ICANN is pricing out small and medium sized business in new gtlds says the NYT website

[Robin Gross]

Interesting post on the NY Times website today about how ICANN's new  
gtld rules are pricing small and medium sized businesses out of the  
market entirely.  So much for innovation and Internet start-ups.   
Noncommercial entrants won't stand a chance of getting a new top  
level domain under ICANN's proposed rules and costs either.  Sigh.

Robin



http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/the-best-internet-addresses- 
will-cost-a-cool-million/?ref=technology

July 14, 2009
The Best Internet Addresses Will Cost a Cool .Million
By SAUL HANSELL


One of the characteristics of the Internet Corporation for Assigned  
Names and Numbers has been its commitment to create a level playing  
field between big companies and individuals who use the Internet. Its  
cumbersome decision-making process is open to input from all sides.  
And its core role — assigning the domain names used by Web sites —  
has been quite egalitarian: First come, first served. (Trademark  
issues aside.)

That’s all changing with a radical revision to the way domain names  
are assigned. Big companies are going to be able to get prime  
addresses that individuals and small business will not be able to  
afford.

Icann is about to let anyone start a top-level domain — the part of  
an Internet address to the right of the period. It mainly says this  
plan will let entrepreneurs sell specialty addresses to people and  
companies interested in certain areas, like .shoes or .movies.

But there is another use for the new top-level domains: simpler Web  
addresses for companies. Expect to see the likes of .amazon, .ibm  
and .pepsi. This will let them offer slightly faster ways to get to  
their various subsections, books.amazon or servers.ibm. I’m not so  
sure how much of a benefit to users that is over books.amazon.com,  
but every character is a chance for an error or confusion, so a  
simpler name can’t be anything but better.

What about a company’s home page? This is where things may really get  
interesting. Right now, Internet conventions require text before and  
after the period. So you’ll need to go to home.amazon or  
amazon.amazon to get to the company’s home page. Browsers right now  
treat text with no periods differently. Sometimes the text is sent to  
a search engine; some corporate networks use the text to go to  
internal sites.

But if top-level domains become widely used by popular Web sites,  
browser makers may well decide to treat a single word entered in the  
browser bar as a pointer to that domain’s home page. Suddenly, you  
will be able to get to Amazon and Pepsi typing a single word, no dots  
needed.

What would stop everybody then from rushing to get their own top- 
level domain? It might be very fine to own .saul, as I missed out  
buying saul.com. The answer is money. It costs $185,000 simply to  
apply for a top-level domain. Then there are the legal bills to  
shepherd your application through Icann. And the organization  
requires a fair bit of technology to be certified to run a domain.

All in, it will cost $500,000 to $1 million to set up shop on the  
Internet after the dot. That means that not only will individuals be  
shut out of owning top-level domains, but small and mid-sized  
businesses could also find the price of entry too high.

So here’s where the two-tier Internet is going to hit home with  
users. Companies that own top-level domains may well stand out from  
those that don’t.

Does .citi seem more established than hometownbank.com? Is .gap a bit  
more fashionable than tiedyetshirts.com?




IP JUSTICE
Robin Gross, Executive Director
1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org



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