Domain names - what a mess | LEWIS PR

The Internet was always been great at democratising the world. Many of us can access the same content wherever we are. Cloud computing meant that we didn?t have to set up our own services but rather plug into a general world-wide utility. Social media enables us to connect across borders and people can share and debate their views ? and even tackle corporations and governments.

Sadly, the Internet is also great at dividing us, evoking very strong feelings about ownership and national identity. The more global we get, the more local we feel.

This was once again evident in the latest debate and vote this week to introduce new top level domain (TLD) names. Just like the .co.uk let?s you know that you?re visiting a UK site and .gov tells you it is a government organisation, these new proposed TLDs will help create partitions that allow more scope for web site creators. The organisation responsible for allocating these new domain names is called ICANN?(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). As it goes with people in positions of responsibility, they have other people advising them so they can take responsible decisions. One?such group advising ICANN ?is called the GAC (Government Advisory Committee).

The list of newly proposed domain names to create space for the Internet newcomers included everything from the bizarre (.sucks) and geeky (.cloud) to the religious and politically sensitive (.bible and .islam).

As the GAC panel who gathered to approve this list represented over 50 governmental bodies, agreement was never going to be easy. But I don?t think anyone expected there to be not one, not two objections made, but 270.

Apart from the objections based on politics and religion, you also have the anti-competive watch-dogs airing their views. Why should Amazon, for example, have the right to register and own the .shop TLD, and thereby blocking the opportunity for the gazillion other shops who want to register .shops? Similarly, would Amazon have to pay to own amazon.sucks, just to prevent someone else from registering that domain and using it against the company.

So, what?s next? Will organisations start masking them themselves (for example an airforce unit registering as .taxi or a casino filing as .supermarket) or filing under bizarre negating terminology (.notairforce, anythingbutacasino). Probably not, but there is a strong chance that many of these domain names will have to R.I.P.

Personally, I call a spade a spade, an airforce is an airforce and a casino a casino. The world, of course, is far more complex than and this latest debate is further proof of that.

The list that was planned to be rolled out in May 2013 might have to wait until 2014. In the meantime, those businesses awaiting a room on the Internet, might have to start?being a lot more creative with their domain name choices using existing TLDs, or make a lot more phone calls and send a lot more faxes to make themselves heard.

Tags: .cloud, .sucks, tld, top level domain names

Source: http://blog.lewispr.com/2012/11/domain-names-what-a-mess.html

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