KING…
Revenue neutral for ICANN
But a windfall for all those working for, consulting to and involved with ICANN
“I think you are right in that this gTLD nonsense will prove to be a big .fail (which I wholeheartedly agree!)
I agree that .COM domains will need to go up more in value. Classic supply and demand curve at work here.”
////////////////
Mr Ed.,
How could “more supply” be good for .com values? I think the effect on .com will be small but I don’t for a minute think it will be positive. Much larger effect for alternative extensions in my view, .us, .tv, .net, .info, .cc etc.
I am loving this every minute…do you?
Everyday this business brings more BSness and it is so exciting to see what going to happen next.- but we all agree, dot com is KING and will always be king and his status is more validated now.
Long live dot COM long live dot COM
My F***ing GOD ASS !!!
.com is now officially dead
The new age of right of dot is here and your new KING is drum roll
.CO
By the way, Just Sold
ELV.CO for $500
@ Robert
If anything newer extensions like .CO will suffer, not .COM
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid……..
Brad
@Brad
you are a f***ing idiot
.com will be washed up in a sea of new right of dot
people will realize that the left of the dot varies
and now will realize that the right of the dot varies just as much.
The only thing that will be super premium is being short and meaningful
both assets which
.CO
excels in.
Long live your new KING
.CO
everyone bows and will now must pay homage.
@ Robert
The year anniversary for .CO is approaching fast.
Best of luck with your renewals.
Brad
Not seen the detail regarding the trademark issues. ICCAN is not Pontius Pilate. Were National /International = USPTO part of the consultation board? if the Gov prints bad $ notes are they legal tender if not withdrawn? Advise your children to become attorneys, full employment guaranteed.
dot whatever I do not care. The brand credibility factor alone of the dot com or cc is the only edge I need.
Well, I hope the registery is listening and will help us all to retain our .CO s and give us a price break similar to what they are doing with new registrations.
Plus I am sure there will be price reductions for bulk renewals.
As .CO gains the same respect and popularity as .com, the price will be set to compete with the .com s.
As I have said before the only certainty is change.
Robert
So the new gTLD story is the biggest story of the day around the world, you have had your say as it relates to .CO but that’s enough on that, I’m not going to let this post turn into a .Co rant and rave
we will need 2.5 yrs to fit in all the conferences to talk about the incredible “complexity” of this “sweeping change”.
and to meet all the consultants who can help us navigate this “maze” of “complexity”. cha-ching!
and the icann tour will keep circunavigating the globe, chased by the gac and other stakeholders. more icann meetings! cha-ching!
but… at the rate we’re going with the digitised IP and censorship issues, the centralised dns model may not even survive 2.5 yrs.
there are alternatives. all users need is a reason to switch gears.
Brad,
Most of your questions are answered in the New TLD Applicant Guidebook.
In brief, competing applicants will go to auction. However, there are provisions for “community” TLD’s and generic TLD’s, for which applicants who can demonstrate community support can score higher and avoid an auction (e.g. if the City of New York supports a community .nyc application, they beat an open .nyc application)
Confusing similarity with an existing TLD is a disqualification. ICANN has released a draft “similarity scoring” tool.
Trademarks are subject to a “use” requirement. “Paper trademark registrations” which do not represent a brand substantially used in connection with actual goods/services, do not qualify. ICANN has at least finally figured out those games.
Finally, on names which raise issues of “morality and public order”, there will be an opportunity for the Government Advisory Committee and/or constituent governments to provide non-binding “advice” on offensive names. IMHO, nobody is going to drop $185K on an application for something like “.god”, which is likely to be universally recognized as contentious.
It is a complete unknown how many applications there might be. However, ICANN has implied that there will be a hard limit of no more than a few hundred per year. There is utterly nothing I have found which suggests how those would be queued. So, if there are, say 2,000 applications, 800 approvals, and a rollout threshold of 200 per year, one might imagine that “who gets to be first in line” would be a touchy subject.
@ MHB
Thanks for that statement. I would like to keep the thread on topic.
I think everyone has grown tired of Robert’s thread hijacking.
Brad
@MHB
What the hell !! Now you want to censor what people can say and discuss.
That’s a hell of a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line ? heh
In any event, this is a HELL of a story for imagination and creativity.
