ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs

Marshall Eubanks tme at multicasttech.com
Fri Jun 27 00:11:33 UTC 2008




On Jun 26, 2008, at 7:58 PM, Ken Simpson wrote:

>> This gives an (unofficial) estimate :
>>
>> <http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080626-confusion-icann-opens-up-pandoras-box-of-new-tlds.html 
>> >
>>
>> .confusion: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs
>> By Jacqui Cheng | Published: June 26, 2008 - 12:11PM CT
>>
>> <snip>
>> Not every zany TLD will be immediately available to anyone who want  
>> to register a domain, however. Businesses must apply to register  
>> the TLD first, then go through a review process to ensure that it  
>> isn't offensive and doesn't infringe on anyone's intellectual  
>> property. If approved, registering the TLD will cost anywhere from  
>> $100,000 to $500,000, ICANN says, and the business or organization  
>> must prove that they are either capable of managing the TLD or can  
>> reach a deal with a company that will. This is no small beans— 
>> unless you're planning to fork over up to half a million dollars  
>> and put in the labor to manage everything that appears under the  
>> TLD, this task is probably best left to large organizations and  
>> governmental entities. The organization registering the TLD will  
>> also be responsible for determining whether it will be restricted  
>> to certain types of sites or open to the public.
>> <snip>
>
> Thanks for the info. Okay, well that kind of pricing will prevent  
> most of the fraudsters from obtaining TLDs. But of course it doesn't  
> prevent shady operators from setting up a TLD with lenient abuse  
> controls - such as .info or .to. Imagine 40 .infos spamming away...

What I wonder is what that amount is going to ? Is that a fee, or is it
an estimate of what it would take to set up a registrar ?

If it is the latter, GoDaddy or Network Solutions may start offering  
TLDs for a lot less. I don't see much
of an intrinsic reason why it should be more than 1 hour of person  
time to evaluate, thus a cost in the $ 100's
of USDs, plus ongoing registry costs. This

https://par.icann.org/files/paris/GNSO-gTLD-Update-Paris22jun08.pdf

makes it look like much of the process could be automated.

Regards
Marshall



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