Ready to 
ICANN to open the floodgates on TLDs
Matt Jancaitis
April 9, 2009 1:15 PM ET in Tech
A new change that has been proposed and accepted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will allow wealthy buyers to register any top-level domain they can imagine. Are you prepared for www.myspace.music? www.goldengate.sf? www.superhedgehogs.whatareyouthinkingICANN?
What about www.razors-suck.gillette? www.google.blows? What about something a little more sinister: www.paypal.copm. Malicious users can now capitalize on common typos for common TLDs. These are just some examples of the chaos that could ensue when TLDs become a free-for-all.
Consider Google, which forwards www.google.net to google.com, but keeps www.google.org as a separate site. CNN.org mirrors the CNN.com main page, but CNN.net doesn’t load. Verizon.net and Verizon.com are very different pages, though they both look legitimate, while AOL.com and AOL.org both resolve to the same page. Companies are clearly paying a hefty sum for these TLDs (of which there are only 18 at the moment) so they can protect their brand and prevent users from being duped into a malware-laden domain squat. Now an enterprising group can register www.chase.bank, build a strikingly good replica of the Chase bank site, and get some poor sap to throw away his bank information at the drop of a hat. It’s institutionally assisted phishing, and organized cybercrime isn’t exactly strapped for cash.
Meanwhile, consider the fact that the average net user probably isn’t aware that other TLDs exist aside from the handful of common ones like .net and .com. Who knows that one of the 18 generic TLDs is .aero? Who knew that .cat was available for Catalan culture? With a flush of new domains, people will have an even more confusing landscape to navigate online.
Say a legitimate enterprise wants to register www.something.unique and publish it. What if a user goes to www.something.com out of habit? What if a user searches Google for something and arrives at www.something.uniq instead? Imagine how difficult it will be for companies to protect their customers.
We have 18 perfectly functional TLDs, so what’s the point in being able to register anything you want? Why money, of course.
“Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for,” says Paul Levins, ICANN’s vice-president of corporate affairs. “It could translate into one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history.”
Levins is proposing an application-only fee of $185,000, and a yearly renewal fee of $25,000. That price is only good if people aren’t competing for ownership of the domain name with a bidding war. Who doesn’t love those? Granted, a fee of this size will help discourage lesser shenanigans, but certainly won’t stop everybody. Many times, businesses actively snap up alternative domains simply to prevent others from registering them to cause harm, and many more are crying foul over the change.
The world has 18 generic TLDs, perhaps seven of which are even memorable to the public (.com, .net, .org, .gov, .edu, .mil, .info), and ICANN wants to open up the full spectrum. It’s hard to see how this is anything but a grab for cash, and it leaves many of us wondering exactly what they’re thinking.
What are you guys thinking about ICANN’s change?
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