OHHHH
I have such good ideas for my new domain names. How about James.Seattle ? or James.NY or James.NYC
.com value has just dropped by 50% today.
Robert
“”Where do you draw the line ? “”
I just drew it
@ John
Thanks for answering those questions. My only issue is that answers in a book don’t always apply to real world issues.
I think there are going to be some major legal issues with the awarding and usage of generic keyword extensions.
Another major issue is confusingly similar extensions.
.CON should not be able to exit, or any other obvious squatting extensions.
.USA should not be able to exists where there is already a .US ccTLD.
I think there is a way this could be implemented fairly, but I have no faith in ICANN.
Brad
You know, one thing you must consider is that there are a finite money that people have when it comes to buying domain names.
Therefore, if I and others are buying other extension domain names, then naturally I and others will be buying less .com names.
And through this logic and proof, tells me and you that .com value will drop considerably at least 50% today.
I feel sorry for that guy that has 270,000 .com domains. His site is like asking $17457 for rocketbottle.com
who is going to pay that kind of price when they can get rocketbottle.nyc for $10.
@ Robert
“You know, one thing you must consider is that there are a finite money that people have when it comes to buying domain names.
Therefore, if I and others are buying other extension domain names, then naturally I and others will be buying less .com names.”
New extensions bring in new investors and new money. That doesn’t mean these people would have invested in .COM
Plenty of new investors came in with .MOBI, lost a fortune, and left. It happens with virtually every new extension.
.COM is like premium land on the beach. Building a bunch of marginal suburbs (new extensions) does not lower that value and appeal.
Brad
@Robert Cline:
Mark my words: You couldn’t be more wrong.
@ Robert
“I feel sorry for that guy that has 270,000 .com domains. His site is like asking $17457 for rocketbottle.com”
Yeah, and I sorry for Michael Berkens. He only owns tens of thousands of premium .COM domains. LOL
Brad
.com value has just dropped by 50% today.
////////////////
The vote was expected to be passed, so why would that be the case?
robert –
is it possible that you believe there are not any more reg fee opportunities in .com? if you do, you are among many, many other people who believe the same. but i think this is a mistaken belief. i’ve seen this so many times by people online. lashing out because they believe “all the good names are taken”. they never present any solid evidence, and rarely even anecdotes, to support their assertion. it is simply not true. i’m not sure if that’s your belief. but if it is, you need to get rid of that thinking. there are opportunities. but if you think along the lines of “all the good names are taken” and let emotion get in the way you will not see them.
.co is not the answer
that registry has made a fortune on people’s broken dreams.
many people on this forum do not want to see you or any other domainer fail miserably. they’re trying to help you.
Some .coms will be hit harder than others. The perception that .com is the only prestigious place to be may be weakened by .brands and .community TLDs. So far new TLDs have been a ragtag bunch but the firepower coming at .com in two years time will be much more concerted.
The .coms at greatest risk are those that compete against community TLDs. Will people feel that they should support, and feel more at home at, a community TLD backed by community leaders, rather than .com.
Maybe once the TLDs arrive some good things will happen, but in the meantime there is tremendous uncertainty. Those who had hoped to develop in a field that will be claimed by a community TLD may feel themselves a little hard done by.
@David J Castello These new city gTLDs will be the ccTLDs for the US that .US should have been. They will be the ones to watch closely as they may share the same development dynamics as the strong ccTLDs. The level of development in ccTLDs tends to be higher than that of the gTLDs, especially the non-core gTLDs (the gTLDs outside of COM/NET/ORG). What a lot of .COM focused people forget is that ccTLDs are local and part of the community. People in countries with strong ccTLDs don’t have to remember their ccTLD extension because it is part of their identity. Thus the .COM certainties of generics being category killers don’t apply in the same way. People remember ccTLD websites in the same way that they remember their local shops and bars. Because they are effectively smaller markets, the volume of type-in traffic may be lower too and this can have an effect on the domain prices. What could develop is a global cityname.com market and a local .cityname market. The cityname.com could see its traffic levels fall if it fails to innovate.
@MHB
“According to a chart posted in the Board meeting room, it looks like no new gTLD’s will be operational until November 2013.”
2013? Is that correct?
