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ICANN Asks FTC To Rule On .sucks gTLD Rollout

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

DW100 writes: "ICANN, the body in charge of overseeing the management and rollout of new top level domains, has asked the FTC to investigate whether the registry running .sucks is acting illegally . ICANN's in-house legal team raised concerns that the registry was selling the domains to brand owners in a 'predatory' manner. "The issues relate to concerns brands wishing to buy the .sucks domain, which went on sale on 30 March for a three-month ‘clearing house' period, will have to pay $2,500 to register it for their brand. This is far in excess of the price that will be offered to the general public and the price of other top-level domains."

5 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Seems fair by Vihai · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The new gTLDs are a monstruosity under any technical viewpoint. So it seems fair someone abuses them.

  2. Cash grab, then stupid? by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So, basically the ICANN approved this, sold it ... and only then did they stop and think "is this a good idea"?

    Way to do your due diligence.

    No, wait, this is exactly how you don't do something like this.

    This pretty much could be seen as a potential for a shakedown racket from miles away ... don't want McDonalds.sucks to be a valid website? Well, you keep adding zeroes to the check until I tell you to stop.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  3. Where's the money going? by The+New+Guy+2.0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    $2500 per trademark is a lot to pay for trademark owners compared to the $15 or so .com, .net, and .org domains, and the intent of this is so that competitors and detractors can post attack ads against the trademark holder. This shouldn't have been allowed... who's profiting off of this?

  4. Pot vs kettle by Sqr(twg) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How is this different from what ICANN did when tried to get every major brand to pay them $185.000 for a gTLD?

  5. Re:Classic brinksmanship by petermgreen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If someone owns a particular trademark, why not just wait for someone to shell out for the .sucks version, and then lawyer the shit out of them?

    If paypal could have shut down paypalsucks.com by "lawyering the shit out of them" don't you think they would have done so by now. I don't see why paypal.sucks would be any different.

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    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register