In a letter addressed to ICANN and posted on the Guild’s website, President Scott Turow stated the group “strongly object to ICANN’s plans to sell the exclusive top-level domain rights for generic book-industry terms.” The Wall Street Journal reports the publishing group has similar objections. (Update: the AAP sets out the reasons for its objections in a letter here.)

The issue, which remains arcane for many outside of the domain name industry, arose as part of ICANN’s decision to open up the list of top-level domains to all comers. In practice, this means hundreds of new suffixes will join familiar ones like “.com” and “.org” as part of the internet. It also means companies that win the right to control names can choose between keeping the names for their own use or earning money when the names are bought and sold in the open market.

Both Amazon and Google have paid to obtain the right to run hundreds of new names though it’s still unclear what the companies intend to do with them. Google has indicated it will keep suffixes related to its core business, such as “.goog” or “.search,” for its private use while making others like “.store” and “.dog” open to anyone. Amazon, which also wants to run names like “.kindle” and “.movie” declined to respond to the Wall Street Journal’s request for comment.

Barnes & Noble has also objected that Amazon could abuse its control over the names to the detriment of the publishing industry. In theory, this could occur if Amazon agreed to to grant a “.book” or “.author” website to favored writers or publishers but not to rivals.

Google and Amazon are just two of hundreds of companies applying to run the new domain names. In some cases, there is only one applicant for the name while in other cases multiple firms have asked ICANN to run names like “.movie.” In the latter situation, ICANN will choose between the competing applicants. (You can see the full list of proposed names and applicants here).

The timing and the process for the arrival of the new names is unclear. In no small part, this is due to the murky operations of ICANN. The LA-based organization is nominally a nonprofit with a mission to run the internet’s naming system, but it has attracted controversy for failing to protect trademark owners who accuse it of facilitating “shakedowns,”  and for self-dealing among its members.

Last week, the CEO of GoDaddy, which is the world’s biggest registrar of domain names, predicted the first series of new names will arrive in June and that others will be rolled out in batches of 20 in the weeks that follow.

GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving, attending a large scale meeting of current and future domain registries this week, said by phone that no one knows exactly when the first batch of new names will be available but that the “over/under” consensus among the sellers is three months from now.

Under the process, the new names — which include suffixes like “.party,” “.dog” and “.mormon” — are expected to be rolled out in batches of 20 at a time. The impending sales will deliver millions of dollars to the domain name industry which makes major money off registration fees and in the secondary market for internet names.

The industry has been touting the addition of the approximately 2000 new suffixes as a “land rush” and a “gold rush.” Critics, however, have warned the process will mean a surge in cyber-squatting and trademark infringement. Companies, which have likened it to a shakedown, are already exasperated at having to pay for new names like “.xxx” they don’t need or want but feel obliged to obtain lest someone abuse them. This could occur, for example, if someone who is not Disney bought the name “www.disney.dog”.

The domain name sales have also been characterized as a brazen act of self-dealing by ICANN, an unaccountable agency that overseas the naming process for the internet.

GoDaddy’s Irving defends the process, saying “free market economics allow people to buy the names they want.” He added that the potential for abuse is lower since so-called domain parking (sitting on a name but using it just for ads) is not as big of a business as it once was.

The first of the new names to go on sale are likely to be non-Roman scripts like Chinese or Russian. These were given high priority by ICANN and the order of others was determined by lottery; other names tapped to go early are “.wedding” and “.buy.” (You can see the priority list here).

GoDaddy, anticipating a sizable amount of new business, said it is making its website easier to navigate in response. The company this week also dropped its own application to manage “.casa” and “.home” in order not to be perceived as competing with the names it sells on behalf of others.