Here it says Nov 2012:
domainincite.com/infographic-the-approved-new-gtlds-timeline/
If there’s any existing ship that might benefit from the rising tide (flood) of new TLDs and ‘dynamic identity’ to the right of the dot, it’s probably thus far under-utilized .us, but probably not enough to dive head first into them.
I really don’t think any of this dilutes .com’s preeminence in the United States (in my lifetime, anyway)
It all boils down to marketing dollars and the macro picture. If suddenly, there is a huge rush to vanity corporate TLDs, everyone has to have one and they start advertising them in a big way, that might make for an interesting ballgame, but I wouldn’t start dumping premier .com’s just yet.
Here’s the Forbes Global 2000
http://www.forbes.com/global2000/list
What they do will determine how this plays out.
Not what domainers do with their wordpress splogs or what they talk about in blog comments. I’m still totally betting on .com.
Joe
Your reading the chart wrong, look under November 2012, with the line to the right.
Planned: Publish Initial Evaluation Results in November 2012.
Then all the rest takes place
Here are the big winners from this:
.com
.net
.co
.de
and a few other ccTLDs. The idea of ‘success’ in extensions comes down to branding. .com has been the most well branded and therefore has the most to gain, along with .net. .CO somehow had perfect timing in all this and my guess is they made a very shrewd calculation.They also have won big because their rollout is a very tough act to follow. .co is truly the exception with all these new extensions. There is bound to be one or two amongst thousands.
@Brad
Real estate analogies you make are dead on. Malibu is malibu and the Arctic is the Arctic.
@Robert
.nyc will still require ‘branding’. Not everyone knows .nyc as a ‘commercial’ brand. You won’t be getting much bang for your buck with .nyc and if you do, it would have to at least beat what .co has done. .co is a rarity. Tonnes of money for branding behind it. I just don’t see it happening in .nyc. .LA has been around a while and we haven’t seen it.
BTW, .com values will only be increasing with this announcement. You of all people should be happy about that because other successful extensions like .co also stand to benefit. I hope next month that your pocket book can match your ‘enthusiasm’. The words ‘cautious optimism’ comes to mind.
Silly to argue that .com values rise… Perhaps some won’t be much affected but let’s ask whether the domain uk.com is worth more or less as a result of .uk?
Undboutedly less – for one thing .co.uk makes .uk.com much less useful.
Also, uk.com could have been a great domain for uk news or a community. To me it now looks slightly redundant.
If the new gTLD program is successful people are going to be presented with so many choices that no one is going to pay thousands of dollars for just one single second level domain in any given TLD regardless of whether its old or new unless it has already been developed into a business that is producing a lot of revenue, and then it is not the domain that they are buying anymore, but more like the business that is built on that domain. I predict that no single second level domain in any given TLD is going to sell for more than 50k in the future unless it’s already built into a business.
–
.coke
.nyc
.anything
Are typos of
Coke.com
Nyc.com
Anything.com
IMO it’s incorrect to call them gTLDs, especially when it’s a geographic keyword. An even if it’s a commercial keyword, what if the company that runs it decides to keep it for private use? Shouldn’t gTLDs be freely registrable by anyone (unlike sponsored TLDs)?
“Brad,
They will of course profit. Registrars will profit and perhaps most registries will profit. Overall domainers will lose in my view. They are the opposite side of the equation. There will be a wealth transfer from domainers to the three parties previously mentioned.”
—————————–
True, Its a millionaires playground designed to create more money at the cost of everyone else, whether that be individuals, businesses and of course, domainers….they’re not fussy where it comes from.
The main winners will be ICONN, the registrars and the market places like sedo, afternic and the drop shops who earn their commissions.
There’s nothing wrong with these people making money but when they talk about level playing fields, creating wonderful communities, open opportunities for all and supplying a need etc they are talking out their ass.
.CO is for the registrar and so will all the other .whatevers
Type the following into google search (with quotes) and then go through the first few dozen pages of the results…pretty clear who’s likely to be making the money.
———————————————–
“A Premium Domain Name is a high value web address that has been reserved by the .CO Registry for future sale or auction.”
