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The great TLD landgrab

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25 March 2015

Billy MacInnesYou may have seen a few news stories over the past few days concerning the imminent arrival of some interesting Web domain names in June. Web hosting company 34SP.com issued a press release this month pointing out that the availability of TLDs (top level domains) such as .sucks, .porn and .adult could create a nightmare for brands and celebrities.

According to 34SP.com, experts are advising businesses to snap up uncomplimentary domain names before it’s too late. Companies have the option of registering negative domain names before they become freely available on 1 June and US pop/country superstar Taylor Swift has already registered taylorswift.porn and taylorswift.sucks, while Microsoft has reserved Office.porn and Office.adult.

34SP.com co-founder and technical director Daniel Foster said businesses should “do everything in their power to avoid being associated with negative messages – and it’s hard to imagine domain names like .sucks and .porn will foster positivity”.

He suggested companies should “swoop up the domains sooner rather than later” before domain registration becomes a free-for-all. “While some might use domains for good causes, by creating sites such as cancer.sucks for example, I’d predict that many will be swooping up the new names solely for defamatory purposes,” Foster added.

Although Foster neglected to mention a couple of other potentially popular ‘negative’ TLDs in .fail and .WTF, in the interests of balance, it should be noted that the list of forthcoming TLDs also includes .best, .cool, .fun, .hot, .love, .rocks and .wow, although there is no place for .rules or .great (yet).

Maybe companies and celebrities keen to accentuate the positive will snap up a few of those too although, unlike the negative TLDs, they won’t be buying them as a preemptive strike to bury them.

Weaponised
On the subject of using TLDs as a weapon, it might not just be embittered or angry individuals seeking to defame companies or celebrities that will be interested in buying them. I wonder if it might lead to an escalating arms race with competitors snapping up uncomplimentary domain names for their rivals.

I’m not suggesting for a minute that reputable IT companies would pursue such an underhanded, nefarious strategy but it would be kind of funny if they did. It would certainly liven things up. Perhaps they might not do it directly but employ middlemen or front organisations to buy the TLDs and run the relevant websites. You could end up with competing .sucks and .rocks websites for the same company, product or celebrity.

Would that be so bad? It might be a good thing if all the negativity was concentrated at a specific website as it could end up almost as a quarantine area for all the bad stuff. That way, a company or celebrity could just ignore all the bad vibes if they wanted to by avoiding the website. In fact, if they wanted to bask in positivity and praise, they could choose to only look at the .rocks or .best TLDs (they really have to get a .rules one out there soon!).

.later everyone.

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