TechRepublic.com published a scathing article on the new gTLD program.
The story is entitled “ICANN’s generic top-level domain rules cause major headaches for online businesses and confusion for consumers.”
Here are some highlights:
” In August 2011, ICANN founding chairman Esther Dyson wrote an argument against the proliferation of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), …..like .cloud, .rich, .plumbing, and for reasons that defy logic, both .black and .blackfriday. Dyson predicted that this expansion would “create lots of work for lawyers, marketers of search-engine optimization, registries, and registrars” constituting what is ultimately a “waste of resources.”
Nearly five years on, this prediction appears to have been perfect—the proliferation of gTLDs has added no value, but has lined the pockets of gTLD operators from organizations and individuals in the practice of defensive registration, and joke websites that serve no practical purpose except to highlight the ridiculousness of gTLDs, such as rebecca.blackfriday.””
The proliferation of gTLDs is a headache for IP holders that are burdened with the task of protecting their brand by defensively registering domains.
Companies are also finding themselves obligated to protect their trademarks by defensively registering websites in the .exposed, .gripe, .review, .reviews, and .sucks gTLDs to prevent others from establishing websites which may contain disparaging information about their brand, while appearing to have some modicum of authoritativeness by merit of using a company name or trademark in a TLD.
The existence of both .review and .reviews is also an issue with ICANN’s authorization process—there is no apparent protection against the creation of nearly-identical gTLDs, leading to the creation of .accountant and .accountants, .career and .careers, .dental and .dentist, .loan and .loans, among others. (an issue we wrote about before the first new gTLD actually launched in 2012)
This is a practice that potentially encourages typosquatting. Registering one without the other is effectively useless in that potential customers may be unable to find your website if the corresponding domain is not registered, or could be directed to a competitor if it was registered by someone else””
