Here comes the greatest Internet landgrab in history | Hacker News Reader

Here comes the greatest Internet landgrab in history

news.cnet.com

58 pointsiand83 comments

Semi-related: I've started several businesses, consulted with other startups...basically spent a lot of time trying to come up with business names only to find that a depressingly high percentage of the corresponding domains are being camped on by some clown who wants a ridiculous sum of money.

Domain squatting is without worth and indefensible. Squatters create nothing and they provide nothing of value in exchange for the extraordinary premiums they demand. It is a wholly extractive business model that costs entrepreneurs like myself thousand of dollars with no discernable return.

I recognize that squatting is the (semi)free market at work and as a pretty hard core libertarian I respect that. This does not, however, make me any less contemptuous of the business model or any less desirous of the opportunity to beat a squatter with a shovel.

EDIT: Changed verbiage, replacing the term "domainer" with "squatter."

This would be solved if ICANN raised their fee to $50 per year. Suddenly, domain squatting would not be profitable and it would free millions of domain names.

This is the right answer. Domains are too cheap, particularly in bulk.

As frustrated as some of us have gotten, on occasion, with domain squatters, it really isn't right to blame people for taking advantage of a system someone else set up.

I understand and agree that squatting sucks. Adding new gTLDs will only increase the land to squat upon. ICANN should deal with this problem by mandating that you have content on the site to eliminate squatting. They'd need to keep up on it and stay ahead of those gaming the system so eventually they'd get discouraged and f* right off.

Domain squatting is not a legitimate business, and I hate you of you're profiting from just being a dick like that.

Let me begin with this, you hate me. And I think that's ok. I made a living off domains for a while and continue to make money from them. Moving on...

I don't think that your solution is a real one. Getting 'discouraged and fucking right off' isn't going to happen as long as there are financial rewards. The best example is actual domain squatting (infringing on a company's TMs). The US implemented some HARSH penalties (up to 100k damages under ACPA) for it. It still exists. It still is PROFITABLE. People just setup empty corps in far away places with different laws.

You want to mandate some sort of content law on 200million domains? Here's just a few problems off the top of my head:

-new registrations - how long until content needs to be active?

-sold/transferred/traded names - same as above

-brand protection names without content?

-redirects?

-pages full of advertising?

-autoblogs full of auto content and ads?

-aggregators with ads?

There are a lot of strange cases and a very slippery slope when dealing with what is and isn't content. Finding someone to enforce that on hundreds of millions of sites? That just isn't going to work. It will mess everything up.

And guess what, those guys who are making all the money from domains now? We have the most to lose. We will know the rules the best and get around them.

You're not going to legislate it away or enforce it away. It just won't work.

"you hate me. And I think that's ok."

(Thanks for stepping in here and supporting the noble fight.)

The opportunity to make money in domains actually comes from the fact that not everyone thinks the same way about this. I don't think domain owners worry about this while enjoying the fruits of their business anymore than attorneys care that the much of the world thinks lawyers "suck". Or that the head of a large corporation cares that people think he is overpaid while he is living large and being waited on hand and foot and flying in private jets around the world.

If you are running a popularity contest and care what people think you will have a much harder time making money in life.

"ICANN should deal with this problem by mandating that you have content on the site to eliminate squatting."

Care to give an definition of "content on the site"?

"They'd need to keep up on it"

So you are mandating that content needs to be fresh and change. Exactly how often?

Not sure if possible, but they should have a rule where a single person can only own X domains. Justifying that you use the domain for content is tricky and can be easily bypassed. At least they should be trying, similar to the IPv4 shortage, but they don't seem to even acknowledge the problem.

"Not sure if possible, but they should have a rule where a single person can only own X domains."

Domains can be owned by companies and other entities. So there would be nothing to prevent someone from forming different entities and owning domains.

And in any case you are talking about a system that is grandfathered. You're not going to re-write the rules for millions of existing domain owners at this point.

It's too late for .com but for the new batch they could've done something to at least try to address the problem.

I'll take a squatted domain name for $50k any day over a domain name that is taken and not for sale at any price.

I'd much prefer to find ways to use that $50K that contribute to the economies that my industry supports and relies upon.

I'd rather burn $50K paying on-staff marketing or agencies to work around a sub-optimal domain name. I'd rather buy my staff new MBPs (or I would have before this soldered-in RAM bull). Hell, I'd rather support my local liquor store and buy a few cases of Great Divide and several dozen wings every Friday and invite everyone over for a free gutbombing.

