What are these new names and when will they arrive?

The suffix at the end of a website is called a “top level domain,” or TLD. Right now there are about a dozen top level names like “.com” or “.biz” plus other all the ones reserved for countries like “.ca” for Canada or “.jp” for Japan. Now, hundreds of more TLD’s like “.lol” and “.apple” are set to be live by early next year. The complete list of names and their would-be owners was posted for the first time today and can be found here.

Who will own the new names?

In some cases, familiar companies like Google and Amazon have applied to own the names. In most cases, it’s companies you haven’t heard that want to make money selling websites  (for instance, the owner of “.dogs” could sell names like “www.rover.dogs” and “www.lassie.dogs”).

So all these companies are now going to run the internet?

Not exactly. Running a top level domain registry is an expensive and complicated affair. While some big technology firms like Apple might be up to the task, most companies are not. They will instead decide to outsource that part of it to existing registries and focus instead on the business of selling websites.

How does a company get a TLD in the first place?

The applicants paid a non-refundable $185,000 application fee to request a name. If they can show that they have the qualifications to do the job, they will likely get it. They will then have to pay an annual fee of at least $25,000 to keep it.

What if more than one company wants the same name?

This is an issue. Today’s list reveals that 11 companies applied for “.app”, nine applied for “.art”, seven for “.news” and so on (see here for most popular names). When there are multiple applications for a name, the companies that meet the technical qualifications will have an auction to determine who gets to own it.

What happens now that the names have been announced?

There will be a sixty-day period for the public to comment. According to trademark lawyer Joanne Ludovici-Lint of McDermott Will & Emery, companies will then have seven months to bring formal objections to any of the proposed names. Disputes will be resolved by ICANN (see below) and the World Intellectual Property Office, which are the same bodies that resolve disputes over website ownership.

Why do we have all these new names in the first place?

This was ICANN’s idea. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit agency located in Los Angeles that oversees internet names and addresses. Over the last decade, it added new TLDs such as “.jobs” and “.coop” and then decided to make the number of TLD’s essentially limitless.

Why is there a controversy over the new names?

Critics say it will lead to a new flood of cyber-squatting. Brand owners are already upset with ICANN for creating new TLD’s like “.pro” or “.travel” that they don’t want or need. In the case of last year’s “.xxx”, for instance, major companies across America called the scheme a “shakedown” and “extortion” because they felt forced to buy up the names before a squatter did. The arrival of hundreds or thousands of new names will exacerbate the problem. “Father of the internet” Vint Cerf has also expressed skepticism, recently telling a Dutch newspaper (translation):

“Hundreds of new brands and generic names to add now? I see no benefit in that. Many companies fear that they will soon must follow hundreds of new Internet extensions to ensure that their names never be abused. They have a point.”

So who does ICANN report to?

The body was once overseen by the U.S. Department of Commerce but in 2006 it signed an agreement that made it autonomous. It now professes allegiance to a “multi-staker model” but in reality appears to be accountable to no one at all. As this devastating article by a Wired editor recounts, former members of ICANN have engaged in a brazen act of self-dealing by creating the scheme to sell the names and then turning around and offering registry and consulting services (a trademark lawyers says today’s list shows that a company owned by the former ICANN chair has filed the third most applications). ICANN has also ignored requests by companies to create a “defensive registry” that allow them to protect their names and is planning to use half of the hundreds of millions of fees it is collecting to fund a legal war-chest.

(Image by Anna Omelchenko via Shutterstock)

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While Google revealed this month that it would be applying for names like “.youtube” and “.lol”, Amazon has so far been silent about its domain name ambitions. The process, which is being run by internet naming authority ICANN, offers an opportunity for companies to control new top level domain names that will join familiar ones like “.com” and “.org”

Amazon is the only applicant for a number of names like “.author,” “.audible,” “.fire” as well as its own name, “.amazon.” It is competing with other companies, however, for a number of names related to its core business such as “.books” and “.buy”. The competitors for the “.book” name don’t appear to be publishers but are instead internet companies that make money selling website names.

Amazon’s most interesting application may be for “.news,” a field where the retail giant has so far had little involvement. There are six other applicants for “.news” and none of these companies are recognizable news or media brands.

In the case of the names that have multiple bids, ICANN will evaluate the applicants on technical merits and in some cases have an auction. The applications cost a non-refundable $185,000 each and successful bidders will be obliged to pay high ongoing annual fees to ICANN. Many of the new domain names are expected to go live next year.

Here is a link to the rest of the list. We will have a full explanation of the new names and what they mean to consumers and businesses later today.

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ICANN, the body charged with running the internet’s naming system, had to extend the overall process after an embarrassing glitch that revealed some of the confidential applications.

Applicants are paying $185,000 for the opportunity to sell new internet names that will become available in addition to familiar ones like “.com” or “.org.”

According to former Vice-Chair of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee, Lena Carlsson, the applicants include financial and pharmaceutical brands who want to purchase their own names. She also said there are competing bids for names like “.eco” and “.green” and that there is interest from Asia in domains with non-Roman characters.

Carlsson, who is now a VP at a domain services business called MelbourneIT, says that “.vegas,” “london” and “.sydney” are also among the names to be revealed. She says there have been approximately 2,300 applications from about 1,300 participants.

A Shakedown

While ICANN has touted the name sales as a “land rush,” critics have slammed the agency for corruption and brazen self-dealing. (For more dirty details, see this account from a Wired editor).

They have pointed out that many of the companies that want to help inaugurate the new domains are run by former ICANN members and that the body has already pulled in more than $350 million in new fees. ICANN’s own documents show that it plans to use a good chunk of this for a legal war-chest to fight off objections to its cash grab.

Meanwhile, businesses that don’t want or need the new domain names complain that ICANN won’t heed their call to create a “do not sell” registry.