————————————————
A little taster:
Thailand.co
England.co
UnitedKingdom.co
Russia.co
Spain.co
Italy.co
Cyprus.co
Ireland.co
Austria.co
Latvia.co
NewYork.co
Hungary.co
Greece.co
NY.co
NewYork.co
Egypt.co
Norway.co
Sydney.co
Switzerland.co
Germany.co
Berlin.co
Poland.co
France.co
Portugal.co
Belgium.co
Jamaica.co
LosAngeles.co
Washington.co
…get the picture 😉
——————————————-
“Yes, it was Pandora’s Box. It should never have been opened. Gonna be a lawyer’s dream. ”
Pandora’s Pox more like it – Happy Hunting Folks 🙂
It is not so much Pandora’s Box as the Tower of Babel.
.jobs, .travel, .name have gone no where. What makes anyone think all the new TLDs will fair any better. Most new extensions will have limited applicability. BuyMeA.Coke. OK: But GirlsShoes.Coke!? Makes no sense. There exist only four comprehensive domain extensions for commercial endeavours: com, .co, .net and .de. I don’t see them weakening with the increase in extensions. If anything, they will be loved even more.
There exist only four comprehensive domain extensions for commercial endeavours: com, .co, .net and .de.
///////////
Th .co crack smoke is certainly getting thick in here.
@Snoopy
MMMM….Crack…
Having .anything in gTLD market is very expensive cost to protect the companies branding.
For example HILTON HOTEL. The company has to own many extensions versions just to secure and protect HILTON trademarks.
Hilton will have to buy HiltonHotel.com to start with.
Then, to buy more names such as,
hiltonhotel.hilton
sydneyhilton.hilton
sydney.hilton
japan.hilton
hilton.hotel
hiltonsydney.hotel
hiltonindia.hotel
Paris.hilton
ParisHilton.Paris ( who’s is entitle to own this domain? Paris Hilton or Hilton Hotel?)
Celebrity.ParisHilton
ParisHilton.celebrity
etc…Soooo Confusing…
What I mean is, all major companies have to buy more domain names and there are very complicated decision as how and what’s the best way to brand the company’s trademark.
It all comes down to expensive exercise….
EM, jobs, .travel, museum, areo have gone no where since there are so many restrictions. Any barrier in the registration process makes the TLD less popular.
Will it be as huge as the mainstream media is telling us ? I doubt it.
This is intresting reading :
http://www.circleid.com/posts/some_considerations_for_new_tld_operators_from_a_registrar_perspective/
I think Mr Neylon’s observations mightbe dead on.
@Snoopy
It’s not crack smoke, it’s just promoters and marketers. The same ones over and over again who think no one notices them. It’s borderline hilarious.
Anyway, I’ll be staying far far away from anything not .COM for now on.
We’re going further, we are delisting the new TLD’s. Not going to be worth much once more administrators and organizations uneasy with the strange direction ICANN is taking, once the packets wont resolve properly in many places.
Also, contact your organization to find out if they have representation within the standards bodies, if so, we suggest advocating for the replacement of ICANN as registry administrator, replacing them with the ITU.
Joe
“what if the company that runs it decides to keep it for private use? ”
They can do that
em
“.jobs, .travel, .name have gone no where. What makes anyone think all the new TLDs will fair any better.””
.jobs and .travel are sTLD’s meaning they were restricted.
In 25 years since the 1st domain was registered 21 extensions are in existence.
I have said it before and will say it again, there is no way of knowing what will happen when the number of extensions go from 21 to 521 in one year.
Every extension, brand and word to the right of the dot, will teach slowly but still teach the public that what they type on the right side of the dot is going to be as important as what they type on the left side.
Its not an overnight process but its one that’s going to get huge press coverage as it did and continues to do today and over a period of years, a true change of navigation patterns could change and probably will change
Ravy
Hilton can just apply for .hilton and keep the extension for it’s self.
They don’t have to pay any registration fees
MHB, since you apparently are an advocate for this unimaginably insane changes – could you explain the rationale for handing over control of the internet to spammers and phishers?
Now, you are allowing anyone anywhere with 185,000 US dollars to register their own TLD. New spam domains will pop up faster than blacklists can be updated for relays.
Could you explain how this plan in any way has controls to mitigate this problem?
Why has ICANN been consistently making decisions against the public interest? The reason is obvious — it has been captured by the registries and registrars, who only care about selling more and more domain names, even if they are not needed (i.e. “defensive registrations”). They don’t care about confusing users or making it harder to navigate the internet.
John
“”You are allowing anyone anywhere with 185,000 US dollars to register their own TLD”
Of course I’m not allowing or disallowing anyone, don’t have the power.
