Thousands Of New Land Rushes To Come Thanks To ICANN!

[radioz]

So it's official: .whatever really is coming soon:

ICANN Policy Issues
Dear ICA Members and Newsletter Subscribers:

It may seem like a quiet summer, but a lot has been going on at ICA. However, I will be brief in order to try to get more of you to read the newsletter. Please feel free to write me if you have comments or questions about issues brought up here.

In case you haven’t heard, ICANN approved a plan in Paris to add virtually unlimited new TLDs including those with non-ASCII characters. This is likely to lead to big changes in the domain space in the years to come with some big companies probably acquiring their own TLD. Anyone out there want to fund .ica for our members’ exclusive use?

ICANN’s Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) is going through a review to address concerns about protection of registrants. ICA is preparing comments now on the proposed changes. Furthermore, I am on an ICANN Business Constituency (BC) workgroup tasked with preparing the constituencies comments on the proposed RAA changes. If you have any comments about this proposal, please share your comments with me quickly and submit your comments individually by August 4th.

I am leading a one-person BC drafting group for comments on ICANN’s gTLD Registry Failover Plan. ICA is also preparing comments on the plan. It is inevitable that as ICANN adds hundreds or even thousands of new gTLDs, some registries will fail.

The plan enables failed registries to be replaced by a new registry that takes over the TLD from a failed registry. Registrants should be protected from losing their names when this occurs. However, if a new registry is not found quickly, a TLD can be closed and the TLD removed from the root. A new entity could then conceivably apply for the closed TLD and it could be started as a brand new operation, without any registrations. In preparation for drafting comments for BC, I have been discussing my desire to see registrants have first rights to domains lost because of a TLD closure if the TLD is delegated to a new registry within some reasonable time, maybe a year. I am not getting any support or opposition from BC so I will probably include them in draft comments for the constituency. I welcome feedback from ICA members about this issue as well. If you agree that registrant protection for reestablished TLDs should be added to the plan, submit your individual comments to ICANN.

I also worked on an ICANN GNSO drafting group about inter-registrar transfer policy headed by ICA member, Mike O’Conner. Our drafting group had a very limited scope. We were only clarifying text of four of the nine reasons for which a registrar can deny a transfer. The group succeeded with improvements to two of the reasons and decided that the other two required greater policy development work. Once changes are implemented registrars should no longer be able to prevent a registrar transfer because of a registrant change or whois edit within the last 60 days. Registrars will not be able to use reason 8 to deny a transfer after a domain renewal. The workgroup report is available here.

Thank you to ICA members for your support. Enjoy the rest of your summer.

Best regards,
Michael Collins

InternetCommerce.org
(202) 657-4570

Here is the link to the actual ruling from ICANN: http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-4-26jun08-en.htm and a little more http://www.icann.org/topics/new-gtld-program.htm.


Frankly, we likely already have too many extensions, .ME being the latest one in search of a purpose. At least that is a country code and was granted by right. This should really intensify the value of .COM, .ORG, and a few other extensions with super strong identities. It will be extremely bad news for the newer and lesser extensions, I would think.

It is always difficult to understand how big groups of supposedly knowledgeble people can make decisions like this. Maybe the registrars will be happy with thousands of new extensions to register from here to eternity. Making registrars (and other big money interests) happy seems to be the main purpose of ICANN's existence as I see it.

 

[invincible]

They are going to earn big money, but this will cause the big chaos in the web.

 

[Rubber Duck]

Why don't you refer directly to and quote the ICANN policy document rather than reguritated nonsense from a vested interest group.

 

[Ehsan]

i wonder if these new extensions will increase value of .com and the top extensions or decrease there value ???

 

[splonk]

this would be "the beginning of the internet" hitting the fan.

 

[radioz]

Why don't you refer directly to and quote the ICANN policy document rather than reguritated nonsense from a vested interest group.

Links added. Pretty similar content though.

 

[Ownager]

i wonder if these new extensions will increase value of .com and the top extensions or decrease there value ???

Yeah I had a similar thought. Would this hurt the .com , or strengthen it. And what of the other prominent extensions (.net, .org)

 

[Rubber Duck]

Well, what is does is give much more choice, especially to those that don't write in Latin scripts.

It makes domains much more like commodities. The value of the average domain will be no greater your average car number plate. However, the really special ones will remain special, and be much more recognised for how special they really are, and hence more valuable.

To me it suggests that the real value is going to be in dot Com and ccTLDs (including IDN versions), with dot net and dot org probably retaining popularity around existing levels, and just about everything else struggling to maintain any real commercial value from a speculation perspective.