Bottom line, I'm not willing to use my funds to perpetuate a business model that relies on a flavor of extortion.

Devil's advocate: how is this different from real estate? You can always get a domain name of some sort- it just might not be in a desirable TLD (neighbourhood). If you want a desirable address, you have to pay more.

It's different from real estate because domains are not like real estate, although squatters like to use comparisons to real estate as apologia.

A developed property in SF/NY isn't like a domain name, because at some point someone invested capital to build, much as someone must invest capital to build a website that resides at a given domain name. A completely undeveloped property in the middle of SF/NY has no intrinsic value: it's value based upon what's around it (e.g., the massive developments we call a city).

If we must have a real estate comparison to a domain name, it would be this: an island, made only of sand, out in the middle of an unending ocean full of other islands made only of sand, so geographically separated as to be completely isolated from each other.

One, this ocean does not exist on earth, and if it did, the real estate business would not be built around the buying and selling of these islands of sand for the purposes of development.

This feels a bit like a straw man, I know, but I'm trying to illustrate just how untenable the comparison between squatting and real estate truly is.

How's it different? For once there's more friction in buying land. There's more paperwork involved, there are zoning rules, and so on. More importantly you can't buy a piece of land for $10 and sell it for $50K a few years down the road. And just because there are similarities it doesn't make it right. In some countries you cannot own land at all, would you use that as an argument?

All those points just seem to be issues of scale, though. IS the principle any different?

More importantly you can't buy a piece of land for $10 and sell it for $50K a few years down the road.

You absolutely can. Perhaps "a few years" needs to be redefined to a decade or more, but land speculation is absolutely possible and done a lot.

That's very noble. But if that 50k domain name would beat the returns on all the other ways you are talking about deploying your capital, it only makes sense to buy it.

Yes, if.

It's not a matter of nobility, it's a matter of putting my money in the areas where the a) the ROI is highest with b) the highest probability of realizing that ROI.

My experience has demonstrated that forecasting the ROI on a domain name is...well, I don't want to say impossible, but the projections are difficult to compose and they've not proven to be realistic.

Now, I may just suck at projecting the annualized value of a domain name, in which case the problem is my level of suckage.

That's an odd response given the way you initially phrased it. It wasn't an economic comparison for your company directly (arguably it was indirect support for supporting industries). You talk about burning cash (which I would read as not spending efficiently at a minimum) and buying liquor. You've rephrased your disagreement now that domains aren't ROI oriented.

Is your objection really objective or emotional?

Yeah, sorry for the confusing terminology and context switching. I did not do a great job of communicating what the voices in my head were telling me.

I frequently talk about business in terms of flying an airplane. So I meant "burning cash" as I would mean "burning fuel" in the pursuit of getting from point A to point B. Didn't mean it in the context of getting a pile of it and lighting it on fire.

I was joking about the beer and wings bit.

Appreciate the clarification. In my honest opinion, there are very few domains that would really qualify as 50k names. I think the average sale is around 2k-2.5k according to the data I've seen. What would you say at that price?

Wouldn't do it. I'm just not willing to be a part of the squatter economy.

That goes for domain names I hold as well. I've sold several and have never charged more than what I have in them.

This is an extreme position, I realize this.

Anecdote: I was searching for domain names yesterday on my iPad 1, with my daughter asleep on my shoulder, and found 2 unregistered domains that I am considering buying in about 10 minutes. To say the least, I was not being very efficient and still found 2 domains I liked in 10 minutes where each would cost me under $10. There were a few others that squatters were selling that I also liked for under $20.

If you can't find a domain that you like at a reasonable price, you're doing it wrong. There's still a ton of domains not squatted on and squatted domains at reasonable prices out there waiting to be registered.

If you have a legitimate interest in the name and the current owner has no defensible interest/use of the name, you can file an UDRP and generally get the name.

If somehow I was able to register "big_company.com", I'd be pretty much destined to lose it to a company with that name, unless _I_ also had that personal name or had made some use of the domain historically in a context predicated use of the name.

tldr - you cant really squat something unless it is generic

So if I owned example.org, but example.com is used by a squatter -- assuming example is a specific, trademarkable name -- are you saying I could get the .com via UDRP? Have there been cases where this worked?