(Image by  d3images via Shutterstock)

There’s been a lot written about the domain-name “land grab” that ICANN — the agency in charge of the internet’s central address system — unleashed recently, by offering companies the chance to register thousands of new top-level domains that could be used alongside the usual selection like .com and .org. While some of the suggestions are amusing, others are more troubling: Google, for example, wants the exclusive right to reserve domains such as .search and .blog for its own use, and Amazon wants to do the same with .music and .cloud. Some critics, including open-web advocate and blogging pioneer Dave Winer, think this is wrong and shouldn’t be allowed. Are they right?

Just to recap, ICANN — otherwise known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which used to be a U.S. government-funded agency but is now a non-profit managed by a variety of industry stakeholders — decided last year that it was going to add hundreds or even thousands of new “top level” domains to the system. The agency says that this is driven by a desire to open up competition in the domain-registry business, but others argue that it is a revenue grab by ICANN and others (since registrants had to pay $185,000 to file each claim and will pay monthly fees as well) and will make the internet even more complicated.

Google wants .blog and Amazon wants .book

A couple of weeks ago, ICANN released the names of the companies and individuals who had applied to register new domains — a massive laundry list that includes everything from .beer and .lol to .gay and .asian. As my colleague Jeff Roberts described at the time, two of the biggest registrants were Google and Amazon: the former applied for more than 100 domains through a subsidiary called Charleston Road Registry, and Amazon applied for more than 75. Google’s applications range from .lol and .fun to .search and .map, while Amazon has applied for .music, .book and .like, among others.

The part of these applications that raised warning flags for Winer and others was what the companies said they planned to do with them. In Google’s case, the web giant said that some of the domains — such as .lol and .fun – would be open to the public to register addresses on, but others would be closed and for use by Google properties only, including .search and blog. The .blog domain would only be for users of Google’s Blogger software, the application said:

Google will manage a process whereby users will be able to make use of unique vanity names in the gTLD; such second-level domains will only point to the Google offering.

Amazon, meanwhile, has said that all of the 76 domains it has filed an application for will be its sole property and will be used for its own purposes — in other words, not available to the general public — and that includes .cloud and .music and .book, and even .news. Although the success of the applications by Google and Amazon is not guaranteed, the terms of the ICANN auction make it sound as though no reasonable offer will be refused, in the interests of enhancing competition. But does giving Google .blog solely for its own internal use serve that purpose?

Winer and other critics of the move, including Irish blogger and domain registrar Michele Neylon, say they have no argument with either Google or Amazon — or any other company, for that matter — controlling their own domains, such as .google or .amazon or even .gmail or .kindle, since those relate to trademarks that they have as a corporation. But why should Google be allowed to single-handedly use .blog, asks Winer — who helped pioneer the medium through his Userland software:

[W]hat if the name was created by an open source community, without the financial resources to mount a challenge? I have some standing there, because I played a role in establishing blogs. How does Google get the right to capture all the goodwill generated in the word blog?

Should Google control .cloud, or Amazon .news?

Even something as seemingly innocuous as .cloud could become contentious, especially since both Google and Amazon are vying for exclusive control of the domain — and Google is expected to announce at its upcoming I/O conference that it is launching an Amazon-style cloud service, which it will presumably want to distinguish from that of its competitor. Should ICANN be giving one company or the other the exclusive right to offer companies a .cloud address? And what about .news? Controlling that could theoretically allow Amazon to convey benefits on news entities that play by its rules.

One counter-argument that some commenters have made on the discussion at Hacker News around Winer’s blog post is that domain names are becoming increasingly irrelevant, since many web users simply type a bunch of keywords into their search box or address bar (which in Google’s Chrome browser are the same thing) and then expect the search engine to figure out where they want to go. By that logic, having a .blog or .book or even .news domain isn’t really going to cause much trouble, since one domain isn’t likely to be preferred over another.

But is that really the case? Prominent Google critic Scott Cleland has argued that the web giant could easily give preferential treatment to its own .blog or .search properties over those on other domains when it comes to search, just as it gives a higher profile to its own Google+ social results as part of the somewhat contentious “Search Plus Your World” feature. Cleland goes so far as to argue that Google’s control of such domains would give anti-trust regulators even more ammunition for their ongoing investigation of the company.

