Do we need more domains?
Back in 1985, Symbolics became the first company to register a dot com domain name. Another four domains were registered in that first year. Thirty years on, there are around 288 million registered domains in use, and dot com remains the most popular, accounting for 116 million of those.
Over the years, in order to create more domain space, ICANN has created more top level domains such as dot net and dot info, although arguably it should have done more to encourage the creation of hierarchies of domain name within the country code schemes. Instead, it has chosen to create a mass of new top level domains, selling the management and marketing rights to the highest bidders in a series of auctions. It is early days yet for these new top level domains, but so far they have made little impact.
One issue that this proliferation of top level domains has created is the increased need for individuals and trade mark holders to spend money on defensive registrations. For example, the new top level domains include dot porn and dot sucks. There is a so-called sunrise period, lasting until 1st June, during which people who hold trade marks may advance purchase the corresponding domain names, and after that it is a free for all. This has resulted in, for example, singer songwriter Taylor Swift registering TaylorSwift.porn, TaylorSwift.adult, and others this month, not because she any ambitions to be a porn star, but simply to stop others creating porn sites that trade on her name.
Whether the likes of Taylor Swift can afford it or not, should they have to pay protection money to registrars, to stop their names and trademarks being used by the porn industry? It is not clear how much people are having to pay for a dot porn or dot adult domain name during the sunrise period, but for the similarly dubious dot sucks domains, even when it is open to general registration, domains will cost up to $2,5000 per year. And that is just the cost of defending yourself on one domain name.
The dot xxx domain, also aimed at the porn industry and also benefitting from defensive registrations has been available since 2011. Stuart Lawley, chairman of ICM Registry which operates dot xxx said "revenue has been well north of $50 million". Figures show though that in the first year of dot xxx, it is estimated there were around 83,000 defensive registrations from individuals and organisations trying to protect themselves and their reputations.
26th March 2015
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.