Yes.

No, maybe. A very qualified maybe.

I've tried the UDRP route. You have to have an extremely solid case to get the domain name. Furthermore, the domain name must be very very specific.

So if I've got a business called "Chris's Midwest TV Repair" and we've been in business for 25 years. If someone's squatting on chrissmidwesttvrepair.com then yeah, I can probably UDRP them. But I'm in the TV repair business, so I really need to spend my time finding something else to do before I'm buggy whipped, but that's a tangent.

If I'm just a startup trying to get a domain name, I have no case for a UDRP, nor should I.

"You have to have an extremely solid case to get the domain name."

Actually it's pretty well known within the business that the Plaintiffs win the majority of cases where the facts bear out their rights.

"So if I've got a business called "Chris's Midwest TV Repair" and we've been in business for 25 years. If someone's squatting on chrissmidwesttvrepair.com then yeah, I can probably UDRP them. But I'm in the TV repair business, so I really need to spend my time finding something else to do before I'm buggy whipped, but that's a tangent."

That's what its like to be a small business person.

"If I'm just a startup trying to get a domain name, I have no case for a UDRP"

You don't. A startup has no trademark rights in a domain until they establish trademark rights. The first step is to apply to the USPTO for a trademark.

You mean a domain squatter right? When did we start calling them domainers?

A domain squatter[1] sits on a domain name that relates to trademark (but without abusing the trademark) in hope of a sale on that basis, a "domainer" holds domain names that are brandable, or have keyword value, but are otherwise IP free.

They are often "parked" (those god-awful advertising pages, or worse psedo-content wrapped with advertising) which through type-ins and long-tail search can attract enough clicks to cover the annual cost of registration, or in some cases, many times it. In this way, "domainer" will aim to operate at no cost, or modest gain across a portfolio, with domain sales being the core revenue opportunity.

[Edit to add a reference]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersquatting

question: are they still making money from ads after google rolled panda and stuff? directly typing address, yes, but from search result?

Panda punishes "thin content" pages, so it's unlikely that they are making any money off Google search results. From what I've seen, all but the most common domains don't make much money off of type-in traffic, either. (Sedo, for instance, shows traffic to the domains parked with Sedo when you run a search for a key term on their site. The traffic is nearly always negligible.)

This is probably a consequence of newer browsers redirecting queries they can't understand to search engines vs. auto-completing a domain name.

From what I can see, most of these folks are just hoping some sucker is willing to come along and pay money for the domains. Sometimes it works; most of the time it doesn't, but that doesn't stop people from doing it because they figure one "big hit" is worth all the money they spent buying domains. Sort of like buying a lottery ticket, but slightly smarter.

Most parked pages make very little from search engine traffic. Very few were listed anyways. A couple domain parking solutions were trying to get around this but adding content hurts conversion rates on ads. The better names still get type in traffic and straight ads convert better on that.

I don't think search results were ever the driving source of traffic. A lot of places experimented, none really blew it away, so I can't imagine panda had much impact on the bottom line of any major players.

Good question. I think the term domainers is me succumbing to sqautters' attempt to sound more legit. I've updated accordingly and will give my brain 20 for falling for their attempted re-labeling.

"camped on by some clown"

Why is that language necessary?

"Domain squatting is without worth and indefensible."

"Squatters" buy something with the hopes of reselling. Exactly what is wrong with that other than you are frustrated that you don't want to pay for what they have to sell? Are you also frustrated that real estate in Silicon Valley or NYC sells for so much money? That some people bought at the right time and can now sell for more? That some people own homes and don't use them full time? That someone should get to use the home and they should give them up?

"Squatters create nothing and they provide nothing of value"

They can provide a domain name that you want. Read below on what happens when a domain is owned by someone that doesn't care about money (google).

I understand that HN is certainly against squatters in the worst way. And that it is frustrating to deal with some domain sellers (this is part of what I do for people).

I'm not defending the practices of some who are unreasonable. (I also want to point out that I am both on the buying and selling end just like an attorney can represent both parties in a lawsuit. I also own domain names as further disclosure and I've sold them for plenty of money.)

