.sucks-gate: How about listening to us the first two times, exasperated FTC tells ICANN

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has responded to questions over the legality of .sucks domain pricing with a three-page "I told you so" letter to domain name overseer ICANN. ICANN is upset that Vox Populi – the company in charge of .sucks – is charging people $2,500 (£1,700) to defensively register dot-sucks domains …

[Crazy Operations Guy]

How do they know who is registering?

What's to stop a private person from registering a domain and then transferring it to the company? Its not like Vox Populi (What a pretentious name for a company...) have a list of employees for every company out there.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How do they know who is registering?

You would hope at least a copy of a tax return...you'd hope.

Anyways, this whole debate feels like it should of happened nearly 20 years ago, when domains were setting dominate foundations, when squatters ruled the roost. Wait, they still do, but now we also have "official" squatters (ICANN).

Also, the bullshit term of "activist" and "executive" basically means "poor" and "rich". Just ask Madonna.com (R.I.P.), Whitehouse.com (R.I.P.), Nissan.com (But Nissan.com is still hanging in there, and who knew Nissan Automotive was owned by Renault? (France)). There is many more, but in the end, money steals the winner. I guess regardless of this article's topic, ICANN is in that fabled Win/Win position, thanks to themselves.

[TeeCee]

Re: How do they know who is registering?

who knew Nissan Automotive was owned by Renault?

Anyone who pays attention.

We were all rather hoping for that legendary Nissan reliability with Renault's flair for design. What we actually got was the Juke and the CashCow......

[John Robson]

Re: How do they know who is registering?

Because this is in the "sunrise" phase - you can only pay top dollar now - when they open it to the public then you can pay $10..

[Notas Badoff]

What's that mood?

Wait, so ICANN is establishing the tenor of the relationship with Vox Populi by extorting $1M from it using dubious rationales, and then wondering why the registrar is in turn extorting companies? Hey, this is good, I suppose, as the flow of sh1t reverses back towards ICANN. "Centipede IV: Turnabout"

[Destroy All Monsters]

The mood when...

Happens all day, every day in the carpeted halls of management.

[Steve Knox]

.sucks sucks, but not for those reasons.

The real problem with .sucks is that it allows trademark holders to register {trademark}.sucks at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: .sucks sucks, but not for those reasons.

Also, that they don't then have to put up a placeholder page that says, for example: icann.sucks

[BristolBachelor]

Re: .sucks sucks, but not for those reasons.

No. They'd put up a page that "lists all the people who have been affected" by Crappy-big-TV company, with an option for other people to add to the list. BUT - there would only appear 3 or 4 people on the list and their claims would be like "The TV is great, but the cardboard box it came in had fuzzy printing".

Anyone going to the site will think that maybe Crappy-big-TV company must actually be good with so few complaints, and the complaints all being minor.

[jelabarre59]

Re: .sucks sucks, but not for those reasons.

> ...They'd put up a page that "lists all the people who have been affected" by Crappy-big-TV company, with an option for other people to add to the list...

You just need to register the obnoxious variations of the company's name. For example "crapcast.com" or "suxfinity.com". (those of you in the States will know who I mean).

[Stu 18]

dont steal my business plan...

Keep this between us, but I'm in the process of registering

.reallysucks

.totallysucks

.probablysucks

.sceoisaXXXX

.iscodedbymonkeys

and similar for my corporate wing

and I'm thinking a gtld like '.iscrapinbed' and '.isaloser' and '.gotsuckeredforthecostofastupiddomainname' for when I go after the defensive personal market.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: dont steal my business plan...

your forgot the "sux" variant and its variations.

[Anonymous Coward]

We didn't need that many TLDs afterall.

The whole scheme was for ICANN to get rich.

[Ralph B]

Re: We didn't need that many TLDs afterall.

ICANN is to the internet what FIFA is to football*.

* Soccer, USians.

[theblackhand]

Re: We didn't need that many TLDs afterall.

FIFA is the 1000 lb leech stuck to the side of football while ICANN are the monkeys on the typewriters of Internet regulation.

The monkeys are locked in the room and their hygiene is poor, hence the smell...

[Alan Denman]

Icann blackmail .

That is blackmail for you, loads of free money.

It is a love-in?

Put me down for .sucksthemost so I can retire .easymoney like.

[Ralph B]

Related News

Reports that Apple have bought theregister.sucks may not be entirely reliable.

[Schlimnitz]

.sucks sucks and the whole thing is a dog's breakfast, outgoing.

[The Vociferous Time Waster]

.sucks

.sucks is a good old fashioned shake down.

Pure and simple.

[Ken Hagan]

Evil + Dumb = No Sympathy

Any trademark holder dumb enough to pay *at all* for a .sucks domain deserves to get fleeced for all they have. They are trying to suppress free speech (which makes them evil) and trying to do it in an amazing naive way (which makes them dumb).