Whether ICANN accepts any of the applications from Google and Amazon remains to be seen — but if it does, there will be an even bigger spotlight on what those companies plan to do with them, and whether that is in the interests of the web as a whole.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Fabio Venni and Wesley Fryer

What are these new names and when will they arrive?

The suffix at the end of a website is called a “top level domain,” or TLD. Right now there are about a dozen top level names like “.com” or “.biz” plus other all the ones reserved for countries like “.ca” for Canada or “.jp” for Japan. Now, hundreds of more TLD’s like “.lol” and “.apple” are set to be live by early next year. The complete list of names and their would-be owners was posted for the first time today and can be found here.

Who will own the new names?

In some cases, familiar companies like Google and Amazon have applied to own the names. In most cases, it’s companies you haven’t heard that want to make money selling websites  (for instance, the owner of “.dogs” could sell names like “www.rover.dogs” and “www.lassie.dogs”).

So all these companies are now going to run the internet?

Not exactly. Running a top level domain registry is an expensive and complicated affair. While some big technology firms like Apple might be up to the task, most companies are not. They will instead decide to outsource that part of it to existing registries and focus instead on the business of selling websites.

How does a company get a TLD in the first place?

The applicants paid a non-refundable $185,000 application fee to request a name. If they can show that they have the qualifications to do the job, they will likely get it. They will then have to pay an annual fee of at least $25,000 to keep it.

What if more than one company wants the same name?

This is an issue. Today’s list reveals that 11 companies applied for “.app”, nine applied for “.art”, seven for “.news” and so on (see here for most popular names). When there are multiple applications for a name, the companies that meet the technical qualifications will have an auction to determine who gets to own it.

What happens now that the names have been announced?

There will be a sixty-day period for the public to comment. According to trademark lawyer Joanne Ludovici-Lint of McDermott Will & Emery, companies will then have seven months to bring formal objections to any of the proposed names. Disputes will be resolved by ICANN (see below) and the World Intellectual Property Office, which are the same bodies that resolve disputes over website ownership.

Why do we have all these new names in the first place?

This was ICANN’s idea. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit agency located in Los Angeles that oversees internet names and addresses. Over the last decade, it added new TLDs such as “.jobs” and “.coop” and then decided to make the number of TLD’s essentially limitless.

Why is there a controversy over the new names?

Critics say it will lead to a new flood of cyber-squatting. Brand owners are already upset with ICANN for creating new TLD’s like “.pro” or “.travel” that they don’t want or need. In the case of last year’s “.xxx”, for instance, major companies across America called the scheme a “shakedown” and “extortion” because they felt forced to buy up the names before a squatter did. The arrival of hundreds or thousands of new names will exacerbate the problem. “Father of the internet” Vint Cerf has also expressed skepticism, recently telling a Dutch newspaper (translation):

“Hundreds of new brands and generic names to add now? I see no benefit in that. Many companies fear that they will soon must follow hundreds of new Internet extensions to ensure that their names never be abused. They have a point.”

So who does ICANN report to?

The body was once overseen by the U.S. Department of Commerce but in 2006 it signed an agreement that made it autonomous. It now professes allegiance to a “multi-staker model” but in reality appears to be accountable to no one at all. As this devastating article by a Wired editor recounts, former members of ICANN have engaged in a brazen act of self-dealing by creating the scheme to sell the names and then turning around and offering registry and consulting services (a trademark lawyers says today’s list shows that a company owned by the former ICANN chair has filed the third most applications). ICANN has also ignored requests by companies to create a “defensive registry” that allow them to protect their names and is planning to use half of the hundreds of millions of fees it is collecting to fund a legal war-chest.