There is a domain I was trying to get for someone that google owned and it was very clear they weren't going to sell the domain. Not for any price. Any price. They don't need the money. It took hours of effort to just track down the person who controlled the domain for google. No dice. Had the domain been owned by a speculator a deal would have been done easily. This happens frequently actually. You have a better chance of getting a domain if it's not being used at all and owned by someone who wants to make money then you do if it's owned by a company that either doesn't need the money or is using it for their bakery and doesn't want to rebrand.

"beat a squatter with a shovel"

I think you have to think about this. You have a serious anger problem.

Hyperbole, I was using it. The worst I'm going to do to a domain squatter, should I meet one, is give them an uncomfortably firm handshake. Very firm. There may be some mild bruising. (That's more hyperbole there, to be clear. I'm exaggerating for effect.)

Nowhere in your response did you demonstrate where you as a squatter are providing value for the premium you ask over the ICANN cost. It's my contention that you provide none.

Squatting has no offline analogue, period. Trying to invoke real estate, a common tack, only succeeds at the most superficial levels. The barriers to entry, risks, and perpetuated costs of real estate speculation/ownership fracture the comparison quickly.

Note that nowhere have I said that squatting should be illegal, in fact I said that as a libertarian I understand why it has to exist. In the same vein, I believe other business models that are currently illegal should be legitimized, even though I find them as repugnant and without value as domain squatting.

Why is that language necessary?

What, "clown"? That's about the least offensive way of expressing frustration at people there is -- why is complaining about it necessary?

"Squatters" buy something with the hopes of reselling. Exactly what is wrong with that ...

All the usual problems with speculators, really: inflated prices, leading to non-speculators being priced out of the market; market instability as the speculators stampede one way or the other, being bubbles in the extreme case; etc etc.

They can provide a domain name that you want.

That's misinterpreting "provide nothing of value", and you know it.

You have a serious anger problem.

Because, of course, a cartoonish description on the internet of hypothetical violence is indicative of "a serious anger problem". And I'm the Pope.

Because, of course, a cartoonish description on the internet of hypothetical violence is indicative of "a serious anger problem". And I'm the Pope.

I bit the shovel thing from Patton Oswalt anyway. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDCjIjsZp_Y

If somebody (Google) doesn't want to sell the domain is because they have a good use for it (probably trademark protection). These cases are rare compared to the number of parked domains that only have the "for sale" sign on them. If the squatter would not have taken it then it would've been available for $10, not $10K.

"If somebody (Google) doesn't want to sell the domain is because they have a good use for it"

So you are saying that google can have a "good" use for a domain and speculating "probably trademark protection". Actually the domain that I am referring to was from a company that they acquired that was shut down. And no they don't have a good use for it. They told me that. They just don't care. It is of no benefit to the decision maker to sell the domain. He won't get the money. So why not hold on to it in case they have a use in 10 years? (And all the evidence points in that direction). Additionally: In the case of this particular domain they simply don't want what they feel is a potential competitor to get the domain.

"If the squatter would not have taken it then it would've been available for $10"

Absolutely positively the biggest myth out there. Simply not the way any market works. That a domain that you want would be there for you when you want it. Emphasis: You. Not that someone with another idea would have gotten it first and you'd have to convince them to sell.

Look, I think what you do is legal and should be legal. But I think you're letting your emotions from people criticizing you get in the way of your logic.

>> If the squatter would not have taken it then it would've been available for $10

> Absolutely positively the biggest myth out there.

He didn't literally mean that without squatters, every domain would be available and you know it. Of course someone could still beat you to it but the problem most people have is with squatters not Google owning a random name that they don't want to sell (unfortunate but I think they have good reason to keep it and it's not a major problem for most people).

When someone has an idea and goes through 100 names before finding something available to register, the odds are that approximately 100 of those will be in use or squatters (often the majority), not Google unwilling to sell.

Take away the squatters (again, I'm not suggesting it should be illegal) and you've solved a big problem for a lot of people. That's just the way it is. You don't have to care and you can rationalize it to yourself all you want but it doesn't change that fact.

You're not seriously saying Google is a squatter, are you? When a company buys another company it's a package deal. How would you separate the value of the domain from the rest of the acquired IP? It's too much of a headache; remember they have to answer to their shareholders.

There's no myth, it's logic. If you eliminate squatters, let's say you somehow make it illegal, then if I want domain X then it's either available or used by somebody - which I have no problem with. If you think that sitting on it, because somebody may have a good use for it in the future, provides any useful service you're fooling yourself. In that case parasites also provide a good service by regulating the ecosystem.

