ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs

Owen DeLong owen at delong.com
Sat Jun 18 08:41:49 UTC 2011


On Jun 17, 2011, at 10:05 PM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 12:04 AM, George B. <georgeb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think I will get .payme  and make sure coke.payme, pepsi.payme,
>> comcast.payme, etc. all get registered at the low-low price of
>> $10/year.  All I would need is 100,000 registrations to provide me
>> with a million dollar a year income stream for the rest of my life.
> 
> I have read this thread, but certainly not any ICANN garbage.  It
> seems to me that a TLD for a brand, like Coca-Cola, would not be used
> in the same way as GTLDs.  Will George actually be allowed to carve up
> his own TLD and sell bits of it to anyone who is willing to click a
> checkbox on GoDaddy.com?  Obviously there is not any technical
> limitation in place to prevent this, but will there be legal / "layer
> 9" limitations?
> 
Um, that'll be just GoDaddy. soon enough.


> I kinda figured additional GTLDs is not very useful given that
> probably every domain registrar drives customers to "protect their
> brand," avoid phishing attacks against their customers, etc. by buying
> not only example.com, but also net|org|biz|etc.  I imagine that
> registrars may be really excited about this idea, because it
> represents additional fees/revenue to them.  I can't understand why it
> is good for anyone else.  Does McDonald's really want to print
> http://mcdonalds/ or www.mcdonalds instead of www.mcdonalds.com on
> their soft drink cups and TV ads?
> 
Ah, but at $185k/year/TLD to ICANN, Mr. Beckstrom has to be loving
it.

> Is Owen so disconnected from reality that he thinks the chain with the
> golden arches is spelled "MacDonald's?"
> 
No, just didn't want to get caught infringing. ;-)

I did say that I made several of the examples up.

> I don't particularly care about the intellectual property questions
> (in the context of NANOG) but if you really want to bang your head
> against that, I suggest reading about the current trademark status of
> "Standard Oil."  In short, it remains a legally protected mark but has
> several distinct owners throughout the United States -- a result of
> the break-up.  "Waffle House" is a little complex, too.  Somehow the
> GTLD system continues to function.  I imagine the relevant authorities
> are capable of figuring out who should be allowed to register which
> brand-TLD.
> 
I find your faith most disturbing.

Owen





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