(Image by Anna Omelchenko via Shutterstock)

While Google revealed this month that it would be applying for names like “.youtube” and “.lol”, Amazon has so far been silent about its domain name ambitions. The process, which is being run by internet naming authority ICANN, offers an opportunity for companies to control new top level domain names that will join familiar ones like “.com” and “.org”

Amazon is the only applicant for a number of names like “.author,” “.audible,” “.fire” as well as its own name, “.amazon.” It is competing with other companies, however, for a number of names related to its core business such as “.books” and “.buy”. The competitors for the “.book” name don’t appear to be publishers but are instead internet companies that make money selling website names.

Amazon’s most interesting application may be for “.news,” a field where the retail giant has so far had little involvement. There are six other applicants for “.news” and none of these companies are recognizable news or media brands.

In the case of the names that have multiple bids, ICANN will evaluate the applicants on technical merits and in some cases have an auction. The applications cost a non-refundable $185,000 each and successful bidders will be obliged to pay high ongoing annual fees to ICANN. Many of the new domain names are expected to go live next year.

Here is a link to the rest of the list. We will have a full explanation of the new names and what they mean to consumers and businesses later today.

It appears that some of the names will be run by Google. In a blog post this afternoon, the company said it has applied to control not just “.google” or “.youtube” but a series of other names as well.

The search giant revealed that it has designs on names “related to its core business” like “.docs” as well as ones with “interesting and creative potential” like “.lol.”

What this means in practice is that sometime next year Google will be in a position to use and sell websites like, say, “catsonskateboards.youtube” or “antitrust.lol.”

Domains gone wild

Google is one of about 1,300 reported companies who are applying for the right to run domain name registries. Although the applications will be officially revealed next month, some of them like “.vegas” and “.rugby” have been named already. A company called Directi Group disclosed today that it has applied for .web, .bank, .loans, .insurance, .law, .shop, .app, .website, .click, .online, .music, .hotel .doctor, .baby and .shop.

ICANN has portrayed the domain names sales as a “land rush” but the process has been fiercely criticized by US companies who have described it instead as a “shakedown.” The companies complain they will be forced to shell out more money to buy the names before squatters do. Right now, many companies spend hundreds of dollars to defensively register domains they do not need like “.info”, “.biz” and “.xxx.”

The Association of National Advertisers has demanded ICANN create a “Do Not Sell” registry but the body has ignored the request. ICANN, whose former members have been accused of brazen self-dealing, will make hundreds of millions from the sales and plans to use half of it for a legal war-chest.

(Image by Andreas Meyer via Shutterstock)

ICANN, the body charged with running the internet’s naming system, had to extend the overall process after an embarrassing glitch that revealed some of the confidential applications.

Applicants are paying $185,000 for the opportunity to sell new internet names that will become available in addition to familiar ones like “.com” or “.org.”

According to former Vice-Chair of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee, Lena Carlsson, the applicants include financial and pharmaceutical brands who want to purchase their own names. She also said there are competing bids for names like “.eco” and “.green” and that there is interest from Asia in domains with non-Roman characters.

Carlsson, who is now a VP at a domain services business called MelbourneIT, says that “.vegas,” “london” and “.sydney” are also among the names to be revealed. She says there have been approximately 2,300 applications from about 1,300 participants.

A Shakedown

While ICANN has touted the name sales as a “land rush,” critics have slammed the agency for corruption and brazen self-dealing. (For more dirty details, see this account from a Wired editor).

They have pointed out that many of the companies that want to help inaugurate the new domains are run by former ICANN members and that the body has already pulled in more than $350 million in new fees. ICANN’s own documents show that it plans to use a good chunk of this for a legal war-chest to fight off objections to its cash grab.

Meanwhile, businesses that don’t want or need the new domain names complain that ICANN won’t heed their call to create a “do not sell” registry.

Businesses worry that the new names will increase brand-jacking and cyber-squatting — situations where opportunists and criminals effectively hold a company’s name at ransom unless they agree to buy it back (check out the Pinterest.org
page for instance).