I see, and I saw this dramatic change in the Internet coming and wrote about it often and decided that I need to have a stake in the next 25 years of the internet.
Like anything else you can stop progress because of possible bad actors.
You can’t say we are never going to issue another drivers license because some people can’t drive and are going to cause accidents.
There are a TONS of rules and regulations, requirements, financial requirements, background checks, etc , etc.
Its a BIG money deal with a TON of paperwork.
Spam phishing, fraud, etc, have existed since the start of the net, criminal conduct goes back to the bible.
There are a lot of rules in place to stop the spread of this to the new gTLD’s including the URS under which domains can be taken down quickly and cheaply.
So if a bad actor wants to do bad things they have plenty of choices under the existing extensions
“You can’t say we are never going to issue another drivers license because some people can’t drive and are going to cause accidents.”
This analogy fails from many angles. An individual person does not pay 185,000$ for a ‘premium’ license that allows them to then issue licenses to their friends without any other legal check.
Yet that is exactly what setting up private parallel registries does.
Mark my words, in your hubris you have overstepped your boundaries, registrars. As I state, many people will delist these new TLD’s entirely rather than deal with the enormous security headache they cause. This will cause the value of these domains to hover somewhere between ‘worthless’ and ‘free’.
You cannot sidestep these problems saying this is innovation. You know well that this is not innovation – we could have had this years ago, but sensible people were in charge. Now you have pointy heads only interested in selling more domains.
Mark my words, this is the beginning of the end for ICANN.
John
Its a big world so you can make generalizations what people and governments do or don’t do.
Here in Singapore people pay $65K for a license plate for 10 years.
I know its unheard of in the US
Here they regulate the number of cars on the road by limiting the number of cars.
So like a liquor license in the US there is a certain number issue and therefore they have a value and a cost.
Back to domains if your sure the new extensions will fail then don’t worry about them, let them fail.
But if you think in a world where Apple tells people to visit them at .Apple and ABC tells people to visit them at .ABC, same with Disney, NBC, IBM, Microsoft and hundreds and hundreds more, navigation patterns can change and ignore them at your own risk
I’m using this forum as advocacy, as you have, for the many MANY like minded administrators, CIO’s and businesspeople who recognize the huge mudfights that will ensue, for instance, when the California Apple Grower’s Association and Apple Inc. both claim .apple
I am letting them know, the way out of this bind (nyuck nyuck) is not only to delist the TLD’s, but pay ICANN back for their enormous hubris and attempted hijack of logical namespace hierarchies.
ICANN has proven with this decision they cannot be trusted to steward the root domain – as unpalatable as it is, I now recommend to all my colleagues that they realign themselves to support ITU taking over the administration of the root domain from ICANN.
Take notice, readers. The decision ICANN is taking us is not where we want to be. A world where it would be nearly impossible to shut down spammers to an order of magnitude harder than it is already. More load on infrastructure, especially mail servers. More individuals being suckered into security threats, more viruses, more namespace to hide in as a ‘bad actor’.
All so ICANN’s brass can pull it a quick cash grab off some new TLD’s.
Don’t even try to defend it – its indefensible and obvious to all of us who work in this industry. There is no innovation here, only the lowest common denominator – marketing people – seeing another way to make easy money.
I don’t know who “John” is, but the quote “Why has ICANN been consistently making decisions against the public interest? The reason is obvious — it has been captured by the registries and registrars, who only care about selling more and more domain names, even if they are not needed (i.e. “defensive registrations”). They don’t care about confusing users or making it harder to navigate the internet.” is copied directly from my comment in the Slashdot story of Friday, i.e. “ICANN To Allow .brandname Top-Level Domains”. Normally, one should attribute the source of comments like that, instead of copying them verbatim.
Of course, I agree with the point made, given it’s my own! 🙂
It deserved better visibility George, and I should have attributed it, though better that it is by full name than GeorgeK.
Apologies for this, as it is only an excerpt of a more fully developed thought, from http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/06/17/202245/ICANN-To-Allow-brandname-Top-Level-Domains
Thanks. I didn’t want anyone to think that I post here under multiple names, e.g. sockpuppet accounts.
Although I may disagree with George I can vouch that he always speaks from the heart, doesn’t play games and tell it like he believes and I respect his opinion.
