ICANN agrees to delay new domain names
ICANN has backtracked over its decision to introduce additional top level domains after coming under pressure from big businesses, trade mark holders, and even the Vatican.
If ever you try to register a domain name for a new business you will probably find that all of the remotely useful names have already been snapped up, and are often pointing at holding sites which have no intention of using the domain themselves but will offer to sell it to you at a hugely inflated price.
ICANN's solution to this problem of cybersquatting has been to propose more and more top level domains, as a way of creating more names to choose from. But this isn't a solution. It just creates even more land-grab opportunities for the squatters and creates a headache for trademark holders who have to register endless variations on their names as a way of protecting their brand. And that gets expensive. Even Microsoft, which has already registered its name and variations on it with 280 of the existing top level domains decided it just wasn't worthwhile registering the "microsoft.travel" variation, but that didn't stop someone else from snapping it up, even though they appear to have no connection with Microsoft and do not themselves trade as Microsoft Travel.
The Vatican warned of the dangers of creating the proposed top level domains which reflect religions such as .catholic, .anglican, .orthodox and .islam. It pointed out that religion-themed domains would likely promote bitter disputes between various factions and could put ICANN in the position of having to name one of those groups as the definitive authority for the domain name of a religion.
However, a number of bodies are pushing hard for the introduction of new top-level domains. A group led by Al Gore wants to run .eco as a top level domain whilst an organisation called dotBerlin is campaigning to have the rights to issue .berlin domain names. Other cities and regions with similar aspirations include Paris, New York, Quebec and Boston. Of course, that if Paris France, not Paris Texas, and Boston Massachussets, not Boston Lincs, but that too illustrates the flaw in these ambitions. Who has the rights to .london, for example? Is it London UK, or London Ontario? And does it serve a useful purpose. or is it just another money making scheme for the registrars, forcing trade mark holders to defensively register yet more domain names.
In view of the many objections it has received, ICANN has decided to delay the introduction of any more top level domains for at least several months, whilst it works on a new draft of its guidelines.
19th March 2009
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