Who will rule new addresses?

[imadam]

The pillar of the basic Web address — the trusty .com domain — is about to face vast new competition that will dramatically transform the Web as we know it. New websites, with more subject-specific, sometimes controversial suffixes, will soon populate the online galaxy, such as .eco, .love, .god, .sport, .gay or .kurd.

This massive expansion to the Internet's domain name system will either make the Web more intuitive or create more cluttered, maddening experiences. No one knows yet. But an industry of Web wildcatters is racing to grab these potentially lucrative territories with addresses that are bound to provoke.

Who gets to run .abortion Web sites — people who support abortion rights or those who don't? Which individual or mosque can run the .islam or .muhammad sites? Can the Ku Klux Klan own .nazi on free-speech grounds, or will a Jewish organization run the domain and permit only educational websites?

The decisions will come down to a little-known nonprofit based in Marina del Rey, Calif., whose international board of directors approved the expansion in 2008 but has been stuck debating how best to run the program before launching it. Now, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is on the cusp of completing those talks and will soon solicit applications from companies and governments that want to propose and operate the new addresses.

This week, hundreds of investors, consultants and entrepreneurs are expected to converge in San Francisco for the first “.nxt” conference, a three-day affair featuring seminars on ICANN's complicated application guidelines.

These online territories are hardly free. The price tag to apply is $185,000, a cost that ensures only well-financed organizations operate the domains, according to critics. (Rejectees get some of the application fee returned.) That's on top of the $25,000 annual fee domain operators have to pay ICANN.

Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, a grass-roots firm in Los Angeles, alleges that the new domains are designed purely to make money for ICANN and the companies that control the domains. The new Web addresses, he added, will only mean more aggravation for trademark holders and confusion for the average Internet user

Peter Dengate Thrush, chair of the ICANN board of directors, argued that the high application fee is based on the nonprofit's bet that it's going to get sued, and to protect against cybersquatters or other organizations ill equipped to manage an entire domain of hundreds, if not thousands, of Web sites. “Our job is to protect competition and give extra choices for consumers and entrepreneurs,” Thrush said.

Many organizations are competing for the same domain names, in disputes that often will be settled by an ICANN-sponsored auction or by an ICANN board decision. Two companies vying for the environmentally friendly .eco domain have competing endorsements: one from a nonprofit chaired by former Vice President Al Gore; the other from a group founded by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Internet has 21 generic domains such as .com, .net., .edu or .org and hundreds of others for countries, such as .de for Germany. The most prevalent generic domains are .com and .net.

Since 2000, ICANN has expanded the number of “generic top-level domains” only twice, and in tiny doses to such domains as .biz, .jobs and .museum. Those domains have yet to attract huge audiences.

But many entrepreneurs expect the new expansion of Web addresses — the first of which won't go live until early 2012 — to catch on with users and make money.

Many budding domain operators expect to earn millions of dollars, according to Kieren McCarthy, a former ICANN general manager who is organizing next week's conference in San Francisco.

Sourced from: Courier Journal

 

[Sparhawke]

It is bad enough trying to get people to remember one extension, let alone thousands of new extensions....

 

[imadam]

It is bad enough trying to get people to remember one extension, let alone thousands of new extensions....

Completely agree with you here!

 

[altb]

I don't see this model being sustainable politically, all these crap commercial tlds.. they might as well be free for everyone

I am pretty sure that one day someone important will to back up alternative DNS roots such as Opennic ( whether google, group of ISPs, UN, EU, who knows..)

 

[Kate]

The pillar of the basic Web address — the trusty .com domain — is about to face vast new competition that will dramatically transform the Web as we know it.

Actually .com will face virtually no competition at all because it's established. It is the poorer extensions and alternative TLDs that will come under pressure.

 

[Archangel]

I doubt .com will ever be truly challenged and these other vanity extensions will be obscure and developed very little. There will be 5,000 investors for every developer and the vast majority will never be used as anything more than portfolio material. These really won't change much of anything, just a ripple (except things like .gay, which is near guaranteed to fail and will only be known from the controversy and hate it'll bring to the net).

 

[bmugford]

I don't think new extensions pose any threat to the Big 3 (COM/NET/ORG) or good ccTLD.

