When the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) took applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), it reshaped the Internet from a place with a few familiar domain names (.com, .net., and .org) to one with potentially thousands, each with a $185,000 registration fee.
You may think this isn't an issue if you aren't interested in registering for domains. That process takes time. And even filing a protest costs $10,000.
Just as railroads claimed land that eventually brought them money and power, companies are laying claim to the Internet landscape. So far, it's 76 domain names for Amazon, 101 for Google, and 307 for Donuts, which doesn't actually make anything and appears to be setting up shop as a name broker.
Kelly McCarthy called this phenomenon "parking" in TheStreet.
A domain name is registered which includes a popular brand or common typo for that brand (www.buybrandname.com, or www.mybrandname.com), that Web site then displays links either to competitive products or locations where one can purchase products containing the brand name at issue. The domain owner typically receives "pay-per-click" revenue and affiliate marketing fees each time someone lands on the site and clicks on one of the links.
Trademark owners must determine whether their trademark is being used in a site name. You have always needed to do this for .com, .org, et al., but now you must do so for every possible domain -- and consider registering for them, too. Organizations like the Irish domain service Blacknight and Melbourne IT, Australia's oldest domain name registering service, are calling on ICANN to protect trademark holders.
"The new protections introduced by ICANN are not sufficient to avoid the need for organisations with 'high at-risk marks' to pay for defensive registrations for most of the new gTLDs," Melbourne IT told ITWire. "If we assume an organisation will need a defensive registration in 1,000 new gTLDs, at an average cost of $100 per year, this would equate to a cost of $100,000 per mark per year."
If you have a Website, you must see whether someone has registered a gTLD that might make it difficult for customers to find you. Say you're Sony. If there's now a Sony.USA, a Sony.Japan, a Sony.Products, a Sony.DVD, and so on, how do customers know which of these sites belong to Sony and which are imitators? You also need to determine whether a competitor has created disparaging sites, such as Sony.Stinks.
What about your industry or vertical? You'll probably want to figure out whether someone controls an industry domain such as .candy, .shoes, .jeans, or .cars. Imagine if Amazon or Barnes & Noble owned .books, if eBay or Amazon had the rights to .deal, or if Wal-Mart or Sears bought .bargain.
There are steps enterprises and midsized organizations can take. ICANN has published a list of all the requested extensions, and you can get more information here about each application.
It's too late to make a comment on the process, but you can file objections to specific domains. ICANN began accepting objections in June. A formal deadline for filing them has not been set, although the period for objections was scheduled to last for "approximately seven months." You can view others' objections -- for example, the Saudi government has objected to 163 gTLDs having to do with sex or alcohol. Independent evaluators will judge each objection.
We've seen companies buy patents, not to make products, but to prevent other companies from manufacturing them or to shake them down for licensing fees. I'd bet dollars to Donuts that this will happen with the expanded Internet world of gTLDs, too.
Sharon Fisher, @slfisher, is a veteran computer journalist who has been on staff at InfoWorld, CommunicationsWeek, and Computerworld. Her freelance work has appeared in numerous publications and online sites.
You're absolutely right -- this is going to turn into a nightmare for most small or mid-sized businesses. I speak from experience, as I had to do the registrations for a moderately sized media company that had just acquired an internationally-known brand when the .xxx TLD opened up. We had to grab it so somebody else didn't, and it was neither cheap or easy (and yes, the joke is obvious, so I'll ignore it). There are times when you wish things wouldn't change, but nothing ever stays the same. Even rock is worn away by wind and water over time. Imagine how something with no real substance will respond to the sands of time.
mhhfive - I don't know if dotcoms will continue to be tops. Everything is temporary.
If ICANN can pull this off, I certainly can see value to restoring meaning to TLDs. 20 years ago, if a domain ended in .com or .org, it meant something. Still does with .mil and .gov, and mostly with .edu.
That's the vision that ICANN has: That you'll one day see a domain ending in, say, .nyc, and know that it's for some organization or entity or person in New York City.
It's a good vision. The question is whether ICANN can execute it.
Agreed. ICANN seems to be able to print money with the ability to sell TLDs at will. These new domains are probably the most valuable "virtual goods" that exist, and it seems crazy that they're limited in such arbitrary ways. (Who came up with their $185K price tag?)
Dotcoms will probably continue to be the most popular domains, but maybe we'll have easier to remember URLs in the near future?
That's another thing that's been coming up; some other countries are upset that the U.S. essentially controls ICANN and there's a movement to change that. That should be interesting.
Everybody wants a .com domain, and nations license out their national domains for revenue.
Which brings up another point... what nation's laws will control the new domains? Recently, for example, Kim Dotcom announced that he was rebuilding MegaUpload under the me.ga domain; Gabon Telecom (presumably responding to the wishes of its owners and the Gabon government) revoked the domain. For good or bad, how would such policing work when there are thousands, rather than just dozens, of top-level domains available?
First of all, congrats on your first blog, Sharon!
Secondly, IMHO, these new top-level domains strike me as little more than a blatant, reprehensible way for ICANN to extort millions of dollars by striking fear of competitors, pornographers, and other would-be brand damagers into the hearts of organizations and brands.
Maybe I'm a cynic, but cynics are sometimes right.
slfisher - I'm not saying get rid of domains. I'm saying get rid of TLDs.
Second, we need domains for the same reason we need indices and area codes and exchanges and country codes and so on -- to help determine who "belongs" to who and to make them easier to remember by having some sort of structure.
Which the current system does not do. Everybody wants a .com domain, and nations license out their national domains for revenue. For example, I don't know if any of the services using the .ly TLD are actully based in Libya. Bit.ly sure isn't.
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The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
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