ICANN Closes Most Popular Comment Forum

Afilias, ICANN, WIPO and even Congress are all financially and politically interested in the FAILURE of new TLDs. Afilias is comprised of dot-com registrars and every dot-info registration means one less dot-com renewal. Worse, though, is the prospect of every dot-web or dot-whatever registration meaning one less dot-com renewal. That's what every registrar really wanted to avoid. These companies also benefit greatly by speculative registartions, fueled by the trade in "aftermarket" domain names. This market would have collapsed if new TLD were to have succeeded, removing as much as a third of the value of these companies.

Congress is also interested in keeping the "A" root server in Virginia, because it makes cyberspace a place where an American trademark trumps an identical trademark from any other country. It is also interested in protecting the lead that America has by holding more memorable registrations than any other country.

WIPO is also interested in keeping the playing field tilted in favor of existing entities and against new competitors, so they want to keep new companies down by forcing them to choose complicated domain names. As well, having to argue that hundreds of generic companies such as Apple Corp. should have their Apple.farms and Apple.pies would bring scorn upon these companies and discredit the whole notion of trademark.

It has been a year since pre-registration has been open for these domains and the only serious website so far is the one by the American Handball Association, and who would want to set up in a TLD that has been so marred by scandal, anyway? Obviously, they'll conclude that the whole idea of new TLDs was nothing but the misguided meddling of a bunch of geeks.

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Re: ICANN Closes Most Popular Comment Forum
by dtobias (dan@tobias.name) on Saturday March 23 2002, @03:27AM (#5514)
User #2967 Info | http://domains.dan.info/

every dot-info registration means one less dot-com renewal.

I don't see how that's true. Even registrants who changed their site addresses directly from .com to .info probably mostly won't let their old .com addresses expire because of the predators who register expiring domains and put up porn sites. Other .info registrations are for sites that were formerly .org, .us, or other non-.com domains, or for sites that didn't have any domain at all before. Thus, the new TLD grew the market instead of shrinking it.

These companies also benefit greatly by speculative registartions, fueled by the trade in "aftermarket" domain names. This market would have collapsed if new TLD were to have succeeded,

Another dubious statement; I'd think that the success of a new TLD would increase the degree of speculation in new TLDs, rather than decreasing it.

It has been a year since pre-registration has been open for these domains and the only serious website so far is the one by the American Handball Association, and who would want to set up in a TLD that has been so marred by scandal, anyway?

How about the New York MTA whose mta.info site is advertised to all commuters passing through Grand Central Station? That seems pretty high-profile to me. The scandals regarding new TLDs have been pretty much confined to a few websites and message boards; the general public doesn't know or care about them.

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