 

[staffjam]

Rubber duck - pretty much agree with all you've just said. Hope it works out that way. I think it's all dependant on the roll out's execution -sadly, i don't have great faith in ICANN

 

[Rubber Duck]

Rubber duck - pretty much agree with all you've just said. Hope it works out that way. I think it's all dependant on the roll out's execution -sadly, i don't have great faith in ICANN

Maybe not, but the ICANN space is the only game in town, so success is going to based on following what they are doing. We operate in a market where they set the rules, like it or lump it. To date this fact has been largely ignored by the domain establishment, except for forming the ICA to go there and lobby. Like that is ever going to work!

 

[acronym007]

It makes domains much more like commodities. The value of the average domain will be no greater your average car number plate. However, the really special ones will remain special, and be much more recognised for how special they really are, and hence more valuable.

I agree with that 100%... I think it will open allot of eyes, some people will now see why a certain .com is priced so high. They will start to understand the dynamics of the domain industry once they spend 100k on a new shiny tld but it will come with no natural traffic, then they will have to spend another 100k to advertise it. Some new tld's will be great, some will flop. The whole thing should bring in 1000's of new people to our business.

 

[NetworkMsia]

they can go all they want building new cities in Dubai, building palm island, tallest tower and etc...

my properties in the heart of New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, London, Toronto will continue to rise no mather what!

 

[Asperger]

It'll create chaos, people will naturally fall-back on google for order.ICCAN & Google, the ONLY winners here.

 

[Gregcyber]

Search engines will rule the internet.

 

[Rubber Duck]

Search engines will rule the internet.

Most people already do, but Google has serious competition in Japan, Russia and China.

Search is compliments and supplements direct navigation. I use it all the time.

It will not, however, replace direct navigation, and this change in the availability of names will have no impact either way.

 

[Jacksplat]

many domain buyers happen to be domainers. If domaners become uncertain then it's obvious domain value will drop. Dot ca is a perfect example of a reseller market (among domainers). Dot com has more end users but still heavily depends on domainers (resellers/speculators). All that said, I expect value of domains in general to drop significantly. Highly doubtfull the values will go up again considering the SE involvment in navigation. Could be a time in the future that ip's will be the address and the surfers will get to your page through seo or ad campaigns.

go ahead, flame my ***.

 

[Irish31]

many domain buyers happen to be domainers. If domaners become uncertain then it's obvious domain value will drop. Dot ca is a perfect example of a reseller market (among domainers). Dot com has more end users but still heavily depends on domainers (resellers/speculators). All that said, I expect value of domains in general to drop significantly. Highly doubtfull the values will go up again considering the SE involvment in navigation. Could be a time in the future that ip's will be the address and the surfers will get to your page through seo or ad campaigns.

go ahead, flame my ***.

I'd never think of doing such a thing Kevin!

I don't fully agree with everything said mind you. I honestly do not believe this will hurt domain holders in currently strong extensions. I can see Coke taking .Coke and everyone nodding in approval as it makes sense. But who gets .SoftDrink?

I'm really thinking the bureaucracy of this all will bog it down very badly soon after launch, and the public is just going to take a "whatever, i'm sticking with what I know" attitude.

Maybe 10 years down the road this will be a big thing, but I just don't feel that it will impact many of us anytime soon.

 

[David G]

Some people including Internet Commerce Assn appear to be operating under the assumption the public will be buying domains in the new extensions and thus the worry about the new registry going out of business and domains being lost.

I believe that is a misguided view and feel the vast majority of the new extensions will be operated by companies wanting to market or protect their brand and will not even offer registrations to the general public. An example is www.ford instead of www.ford.com which I am sure Ford Motor Company would apply for.

 

[krossat]

What about registrars launching extensions like .car, .house, .sell, .buy, and names to be sold to individuals like computer.buy and repair.car etc?

Some people including Internet Commerce Assn appear to be operating under the assumption the public will be buying domains in the new extensions and thus teh worry about the new registry going out of business and domains being lost.

I believe that is misguided and not accurate view and feel most of the new extensions will be operated by companies wanting to market or protect their brand and will not even offer registrations to the general public. An example is www.ford instead of www.ford.com which I am sure Ford Motor Company would apply for.

 

[Jdaly]

What I'm wondering is how will this effect SEO on the search engines? If I have relevant sites and equal SEO with .car as well with .com when I type "car" into Google, will .car have a better chance of eventually having a stranglehold on the front page? Or if I type in "Coke" will it come up "Coke.coke" then "Coke.com" and everything else with the coke extension? This might not occur at first but it would make sense..I would guess that's up to the search engines to sort out.