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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."

17 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. I guess .sucks sucks by Slashdot+Parent · · Score: 4, Funny

    But who will register .sucks.sucks?

    --
    They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
  2. Seems fair by Vihai · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Seems fair by Ark42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I just keep adding these low-value (as in, user content) TLDs to blacklists, particularly for email. I'm sure I'm not the only sysadmin doing that, so the overall utility of all these stupid TLDs is basically as a spam-filter and nothing more. No serious business is going to operate on anything other than a .com/.net/.org even if they have to get a longer domain.

      --
      Morphing Software
  3. 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.
  4. 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?

    1. Re:Where's the money going? by TWX · · Score: 2

      Personally I don't think that domain names should be as inexpensive as they became, as it promoted cybersquatting equal to what this registrar is attempting to charge. $2500 is too high, but the original Internic prices were, in my opinion, not unrealistic because it generally priced people out of holding more than a few domains. A business that needed a domain for their business probably only needs a few, and persons that wanted their own vanity site didn't really need more than one either.

      When domains started costing less than a fast-food meal, suddenly all good domains were bought-up by people that will sell them to you for, oh, $2500. Even if they have to hold on to them for a decade before reselling, they're still making several orders of magnitude in profit for not actually providing any kind of service.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    2. Re:Where's the money going? by blang · · Score: 5, Funny

      .isapedofile sounds like a good "business" idea as well.

      --
      -- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
  5. You stupid bastards... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

    So, when ICANN floated the gTLD idea, everyone told them that it was pointless bullshit that would only end in trademark wrangling, shakedowns, and vast swaths of slum domains used for little more than scamming.

    They decided to go ahead anyway.

    Now they are shocked, hurt, and betrayed that someone would be using one of the new TLDs for less than upstanding purposes. What utter fools.

  6. Next up: by Krazy+Kanuck · · Score: 2

    .farts .smells .stinks ... its like Mad Libs for tlds

  7. Seems expensive for sure... by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 2

    I can see Dyson, Electrolux, Hoover, Bissell and many others having legitimate claims to those domains, and that price seems more than a tad steep. I'll be interested to see how this pans out.

    After all, if I were to create the Adespoton Super Straw as a startup, there's no way I'd want to have to buy this sort of a domain for such a price, especially if they're planning to drop it down to $8 in a few months.

  8. 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?

  9. Classic brinksmanship by jeffmeden · · Score: 2

    If no one paid for a .sucks domain, Google (where all information discovery starts out at on the internet anyway) would simply rank .sucks domains nice and far down and mcdonalds.sucks would be no more relevant than mcdonalds-sucks.tumblr.com so you can thank whoever it is that bought the first .sucks for this shitstorm. I just can't believe that it's 2015 and we are still debating how best to handle basic squatting. 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? Maybe because it would cost more than $2500 anyway.

    1. 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.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  10. Get 'em while they're hot! by Tokolosh · · Score: 2

    Still available (https://www.nic.sucks/domainsearch):

    ftc.sucks
    icann.sucks
    slashdot.sucks
    electrolux.sucks
    beta.sucks

    Taken:

    voxpopuli.sucks

    --
    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
  11. Re:Time to retire .com? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

    Na, we solve this by getting rid of DNS and just going to straight IP addresses.

    That will shut down this eternal September nonsense right quick.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  12. A good solution for the future by davidwr · · Score: 2

    For all future .TLD rollouts, allow trademark owners to put a "bar" on names they own and any similar spelling variants for no more than the cost of processing the paperwork - well under $5 plus a penny less for each additional name in the same request (companies typically have many trademarks, and each has many close spelling variants that typo-squatters would abuse). If a name is barred, anyone coming along later wanting to use the name would have to demonstrate that the entity holding the "bar" no longer has the trademark, or that the company wanting the name also holds a valid trademark. If two companies claim they want the name and both hold valid trademarks, then it would be handed out by lottery.

    Likewise, all existing .TLDs should be required to offer the same "low-cost bar" courtesy to any legitimate trademark-owner who asks for it.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  13. Brand owners should be prohibited.. by MpVpRb · · Score: 2

    ..from registering their name in the ,sucks domain

    It should only be available to their critics

    Otherwise..why bother?

    Who would want to go to McDonalds.sucks to see a pro-McDonalds ad?