ICANN’s new TLD plan a betrayal of the public trust

Domain Name Wire has an extremely interesting post on Tim Berners-Lee’s Thoughts on New Top Level Domain Names that clearly shows that the original inventor of the world wide web opposed the introduction of the new TLDs for profiteering by ICANN even before to the approval and release of the .mobi top level domain name

Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper explaining the dangers of the introduction of new top level domain names.

I particularly agree with his following observation:

The root of the domain name system is a single public resource, by design. Its control must be for and, indirectly, by the people as a whole. To give away a large chunk of this to a private group would be simply a betrayal of the public trust put in ICANN.

I don’t like any of this myself at all.

In fact, I hate this new plan of ICANN so much that I’d have tried going to courts over the “betrayal of the public trust” had I been in the US. Is there no way people outside USA can contribute to pursue ICANN and make this clear to them that this is not a wise move and must not be pursued at all?

Domain Names costlier! .org hiked by 10%

Public Interest Registry, the registry for .org domain names, has notified ICANN that it is increasing the wholesale prices for .org domain names by 10%. The annual wholesale price for .org domain name registrations will be $6.75, slightly below the $6.86 rate that .com domains are expected to be available at later this year. As the profit margins are thin on domain registrations, the price hike will pinch not your favorite domain registrar’s pocket but yours!

Public Interest Registry has given no rational for the price increase to ICANN. As far as I can make out, it has the most obvious business interest in its mind – profits!

One can’t really blame Public Interest Registry for thinking about ways to increase its profits. After all, it has monopolistic control over the .org domain names! In fact, when .biz registry NeuStar raised prices last year, it was belligerent enough to state the reason for the price hike as – everyone else was doing it. What bullshit!

Also, there are talks that Afilias is all set to hike prices of .info and that NeuStar is already planning another hike in .biz prices.

I have always believed that this whole system of ICANN and domain name registries is rotten to the core. They all have a cartel of sorts. Why does the government allow such monopolistic market conditions to emerge? I wish some intelligent guy in the US will hire good lawyers and file a lawsuit against all this!

Why am I mad? Well, the simple reason is that I have loads of domains that I need to get renewed every year and even now it is quite a lot of money I have to spend. With the price increase it will be a whole lot of new burden.

Yes, yes… I know… you will ask me to monetize the domain to sustain themselves. But bro, monetization doesn’t work on its own. It requires a lot of time, skills and effort, which again costs money. A domainer like me is not a programmer or web designer or an SEO expert. To hire them, I would need to spend money. Domaining is getting costlier by the day. Tsk… Tsk…

if I keep it spending on sustenance, when do I get to enjoy it?

Domain name disputes on the rise!

Domain disputes are on the rise! What else could you expect when the domaining industry is such a huge money spinner while being a low investment business!

Unscrupulous yet highly intelligent cybersquatters pick up premiuim domains related to any event or celebrities/businesses as soon as they get a whiff of something new and exciting comping up. 

Sample this:

The National Arbitration Forum, an international provider of alternative dispute resolution services, administered a total of 1,805 domain name disputes in 2007, up from 1,658 disputes in 2006. The National Arbitration Forum has been approved as a domain name dispute resolution program provider by the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since 1999.

The National Arbitration Forum reports at the end of 2007:

• UDRP domain names with common extensions like .com, .net, and .org accounted for 1,775 filings.
• usDRP domain names with the .us extension accounted for 30 filings.
• Of the 1,805 filings, Panelists heard 1,391 cases; parties worked together to settle many of the rest.
• There were 9,916 total domain name complaints filed since 1999.
• Of those filings, Panelists heard 8,006 cases; the parties settled many of the rest.

- PR-USA

I wish the practice of cybesquatting just disappears overnight. What a better place this world would be!

Hmmm… wishful thinking!