Businesses worry that the new names will increase brand-jacking and cyber-squatting — situations where opportunists and criminals effectively hold a company’s name at ransom unless they agree to buy it back (check out the Pinterest.org
page for instance).

In practice, the new names mean a company like Disney must worry not only about someone buying “Disney.pro” or “Disney.xxx” but also names like “deals.disney” or “disney.fun.” Businesses and trademark lawyers have said ICANN’s behavior is a shakedown and “extortion.”

In this light, the reportedly robust sales to financial firms may simply represent companies like BankofAmerica shelling out $185,000 to buy “.bankofamerica” before someone in Nigeria or Russia buys it instead.

[Corrections: An earlier version of this story mistakenly identified Lena Carlsson as a former ICANN board member; she was a former Vice-Chair of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee. The story also understated the number of applications; there are approximately 2,300 not 1,300 reported applications.]

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That’s because today is the day that ICANN, the agency that administers Internet naming conventions, begins selling new ‘generic domain names’ for $185,000 a pop. That means new so-called generic TLD’s like “.donut” or “.sillyidea” (for example) are for now for sale.

Is this a good idea?

The folks at ICANN did a good job this week at seeding the press with “ain’t that swell” stories about a “land grab” in domain names that will create a wealth of new commerce. But meanwhile a coalition of major companies have been screaming to stop the process, and the FTC has been warning it will lead to a new wave of cyber-scams.

As we’ve reported in the past, companies are already fed up with fighting off cyber-squatters from the dozen or so existing top level domains, many of which are little-used (.biz, .jobs., .asia anyone?). The most recent example was the “.xxx” domain that brought titters to headline writers but was little more than a tax to the companies who had to buy it to ensure no one else did first. Lawyers I’ve spoken with regularly use the word “extortion” to describe the process.

The new gambit is the worst yet. Not only do companies have to shell out $185,000 to buy the name in the first place but they have to hand over large maintenance payments over a ten year period. They also have to become responsible for running a registry which is beyond the IT capacity of large companies.

Conveniently, technical and consultancy businesses are springing up to help — many of them run by former ICANN members.

Lest anyone doubt this is all about the cash, see the budget breakdown in a previous paidContent article. The article
describes a report by ICANN itself that states the agency hopes to double its revenues. And, in an indication that ICANN has an idea just how unpopular this will be, it plans to set aside about half of its windfall for a legal war chest.

This process is as if the FCC, on its own initiative, decided to sell new radio spectrum that might interfere with existing stations, and then turned around and suggested that broadcasters buy the new spectrum as part of a “land grab” — while also recommending former FCC employees as consultants. The ICANN episode is especially ironic because it happened on the watch of a Republican Congress who ordinarily goes ballistic if any agency exceeds its mandate by so much as an extra paper clip.

ICANN has attempted to rebuff its critics but its arguments so far are not convincing. It has pointed out that there has been support domains like “.music” and “.london” Well, fine. Sell those two domains and, if there is obvious support for other specific domains, sell those too. ICANN also says the system will allow companies in other companies to buy non-Latin domain names. Again, well fine. Create a handful of TLD’s in other languages.

The press is finally starting to catch on what is happening. A Wired editor offered a blistering account of ICANN this morning while the influential All Things D fingered the dollars at the heart of the scheme.

But it’s probably too late by now. The retired ICANN directors are likely clinking glasses this very moment, congratulating themselves for pulling this off. Yee-ha, boys, enjoy your cash grab.

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The scheme in question involves turning the current internet naming system wide-open so that it’s possible to buy websites ending in anything — .disney, .redcross, .stevejobs, etc — and host content on them. ICANN, the body responsible for internet names, says the plan will unleash a flood of new innovation and internet commerce.

The problem is that no one wants or likes the plan. Brand owners are fed up with the digital debris they must manage already (including “.biz“, “.travel” and now “.xxx” sites) and don’t want more. Meanwhile, government agencies and NGO’s fear that more internet names simply mean more fraud and phishing.

The new scheme is particularly vexing to companies because it’s so expensive. Starting January 12, would-be registrants of “.chanel” or “.worldvision” must plunk down $185,000 to register the names or risk someone else grabbing them first.

“Companies are nervous,” said Andrea Calvaruso, a trademark expert with Kelley Drye in New York. She says that she has several big clients who are incredulous and resentful at having to acquire yet more domain names but feel they are over a barrel. The cost of running an entire domain system involves not just registration but legal and IT services, Calvaruso adds. Unless a brand is already an IT firm, she says they will have to pay a specialist firm to help them manage the ten year commitment.

An organization called Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight is pushing back against the initiative and has formed an international alliance of marketers and brands such as Dell, Xerox and Coca-Cola. Its website includes a letter from the lawyers of dozens of quasi-government groups like the WHO and the European Space Agency. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission on Friday issued a press release warning Americans that the new internet names will produce new scams.

So why is the plan going ahead all the same? In a word, money. In a recent report, ICANN revealed that the new plan will produce a windfall that will allow it to double its revenue.

Ordinarily, this sort of agency mission creep would be reigned in by political outrage. But that’s unlikely to occur here because ICANN has no real political master now that it has escaped formal oversight from the US Department of Commerce. The decoupling of ICANN from the US government occurred for the good reason that the internet and its naming system are a global, not American, enterprise. But the result is now that an important agency is accountable to no-one at all.

The only support for the scheme that I have uncovered came in the form of a strange press release chiding the US Senate for examining the scheme (no Senator came out in support). It also provides a link to a consultant and the advice: “The bottom line, the New gTLD expansion will happen and instead of concerning yourself with what you can’t control – you should be focusing on how to prepare for what is to come. “

Sounds good. I wonder if it’s too late to buy the “.bureaucracy” name.

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