Likewise, Mike.
Unifiedroot is uniquely positioned to take advantage of this new approach by ICANN:
1) You can start using your company or brand name immediately;
2) You can register specific generic TLDs like .music or .game;
3) You pay a fraction of the cost compared to ICANN;
4) You can register names in non-Latin scripts.
Our lawyers have indicated that companies that register and start using a TLD from Unifiedroot now will be in a favorable position to defend their rights and prevent an identical TLD from being registered with ICANN.
see: full press release on http://www.unifiedroot.com
one of the board members who voted yes for this is the same person who wrote the first “RFC” decades ago.
RFC stands for request for comments.
are “end-users” allowed to comment? we’re all end-users, correct?
end user had a dream last night.
everyone had their own personal IP address. in fact they had blocks of them.
everyone knew how to run BGP and maintained their own personal routing tables. these were no larger than a person’s rolodex. end-to-end connectivity had become reality. people connected only to others who they knew or trusted.
everyone knew how to make a packet of bits and send it. this was no more trouble than stuffing an envelope and licking a stamp.
and everyone’s computer was both a router, a client, a server. in fact no one used those terms anymore.
people met each other first in the real world and then after they trusted each other, they exchanged telephone^W IP numbers and a one-time passprase. in each case, it wasn’t the passphrase that protected them, it was their own intuition formed from their real world relationship.
generally, people had small groups of friends, and many acquaintances. they didn’t give their personal information to strangers or contact strangers randomly, unless they were trying to sell something. (yes, that problem still existed.)
no one really trusted “intelligent” machines, as they were always prone to malfunction, but they still trusted other *people*.
DNS? what’s that? it had been long forgotten as a measure originally designed to account for a growing number of new non-malicious hosts (domain names) coming online, but which later became nothing more than a marketing scam.
everyone now chose their own names and phrases to attach to unique numbers that were too long to memorise. it was personal choice. everyone knew the numbers were what was most important for locating people, books, etc., as they had been for centuries before the “internet”.
the failure of universal naming schemes and of people attempting to impose rules of semantics on society to steer them toward or away from “resources” were a lesson we had learnt over the internet’s early years, beginning with the “DNS” and ending with the internet’s “new gtlds”.
from that experiment we knew that no one could impose limits or control on or over language, as it was constantly evolving and that people were inherently subjective, and therefore unpredictable, in how they “saw the world.”
though briefly deceived into believing names and phrases could be reliable identifiers, we returned to numbers. we realised it was a very sensible path to take; it was a mistake that only some could see.
finacial rewards and self-satisfaction had caused those in control to keep quiet and not expose the weaknesses of their original idea, so as to keep collecting increasingly large paychecks and continued “respect” from their peers.
we had fogiven them for this, but we would not make that mistake again.
then end user woke up. the strange thing is that end user keeps having this same dream.
the beginning of the end of the DNS. it is just a dream?
“…Why has ICANN been consistently making decisions against the public interest? The reason is obvious — it has been captured by the registries and registrars, who only care about selling more and more domain names, even if they are not needed (i.e. “defensive registrations”). They don’t care about confusing users or making it harder to navigate the internet….”
It is a global financial crisis strategy to boost economy that ICANN tries to create employment or try to safeguard their existing jobs by creating new extensions, create new wealth…new employment opportunities…keep the cash flow rolling…keep lawyers busy…so that your sons and daughters get the jobs as well…
@MHB
“Hilton can just apply for .hilton and keep the extension for it’s self.
They don’t have to pay any registration fees”
Agree, for maximum marketing exposure, Hilton still needs to expand market share to reg in other extensions such as:
hilton.hotel
hilton.travel
hilton.resort
hilton.deals
hilton.booking
hilton.dining
hilton.island
hilton.vip
hilton.jobs
It can be very expensive just to reg in other extensions, otherwise hilton will miss out branding exposure in other gTLD eg. .hotel .travel .etc…
@RAYY
“hilton.hotel
hilton.travel
hilton.resort
hilton.deals
hilton.booking
hilton.dining
hilton.island
hilton.vip
hilton.jobs”
You have to put ‘hilton’ on the RIGHT of the dot 🙂
@ McCormac – “It is not so much Pandora’s Box as the Tower of Babel.”
