On Jun 17, 2011, at 10:05 PM, Jeff Wheeler wrote:
On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 12:04 AM, George B. <georgeb@gmail.com> wrote:
I think I will get .payme and make sure coke.payme, pepsi.payme, comcast.payme, etc. all get registered at the low-low price of $10/year. All I would need is 100,000 registrations to provide me with a million dollar a year income stream for the rest of my life.
I have read this thread, but certainly not any ICANN garbage. It seems to me that a TLD for a brand, like Coca-Cola, would not be used in the same way as GTLDs. Will George actually be allowed to carve up his own TLD and sell bits of it to anyone who is willing to click a checkbox on GoDaddy.com? Obviously there is not any technical limitation in place to prevent this, but will there be legal / "layer 9" limitations?
Um, that'll be just GoDaddy. soon enough.
I kinda figured additional GTLDs is not very useful given that probably every domain registrar drives customers to "protect their brand," avoid phishing attacks against their customers, etc. by buying not only example.com, but also net|org|biz|etc. I imagine that registrars may be really excited about this idea, because it represents additional fees/revenue to them. I can't understand why it is good for anyone else. Does McDonald's really want to print http://mcdonalds/ or www.mcdonalds instead of www.mcdonalds.com on their soft drink cups and TV ads?
Ah, but at $185k/year/TLD to ICANN, Mr. Beckstrom has to be loving it.
Is Owen so disconnected from reality that he thinks the chain with the golden arches is spelled "MacDonald's?"
No, just didn't want to get caught infringing. ;-) I did say that I made several of the examples up.
I don't particularly care about the intellectual property questions (in the context of NANOG) but if you really want to bang your head against that, I suggest reading about the current trademark status of "Standard Oil." In short, it remains a legally protected mark but has several distinct owners throughout the United States -- a result of the break-up. "Waffle House" is a little complex, too. Somehow the GTLD system continues to function. I imagine the relevant authorities are capable of figuring out who should be allowed to register which brand-TLD.
I find your faith most disturbing. Owen