In practice, the new names mean a company like Disney must worry not only about someone buying “Disney.pro” or “Disney.xxx” but also names like “deals.disney” or “disney.fun.” Businesses and trademark lawyers have said ICANN’s behavior is a shakedown and “extortion.”

In this light, the reportedly robust sales to financial firms may simply represent companies like BankofAmerica shelling out $185,000 to buy “.bankofamerica” before someone in Nigeria or Russia buys it instead.

[Corrections: An earlier version of this story mistakenly identified Lena Carlsson as a former ICANN board member; she was a former Vice-Chair of ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee. The story also understated the number of applications; there are approximately 2,300 not 1,300 reported applications.]

Residents of the Big Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) learned this week that their city could be the first to have its own domain name — a fancy new “.nyc” instead of boring old “.com”.

New Yorkers so far have greeted the news as further proof that the world is indeed about them but, this time, they should be careful about what they wish for.

History shows that new domain names arrive as a digital novelty but then become little more than a tax on business owners.

That’s because a company only needs one domain to host their website but must also purchase other ones to protect themselves from scammers and cyber-squatters.

The only ones who win are the scammers and the registry operators who line their pockets by forcing companies to buy names they don’t want or need.

New York City landmarks like Katz’s Deli and Magnolia cupcakes are doing just fine with their existing websites but may grudgingly buy the new name so they don’t have to pay a ransom to free “Katz.nyc” or “Magnolia.nyc” from a cyber-squatter.

This not a hypothetical problem — Verizon recently filed a lawsuit to reclaim 660 different fake website names. Each new domain name, including gems like “.biz,” “.travel” and “.mobi” just makes it more expensive for companies to stamp out the squatters. The problem is likely to get bigger as ICANN staffers, in a brazen act of self-dealing, are leaving the non-profit web overseer to run their own domain name companies.

New York City’s Digital Officer, Rachel Stearne, suggests an unnamed company in Virginia is likely to be the registry operator for “.NYC”

There is already a website called NYCdomains.org that is taking orders for “.NYC” names.

Update: Nick Sbordone, a city official, says the website is misleading and that New York City has not authorized it to reserve names.

Sbordone also said that people and businesses will have to be able to show a nexus to New York — like a residence or a business — to be eligible to use “.nyc”

The city has yet to determine, however, if a “.nyc” buyer will have to show they are eligible before they buy the name. If not, places like Magnolia Bakery could use the rules to reclaim the name but would still have to spend money to enforce them against a cyber-squatter (in many cases, it could prove cheaper to just pay the ransom).

Sbordone added that the sale of “.nyc” names are at least a year away and that the city would consult local stakeholders in coming months.

Carole Post, the Commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, offered the following comment:

“We view the .nyc TLD as a unique opportunity, at a unique time, to ride the digital wave and keep New York City at the leading edge of innovation.”

That’s because today is the day that ICANN, the agency that administers Internet naming conventions, begins selling new ‘generic domain names’ for $185,000 a pop. That means new so-called generic TLD’s like “.donut” or “.sillyidea” (for example) are for now for sale.

Is this a good idea?

The folks at ICANN did a good job this week at seeding the press with “ain’t that swell” stories about a “land grab” in domain names that will create a wealth of new commerce. But meanwhile a coalition of major companies have been screaming to stop the process, and the FTC has been warning it will lead to a new wave of cyber-scams.

As we’ve reported in the past, companies are already fed up with fighting off cyber-squatters from the dozen or so existing top level domains, many of which are little-used (.biz, .jobs., .asia anyone?). The most recent example was the “.xxx” domain that brought titters to headline writers but was little more than a tax to the companies who had to buy it to ensure no one else did first. Lawyers I’ve spoken with regularly use the word “extortion” to describe the process.