Well said!
Ravy
“”It is a global financial crisis strategy to boost economy that ICANN tries to create employment or try to safeguard their existing jobs by creating new extensions, create new wealth…new employment opportunities…keep the cash flow rolling…keep lawyers busy…so that your sons and daughters get the jobs as well..””
Good point
We are in the worse economy since the great depression, there are tens of millions out of work some being out of work for years now.
This program is in fact going to create an new industry with a lot of nice paying jobs and billions in revenue produced, not the worst thing.
Ravy
“Hilton can just apply for .hilton and keep the extension for it’s self.
They don’t have to pay any registration fees”
Agree, for maximum marketing exposure, Hilton still needs to expand market share to reg in other extensions such as:
hilton.hotel
hilton.travel
hilton.resort
hilton.deals
hilton.booking
hilton.dining
hilton.island
hilton.vip
hilton.jobs”
Disagree.
Its up to hilton to let people know anything the need regarding hilton can be found on .hilton and they set up all these subdomains like you suggest ending in hilton, there will be hundreds of other brands doing the same.
Consumer behavior will not change in a day or a year but it can be changed.
Did anyone think 5 years ago that they would be spending 8 hours a day on a site telling everyone they know and some they don’t everything they are doing or thinking or sending pictures of the food they are eating.
No
Patterns are changeable and do in fact change.
Its one thing for 1 new extension to get a foothold and change behavior but image when 500 brands, cities and other extensions are marketing this shift to the right of the dot at once.
Hilton
.whatever is just a money grab.
imho the real sleeper is the fact that over half of the people on the internet don’t speak English at all or very little. If Icann manages to finally include pure idn.idn for .com and .net Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, etc. internet users will be able to surf, type and develop sites in their native languages!! Then the internet will be truly inclusive for everyone and HUGE investment opportunities will exist for a whole new generation of investors in almost every language.
Hurry up already…………
“I think there is a way this could be implemented fairly, but I have no faith in ICANN.”
Well, yes, but that’s a function of being human. ICANN is the ultimate “decision by committee” driven organization. It’s outstandingly easy to criticize outcomes, and mind-numbingly difficult to participate with an aim to inject a little sanity from time to time.
I don’t have much of an opinion on the larger “is this a good idea or bad idea” species of question, but I’ve never been opposed to giving people the freedom to fail. For everyone who thinks new TLD’s are a waste of time, there is someone itching to apply and try to run one. I just don’t see the harm in letting that person have at it.
One might as well say that capitalism is a failure because practically every commercial enterprise eventually fails. Most new companies fail. Now, sure, there may be some oddball institutions that have been around for while (certain banks and insurance companies come to mind). But, really, if you took a snapshot of every company formed in the US since an arbitrary date, say 1950, then how many of them are still around? It’s like saying that basketball is a waste of time because there are a bunch of teams, but only one of them wins the championship.
John
As always well said
“that’s why we play the game”
[when reflecting on an unexpected outcome, ex post facto]
All the new extensions will rather gives more power to .com, .net .org; if you are running any business, people will find it easier to visit you on these forefront extensions.
Though, ICANN will make money from some of these new extensions like the .nyc etc; but I don’t think any one can just think of getting hilton.hilton or coke.coke etc without facing TM problems. One can not find any of these big companies without their TM unregistered. The only problem is with scammers as they can use those extensions to scam people who do not know the difference between extensions and that is the only thing ICANN can be proud of.
These will only cause more commotions everywhere for court to be more active like Rayy.co have said.
My regards to those members among them who refused to vote and especially the one who voted against the issuance.
so we should reg a TM and file anyone who reg name of our TM and get it back easily ?
One thing people also need to realize is, at best, the first new gTLD will not even hit the market until 11/2013.
That is almost 2 1/2 years even in an ideal world. With legal challenges and other issues the reality could be even longer that that, especially for generic terms.
That is a lot of time for the popular extensions to get even more popular.
Brad
An animated look, with a shout out to you Mike.
@RH
Nice video.
@MHB
Congrats on the mention.
Thank you Joe, much appreciated.
You all have interesting points. The internet will definitely change a bit but I would say the .coms are still worth something as it will take awhile to retrain most of us to type something other than .com.
interseting what will be with european union cities??
all EU cities (population +1 million) should have their ext.