Forbes Covers Fresh Top Level Domain Names
Forbes Magazine covers fresh TLD launch, but has a few inaccuracies.
The maintstream media has paid cursory attention to ICANN’s opening of the top level domain name landscape. A fresh article in the November 17 issue of Forbes (available now online) covers the topic.
A couple observations: First, the article has many inaccuracies. Second, there’s common ground between domainers and Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse.
Inaccuracies
I find many of the statements in the article misleading or inaccurate.
“The current plan of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names & Numbers, approved in June, is to allow custom domain names to anyone who asks for one. Addresses ending in com or org will be passé. By the middle of next year applicants will be able to register everything from “.soup” to “.nuts.””
First, I think we can all agree that com will not be passé. Second, this seems to imply that anyone can register a top level domain. This isn’t true. There will be a (hopefully) strict review process to ensure that only qualified organizations get TLDs.
“Under the current system it costs a complainant $1,300 to file a claim of trademark infringement with an Icann-approved arbitrator.”
This is sort of true, if you file for one or two domains at National Arbitration Forum. WIPO costs $1500. But the bigger cost is legal fees. I’m sure trademark attorneys would point out that the true cost of fighting cybersquatting is more than $1300 per domain.
“Icann states that it has by now spent $10 million on software that would spot squatters.”
I think the author is confused here. ICANN has spent over $10 million preparing for the launch of fresh TLDs. Not on software to spot squatters.
Common Ground with CADNA
Often times organizations that are generally at odds with each other end up on the same side of the table on a particular topic. Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, which frequently spews out made up numbers regarding cybercrime and would like to group “domainers” with “cybersquatters”, could actually be an advocate for domainers’ interests.
CADNA is worried regarding the cost of fighting against cybersquatting and typosquatting on 56+4
second level domains across hundreds of fresh top level domains. They have good reason to worry regarding this.
Many domainers I’ve talked to are generally opposed to the fresh TLDs. They believe that traffic to .com domains will increase due to user confusion, but they also believe the fresh TLDs could hurt the stability of the internet. Policies made for fresh TLDs (particularly geo domains and “morality”) might creep into existing TLDs. There are a lot of unanswered questions, but the fresh TLDs and their policies could hurt existing ones in the long run.
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