New gTLD’s – Just Remakes of 80′s Pop Songs?

“All this has happened before, and all this will happen again“. – Battlestar Galactica (Pythia).

Back in 2001, a company called New.net published a piece of software (.dll file) which enabled people to resolve domain extensions such as .xxx .law .kids and .church and many others. They also teamed up with ISP’s to provide the service. Check it out yourself at archive.org (and before you ask, it wasn’t me who did the johnson.family that’s in the middle of the page).

In any case, these “domains” were not real TLD’s, as we know them today. Many people called them subdomains or an “alternative DNS root”. This wasn’t the first time that these extensions appeared either; Eugene Kashpureff ran Alternic in the mid 90′s, and directly challenged Internic. That was actually fun to watch. Alternic also had .xxx too.

Here are a few extensions that New.Net were marketing back then:

agent
arts
auction
chat
church
club
family
free
game
gmbh
golf
hola
inc
kids
law
llc
llp
love
ltd
med
mp3
school
scifi
shop
soc
sport
tech
travel
video
xxx

Why is this relevant today? The ICANN board meets to discuss .XXX. Will they approve it after all these years? I’m guessing they will. This whole debate has gone on long enough.

Got some new ideas for a gTLD?

ICANN: Just Add Sugar, Can Of Paint, High Gloss = Ohh Sparkly Whitewash

I wanted to draw your attention to ICANNs “truly independent economic study” of the proposed new TLD’s.

For those reading this, we are going to play a game. When you see the word “independent”, substitute that for the words “seriously conflicted, ICANN sponsored propaganda, marketing piece”. Ok, lets go….

ICANN allegedly commissioned these two independent reports:

• Impact of New gTLDs on Consumer Welfare
• Price Caps for New gTLD Internet Registries

Based on feedback from the whole world, ICANN allegedly went back and asked the person who wrote the reports to “supplement his work”.  At this point, lets look at part of some feedback given by the European-American Business Council who represent 65 US and European-based global companies.

ICANN should re-evaluate the current plan for new gTLDs, at least insofar as it involves the award of any new gTLDs that comprise trademarks.

In particular, ICANN should pay for a truly independent economic study of the market (instead of commissioning an economic advocacy paper designed to support its wish to rollout new TLDs).

In view of this market analysis, it could be determined whether the goal of the scheme is proportionate to the potential effects of new TLDs on consumers and business owners.

In addition, such an analysis may show that a gTLD expansion (if any) should be limited until adequate, low or no cost safeguards are in place to protect consumers, businesses, and brand owners from brand abuse, confusion and cyber fraud threats.

I’m pretty sure that I don’t have to look too deep into my crystal ball to see what’s going to happen here. It walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…. OMG, you’ll never guess what!

Maybe I’m being overly critical? What do you think?

Thanks to the original post made by Andrew Allemann that inspired me to write this.

ICANN To Spend $1M On Ads – Reports $4.7M Investment Loss

ICANN is apparently embarking on a million dollar campaign to convince us to buy their story on generic domains. Its reported that the campaign will start in Q4 2009 with a series of announcements and PR.

The Australian is reporting that Dr Twomey said an independent panel would be appointed to decide who would be allowed to register a disputed domain, but no details were available about who might be on it. I’m sure its going to be “fair and balanced” – just like Fox news.

Best of luck to the ICANN Executive who are no doubt practicing their Jedi mind tricks – “these arent the domains droids your looking for”.

What do you think? Is $1million a waste of funds? After all, its 5,000,000 ICANN .20 cent fees for a .com!

Add this to the “Realized and unrealized investment losses of $4.7 mil thru year to date” which was very quietly disclosed in the unaudited financial results. Click on the down arrow on the left hand side of the graph and you will see a little pop-up that mentions this little gem!

Who in ICANN is being made accountable for this investment loss?

Should Scotland Have Its Own TLD?

Ahh Scotland. The top bit of that big island known as the UK. You know the place: William Wallace, Braveheart, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Well it appears that they are a little bit irritated by “sharing” .uk and now they want their own TLD. Hmmm.. cant think of any reason why a Scotsman wouldn’t like the English.

Apparently the First Minister Alex Salmond visited the Spanish region of Catalonia and found this thing called the Internet. It turns out that Catalonia has .cat and so he wants .sco – just don’t tell him about SCO Unix. By the way – pussy.cat is taken.

“It is not only for Scots who live in Scotland but for our extensive Diaspora and it will be particularly appropriate for a bid to be made during the 2009 Year of Homecoming” Salmond said. I’m wondering if that means that all the Scots are leaving us to go home now its the new year?

It might come as no surprise that there is strong support for dot scot; according to the UK Press Association “Two government surveys showed support among Scots organisations running at 58% and in an international poll, the figure rose to 82%”. Scotland’s governing party, the SNP has got together a working group and is preparing for the submission to ICANN (assuming .anything-goes).

Word also has it that Groundskeeper Willie wants bigwillie.scot. So what do you think? Should Scotland have it’s own TLD or be made to share with those lovely English folk for a little while longer?

Commerce Dept Criticizes ICANN On New TLDs

In a letter sent to ICANN last week, Meredith Baker, the head of the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration stated that is not clear “whether the potential consumer benefits outweigh the potential costs“.

It also goes on to say that “ICANN needs to ensure that the plan would not jeopardize the stability and security of the Internet addressing system.”

Finally, we have someone in the Commerce Department who can see this obvious fundamental problems with what ICANN is proposing. Lets hope this letter is the precursor to stopping this really stupid idea. Keep up the good work Meredith.

More information: USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Arizona Daily Star, The Salt Lake Tribune, Las Vegas Sun.