Berlin Trying For Its Own TLD

[user-7256]

Source: http://www.domaining.ws/tlds/2005/12/17/berlin-germany-trying-for-its-own-tld

Businessman Dirk Krischenowski is bidding to make his city the first ever with its own TLD.

Krischenowski says, “It’s spelled the same in both English and German, and has no accents over its letters.” This is an advantage since Berlin is regarded as part of the continent’s identity. “It would be great for tourism,” he says.

ICANN states that creation of geographical TLDs must be supported by applicable government agencies. Lawyers experienced in the domain name TLD proposal business declare this isn’t easy. Getting it to pass government approval is fairly easy, but getting past the fickle ICANN board is extremely tricky.

Michael Froomkin, a lawyer familiar with these types of cases, says, “It’s not the people with the best ideas, but those with close ties to ICANN staff and board members who get their ideas approved.” He later says, “The insiders always win.”

 

[zaros64]

woah.. that would be cool.. imagine like new york and stuff though.. they would be weird!

yourname.ny etc,etc

 

[wasistdas]

I dont think it will work. I think that a new ccTLD can be done only by national groups who dont have their own country like Tibetian, Maori, Lemki, Bashkirians, Tatars, etc. But not cities. Well, bigbigbig money can do whatever, though

 

[user-7256]

Yeah, and actually, NYC was considering a .nyc TLD...

 

[Smith]

I think this is the wrong way to go. They are trying to sell it as a solution to local search, really though, all I think they will end up doing is confusing a lot of people and wasting a lot of money while further diluting the web with random extensions.

Hopefully ICANN will see this for what it is . . . An obvious attempt to make money while detracting from the usefulness of the internet. (imo)

 

[CrazyTech]

I concur with the general opinion that this simply won't work. At first glance, it's a great idea to promote local businesses and other activities but ultimately it's just too narrow of a target audience IMHO. A city extension would probably remain undesirable since it would be an obscure "cTLD" (city TLD) and would be unappealing to any business trying to target a larger audience. It will simply add to the already large amount of extensions and if Berlin gets one, every other large city will probably want one as well. I think a ccTLD is specific enough at this point.