Brad

 

[polyromcom]

Agree that these pose little threat to current domains. Still I see an opportunity for a company to establish an extension and develop some very prominent properties.

Seems like a potentially very lucrative platform for some high $ developers. But again, doubt that it will pose any threat to existing players. .Com will be further cemented as the gold standard.

Thanks for the original post. Should be interesting to see what comes out the meetings.

 

[eyedomainous]

I think major industries will realize, or quickly learn, to stick with the established mass market extensions.

I also think the expansion will be most successful as "Extended Family" Extensions for "Fan Boys" of celebrities and/or products.

For politicians, a .Obama or .Palin, ect., becomes a built-in fund raising machine, personal branded (sometimes exclusive) content pub house, a post-public service income generating endorsement magnet, and will become the (politician's) 'name' legacy bearer, redefining the (political) name library.

Hollywood and "Rock Star" names are a no brainer. Teenage girls would be scooping up betty.beiber right now.

And Apple 'fan boys' woulda "lined-up" to reg johnny.ipad. Sports stars will see a name extensions as a way to generate income over a lifetime, as well as a THE name marker for their legacy.

The key here is selling the extension like its a ticket to the game, or a seat at the table. This turns the name reg into an annual pay-per-view domain... and changes the web's "free economy".

Whatever the name the benefit, beyond 'the identity', will be the privilege of a more intimate access -with exclusive, or first serve, content.

And then there's the merchandising... (oh my!)

Personally, I think it all could be very good for domainers... as the after market activity will be seen as a key indicator, or poll, on celebrity.

 

[Domagon]

If the vanity TLD saga gets too controversial, it could rapidly lead to ICANN being dissolved / folded into the United Nations bureaucracy.

And the introduction of vanity TLDs also raises other political issues in addition to the free speech and control ones...

There's the issue of standardization, if ICANN becomes non-U.S.-centric (as of now, ICANN is under the U.S. Dept of Commerce).

If ICANN becomes multinational / part of the U.N, expect a strong push for the U.S. to vacate .MIL and .GOV and move all domains from those TLDs to within .US (ie. mil.us and gov.us).

If ICANN had any sense, they'd stop now with this, but then again, organizations often tend to grow larger and, more to the point, it's highly likely there are huge conflicts of financial interest between ICANN and major registry operators, such as VeriSign and Neustar, along with major registrars, such as GoDaddy and eNom, seeking TLD expansion for business growth.

In short, ICANN is opening a huge can of worms with vanity TLDs.

Ron

 

[DU]

I think you'll see an entirely new topology start to appear. The way the internet works at the base level - bits and bytes - won't change but the way you access sites from a data standpoint will be turned on its head. You won't see the same cross cloud, cross network, all-knowing-search like Google.com {they may still organize the search for independent groups}

The new thrust behind these TLDs will focus on ACCESS and SECURITY and DATA and not just be a focus on a web address.

To make the real estate analogy that everyone loves. Think about the difference between living downtown and in gated communities. Think about living in a hotel and living in the scientology building.

 

[Archangel]

Do we have to? I don't wanna picture Tom Cruise decimating my couch...

Think about living in a hotel and living in the scientology building.

 

[altb]

If ICANN had any sense, they'd stop now with this, but then again, organizations often tend to grow larger and, more to the point, it's highly likely there are huge conflicts of financial interest between ICANN and major registry operators, such as VeriSign and Neustar, along with major registrars, such as GoDaddy and eNom, seeking TLD expansion for business growth.

In short, ICANN is opening a huge can of worms with vanity TLDs.

Couldn't agree more. Entropy is eroding ICANN's monopoly.

If this goes on, more people will figure out that the internet is really free, including domain names and that nothing obliges you to pay ICANN to get a shit extension. Or that you don't have to buy every possible shit extension to protect your company name in a system where there is an infinity of extensions.

What will happen when there is lots of good non-commercial content on those webpages that use alternative DNS root servers? Well webmasters will link to them basically. Google and others will be tempted to index them and link to them (don't they have a free DNS service?? ) and some ISPs will be tempted to offer them directly from their DNS servers..