Dot-word domains 'a shakedown, designed to get money out of people' People don't like you – and it's up to you to fix it. That was the unusual message to the domain-name industry during the keynote speeches at NamesCon 2015 in Las Vegas on Monday morning. The domain-name industry conference, in its second year, is an opportunity for a wealth of organizations and businesses to get together and …
"I know, to change that perception, let's just hold our conference in that Mafia run den of vice, Las Vegas."
Y'know, these days I'm thinking that the Mafia is a paragon of honesty and virtue compared to these tech industry clowns. At least the Mafia is straight up about what they're about and what they do.
1) They are selling a product people do not need.
2) At a very high price. $7-$10 vs $20-$50, to $100.000s+
3) People are used to .com/.net/.org, they are well known.
4) You can do whatever.thing.i.want.com and it has proven that people do not remember it, why do they think cocacola.com is worse than refreshing.drink.cocacola or softdrink.cocacola, or was it drink.coke, or cola.coke...? I'm confused, let's Google it.
Yes, the DNS industry has a problem and it is not a PR one, they thought this little scheme of theirs will bring them riches, and they're hurt no one cares.
Idiots.
I agree, and I disagree. I personally think .com,.net,.edu.org should have been phased out, being replaced, at least for the U.S., with .com.us, .net.us, .edu.us, .org.us. ... at least 20 years ago.
As it stands now, with the .shit domains, its all just a clusterfuck.
Is this thing live yet? That is, are there any web sites actually using it yet? I've not heard of a single one if there are. I notice that the NamesCon 2015 is a "dot com" site, rather than having their own "dot word" domain.
I won't be surprised if this whole thing vanishes into obscurity. And oh yes, for now it is a shakedown.
The problem isn't "overcrowding" of name space. The problem is the domain name speculators buying up names which resemble trademarks which belong to legitimate companies and then selling them to the trademark owners at high prices so that these companies won't have their trademarks diluted by fake sites. It's a form of spamming and extortion. Adding more name space just adds more room for these shady practices. Look at the guys behind the porn dot-word domain (I can't remember what they call it), who are telling legitimate companies that if they don't buy up (at eye watering prices) their equivalents in this new domain, they will sell them to porn companies to host porn web sites on.
The problem isn't with the guy who just wants a name for his blog. The problem is with commercial sites involving trademarks. It's not that the domain names themselves are worth money. It's the real world trademarks that are worth money and how the domain names poach those trademarks.
The issues are related to the present shaky connection between trademarks and domain names. What I think the solution would be is for more reliance on country code domains (".uk", ".ca", ".de", etc.) and then using those countries' legal systems to enforce their existing trademark laws within their own countries. Trademark law is well established and there's a good framework for deciding who owns what names. Making domain names an extension of this solves that problem neatly.
As it stands, domain names are in a sort of limbo, with extrajudicial oversight supposedly being exercised by the same people who are running the current shakedown of expanded dot-word domains. It's like putting the mafia in charge of the anti-corruption squad.
Wouldn't it be simpler to just add .dotcom as a new domain to ease the current over-crowding ?
Suddenly I want to register the TLD "dotdot", so my sites can end with ".dotdot". Because who doesn't love an ellipsis?
(If I had a .edu domain I'd be tempted to register "dashdotdotdotdotdash". Yeah, I know, you need the breaks, since Morse isn't self-synchronizing.)
is a fucking sham.
I recently started my own small business and tried, oh god did I try, to find a domain that I could use for my business.
Every-single-possible-example of my business name was taken by a cyber squatter. Every single fucking one, and had been for years as far as I could tell.
In the end my business name was decided by what domain name I could find.
It's fucking bollocks.
I can relate to that.
A few years back my sister gave me a domain (registered via goDaddy) as a birthday gift. I pointed it to my host, and promptly neglected it. A year later when the renewal was due, I could not find the birthday card with the goDaddy username/password. I could verify my account holder status by verifying the CC# used to buy the domain; but it was my sister's, and she had shredded that card. So my option was to wait for the domain to expire, and buy it new. I woke up at 6AM EST on the 'magic' day to find that my domain had been registered by some jackass at midnight. I know they were a jackass, because I also had an email from them, to the admin account for the domain, offering to sell me 'my' domain for the low, low price of $300.
I imagine some "entrepreneur" devised a bot to sell to other "entrepreneurs" who fire it off to check the about-to-expire domains, automatically re-register them, and send a an auto "invite" to the hapless (ex)-owner to re-buy. And don't you dare call them scumbags, they run legitimate, "honorable" business. Beats spamming, I guess :(
Before we forget, ICANN approved the new gTLD program and has profited handsomely from it knowing in advance that brands would be under immense pressure and incur huge cost trying to protect their brands under all the new extensions.
I share the frustration of those who can't find the premium domain they want sitting undeveloped 20 years after the creation of the domain name space and available for a $10 registration fee. I wish to open my new business in a vacant store front on Park Ave in NY but even though the space is empty they want to charge me market rent! The unfairness of the world!
Possibly the weakest counter-argument ever put forward in your last paragraph if you're referring to the average guy on the street who wants to start a small business and needs an appropriate domain name.
You're paying rates for physical space which will have footfall outside it and a small time owner wont expect to have a property in a high rate area.
Domains are entirely different. If I want to buy a four letter domain that makes no sense, such as IWTR.com, which has no traffic, should I be expected to pay a few thousand dollars for it? These are simply automated scripts buying up the entire alphabet one letter at a time. Go through it, I stopped at IWTV which says it'll ignore any offers under $10,000.
jira.domain.com, now offers something.jira.domain.com The Register 
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