The new gambit is the worst yet. Not only do companies have to shell out $185,000 to buy the name in the first place but they have to hand over large maintenance payments over a ten year period. They also have to become responsible for running a registry which is beyond the IT capacity of large companies.

Conveniently, technical and consultancy businesses are springing up to help — many of them run by former ICANN members.

Lest anyone doubt this is all about the cash, see the budget breakdown in a previous paidContent article. The article
describes a report by ICANN itself that states the agency hopes to double its revenues. And, in an indication that ICANN has an idea just how unpopular this will be, it plans to set aside about half of its windfall for a legal war chest.

This process is as if the FCC, on its own initiative, decided to sell new radio spectrum that might interfere with existing stations, and then turned around and suggested that broadcasters buy the new spectrum as part of a “land grab” — while also recommending former FCC employees as consultants. The ICANN episode is especially ironic because it happened on the watch of a Republican Congress who ordinarily goes ballistic if any agency exceeds its mandate by so much as an extra paper clip.

ICANN has attempted to rebuff its critics but its arguments so far are not convincing. It has pointed out that there has been support domains like “.music” and “.london” Well, fine. Sell those two domains and, if there is obvious support for other specific domains, sell those too. ICANN also says the system will allow companies in other companies to buy non-Latin domain names. Again, well fine. Create a handful of TLD’s in other languages.

The press is finally starting to catch on what is happening. A Wired editor offered a blistering account of ICANN this morning while the influential All Things D fingered the dollars at the heart of the scheme.

But it’s probably too late by now. The retired ICANN directors are likely clinking glasses this very moment, congratulating themselves for pulling this off. Yee-ha, boys, enjoy your cash grab.

The scheme in question involves turning the current internet naming system wide-open so that it’s possible to buy websites ending in anything — .disney, .redcross, .stevejobs, etc — and host content on them. ICANN, the body responsible for internet names, says the plan will unleash a flood of new innovation and internet commerce.

The problem is that no one wants or likes the plan. Brand owners are fed up with the digital debris they must manage already (including “.biz“, “.travel” and now “.xxx” sites) and don’t want more. Meanwhile, government agencies and NGO’s fear that more internet names simply mean more fraud and phishing.

The new scheme is particularly vexing to companies because it’s so expensive. Starting January 12, would-be registrants of “.chanel” or “.worldvision” must plunk down $185,000 to register the names or risk someone else grabbing them first.

“Companies are nervous,” said Andrea Calvaruso, a trademark expert with Kelley Drye in New York. She says that she has several big clients who are incredulous and resentful at having to acquire yet more domain names but feel they are over a barrel. The cost of running an entire domain system involves not just registration but legal and IT services, Calvaruso adds. Unless a brand is already an IT firm, she says they will have to pay a specialist firm to help them manage the ten year commitment.

An organization called Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight is pushing back against the initiative and has formed an international alliance of marketers and brands such as Dell, Xerox and Coca-Cola. Its website includes a letter from the lawyers of dozens of quasi-government groups like the WHO and the European Space Agency. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission on Friday issued a press release warning Americans that the new internet names will produce new scams.

So why is the plan going ahead all the same? In a word, money. In a recent report, ICANN revealed that the new plan will produce a windfall that will allow it to double its revenue.

Ordinarily, this sort of agency mission creep would be reigned in by political outrage. But that’s unlikely to occur here because ICANN has no real political master now that it has escaped formal oversight from the US Department of Commerce. The decoupling of ICANN from the US government occurred for the good reason that the internet and its naming system are a global, not American, enterprise. But the result is now that an important agency is accountable to no-one at all.

The only support for the scheme that I have uncovered came in the form of a strange press release chiding the US Senate for examining the scheme (no Senator came out in support). It also provides a link to a consultant and the advice: “The bottom line, the New gTLD expansion will happen and instead of concerning yourself with what you can’t control – you should be focusing on how to prepare for what is to come. “

Sounds good. I wonder if it’s too late to buy the “.bureaucracy” name.