Get Your Family Domain Name
Get your very own special domain name. Ever fancied having your own domain name - such as Wayne.king or even King.Wayne or Wayne.whatever or Wayne.themindboggles ? Well it will soon be possible.
The domain name addressing system is set to be all shook up, as ICANN has voted to relax the rules governing TLDs (top level domains – e.g. .com, .net etc…).
ICANN has approved a proposal by which we could see these changes come into play as early as 2009. One expectation is that companies will use their own brands for domain names, which sounds like a good idea, but who will get .cola ? Pepsi or Coke ? or Doris Cola from Des Moines ? Or the Spanish firm ola.cola ? Lawyers must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of these future .lawsuits.
For individuals to be allowed to register personalised domains, however, they will need to demonstrate technical capacity and the ability to produce a business plan. So I guess that rules out me and Wayne.
Dr Paul Tworney, CEO of ICANN says : "The potential is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the net. It's a massive increase in the 'real estate' of the internet."
So we could also finally see the .xxx domain name extension some people have been campaigning so long for, and which so far has been blocked as it is argued it would encourage pornography on the Internet ! Lol – perish the thought.
Domain squatters, typosquatters and spammers may have a lot of fun of course. I shall in fact shortly be writing an article on exactly why typosquatting is gud !
There is also the question of price, and whether this isn’t just another enormous legalized scam designed to bring more money into the coffers of the registrars. All legal of course, but they are after all creating a product which we have all managed to live without so far, but which will become an absolute must have for the big names. They will be almost commercially obliged to register their brand name in order to protect it from squatters or from the competition.
ICANN hasn’t disclosed a price yet but my guess is that it won’t be $10 a name, which would be the democratic and non-exploitative way to do things. Rumour has it that prices will be over $100,000 – why is that ? And some of the more popular suffixes will be put up for auction to the highest bidder.
You’ve got to hand it to those guys at ICANN – "Here’s some stuff we've just made, you can take it or leave it, but if you want it it’ll cost you $100,000, if you don’t want it we’ll sell it to your main competitor. Your choice."
