Why should you care?
Top Level Domains are the final part of the URL for a web address (and email) – up until now, those were .com, .net, .org, .gov, .mil and country codes like .mx, .ca, .uk. Top level domains and the rules for issuing them (and revenue from registering one) were dictated by governments and largely dominated by the US Government.
A generic Top Level domain allows any entity that meets a basic criteria and goes through a prioritization process to set up their own gTLD. The plan is to eventually have 1,400 of these. The new gTLD can have non-Latin characters, so many of them contain Chinese characters.
This has potential for creating chaos and causing an unending series of trademark battles. Imagine if someone created .sucks and people registered microsoft.sucks, Starbucks.sucks, etc
Among the first group to rollout are .democrat
http://JohnBoehnerIsACloset.Democrat/
So far, this concept hasn’t caught much traction, but now the flood gates are open.
Streaming.directory ?
Tend to agree; it’s more likely to put money into the pockets of the registrars and copyright & trademark lawyers than anyone else. i.e. Seems like a scheme to induce domain holders to register new TLDs in order to ‘protect’ a trade name or copyright.
My registrar(s) keep sending me reminders about the new TLDs, so they clearly view this as a potential wind-fall. I’m not convinced it’ll work out that way. The problem I have with the current situation is how domain registrars are allowed to ‘expire’ a domain, then squat on the name while demanding a ‘premium’ price for it. If I recall, that was one of the reasons cited for opening it up (away from Network Solutions).
As for a .sucks TLD, the so-called search engines already filter (censor) such results.
ICANN has set up some sort of trademark registry to head off some of this, but they say right up front it is pretty toothless
I’ve had to deal with “ICANN’t” on a few occasions, none of it was pleasant:
One of my reliable registrars (U.S. company) was ‘deaccredited’ by ICANN for what I’d consider a minor issue. ICANN then took bids from other registrars to assume admin/renwal$ of the domains. Registrants received no notification until -after- the takeover… preventing us from transferring domains to a registrar of -our- choice.
[Note: ICANN accepted bids from any ‘qualified’ registrar, anywhere in the world.]
The new registrar, based in India (besides being a bit incompetent) then withheld my transfer/unlock codes and made it extremely difficult to undo ICANN’s folly… whose policy forbids transferring domains for 60 days, which caused a new set of problems.
ICANN typifies an incompetent, bloated bureaucracy… one merely needs to visit their website and view the ‘diversity’ of staff photos and EEO hires to identify the problem.
It’ll be interesting to see how much more ‘bureaucratic’ they get with the new TLD’s.
The trademark issue is a sticky wicket. Until trademarks are issued by the United Nations and its global government, you’re going to have conflicting claims. Deloitte has been retained to create a trademark clearinghouse to gather data, but giving them your proof of trademark neither creates any legal protection or prevents registration by others using your name – yet.