The New Tork Times just covered the coming new gTLD’s and quotes a number of sources which give some juicy quotes like the one in the title which came from Esther Dyson
Some of the new gTLD’s getting a mention in the article were: .bible, .blog, .family, .game, .gay and .pizza.
The article quotes Akram Atallah, from ICANN who says:
“With .com and .net, if you wanted a nice name, it’s all taken,”
“The idea of new gTLD’s is to provide real-estate availability in the market.”
“The proliferation of these suffixes seems fraught for both consumers and companies. It has the potential to confuse online searchers: .car or .cars? baby.toys or toys.baby? It could also prompt companies, at great expense, to register bunches of new brand sites defensively as a way to pre-empt cybersquatters, spoofers and fraudsters.”
“Some technology veterans and trademark experts view the domain expansion as largely unnecessary.”
As we mentioned above the story quotes Esther Dyson founding chairwoman of Icann as saying:
“You are creating a business, like derivatives on Wall Street, that has no value,”.
“You can charge people for it, but you are contributing nothing to the happiness of humanity.”
“Advocates of Internet freedom contend that such an expanded address system effectively places online control over powerful commercial and cultural interests in the hands of individual companies, challenging the very idea of an open Internet.
“Existing generic domains, like .net and .com, overseen by Verisign Inc., a domain registry, have an open-use policy; that means consumers can buy domain names ending in .com directly from retail registrars like GoDaddy. With a new crop of applicants, however, Icann initially accepted proposals for closed or restricted generic domains, a practice that could limit competing views and businesses.
The story quotes Jon Leibowitz, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission as saying:
“It’s a very legitimate competition concern, the public at large, consumers and businesses, would be better served by no expansion or less expansion” of domains.”
The story quotes Thies Lindenthal who designed the IDNX domain index as saying:
“Verisign right now is like the Wal-Mart of the domain space, Other big players may be beneficial, just to increase competition.”
Jon Nevett is quoted in the story saying about Donuts
“We want to be as open as possible, we don’t want to have a walled garden.”
The story also quotes Jacqueline Lipton, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center as saying
“The Internet address oversight body may not have considered deeply enough the larger linguistic and societal ramifications of setting off a land grab for new virtual real estate like .love or .home “It’s a private body, that is dabbling in this very delicate balance of commerce and expression online that is fraught with pitfalls.”
You can read the full story here…