"When a company buys another company it's a package deal. "

They aren't using the domain. The company they acquired they shut down. All transition has been done.

So by the logic that many commenters here use they are squatters. Because they aren't using the domain.

As an aside google and many large corporations who aren't actively selling domains own domains that they have stockpiled for one reason on another (preventing competition).

Back to the domain in question. It doesn't go anywhere. Just because they aren't in the business of registering domains for the purpose of profit doesn't make it less so (by once again people's definitions here..) that they are squatters. And just because they got the domain buy acquiring a company doesn't change the facts.

"If you eliminate squatters, let's say you somehow make it illegal,"

It seems like the thing you want to be illegal is people being in the business of buying and selling domain names then, am I correct? You think domains are a public trust and there should be a committee that passes judgement on who can get a domain and also monitors that a domain is used in an acceptable way and finally that a domain isn't sold without content. And a whole bunch of regulation to prevent people from gaming the system. Unfortunately that would hurt the internet.

Your idea isn't practical and not the way a free market works. There is nothing special about domains that requires such special protection. They aren't kidneys or liver transplants. Lastly, there are other TLD that you can register your name in. You just can't get .com or any of the mostly popular ones. If you can't get hackernews.com you can get hackernews.tld

I was around at the start when a) domains were free b) domains were then priced at $100 for 2 years and c) that price was lowered to $70 for 2 years. Then came ICANN and many registrars and domains dropped to $10 or whatever godaddy was charging at the time or Tucows etc.

I was around in the beginning when you had to fill out a long form and say what you were doing with the name. Pretty soon there were so many people wanting domains that NSI asked the NSF if they could charge per name. Then people got upset with the money they were making and we got competition. Reviewing applications for domains stopped and that was actually good. It allowed the Internet to grow quickly.

A vestige of this system exists with .edu names. Last I check (and this may have changed since I haven't attempted for years) I couldn't even get one for a University without justifying why they couldn't use their main .edu. It also exists with some sponsored TLD that you've never heard of.

Bottom line: Who is going to pay for the regulation and who is going to run that system?

If Google wanted a domain owned by a squatter they would buy it from them, so the squatter isn't preventing this from happening.

You're outraged because you'd like to purchase a scarce resource (in this case a domain name) at less than its market value. With that sort of mindset you're gonna have a tough time.

The winner will be ICANN who laughs all the way to the bank with hundreds of new gTLD registration fees (equalling tens of millions of US$). The losers will most probably be companies like uniregistry.com (or, more specifically, their investors) who will register tens of new gTLDs and later find out that they are not worth as much.

I wish I could put this comment to the top of the page. How many TLD/ccTLDs are there already? The primary interest being served here would seem to be ICANN's. As a user, I may well register some of these new domains, but I'm kind of looking at it sidewise atm.

What value does it bring? Just more dilution of the already huge namespace for the most part.

Aren't tlds just a landgrab from the start, making money for the registrars? The original RFC882 never stated domain.com - their example was blue.colors, red.colors etc. What happened that we became stuck with these country level TLDs, and why can't I register myname.lastname?

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc882

A more appropriate but less link baiterrific title would be:

Here comes the greatest Internet terraform in history

I do not understand why the article leads with Schilling making a fortune when it should begin by describing the piles of money that ICANN is printing...

Here comes the circus would be more correct, in my opinion

I am finding it hard to believe that this will be such a landgrab. The demand to already existing non .com TLDs doesn't indicate that there will be a huge demand for new ones.

I can see people registering main keywords, or playful phrases that work.. eg: about.me etc.. However then those will just turn into cybersquatting and auctioning off in most cases. I can see it causing confusion in some situations as well.

Yup. I hate this idea. If anything, we need /fewer/ gTLDs. No one uses .mobi, .travel, .museum, etc. If you're serious, you still get a .com.

"movies.youtube" sounds like nothing I'd care to visit.

Currently, the "dot com/net/org" at the end of a spoken domain name clues the listener in to what they just heard. You think, "oh, a domain name, I'll visit it on my browser." But without that, a new spoken standard may have to be developed. If I hear "go to mint", without any other context, I will not know if that means a night club or a web site. Perhaps we'll have to say "www dot mint" to make it clear, but that's not optimal.

Who will have control over these gTLDs? What I mean by that is: .com is controlled by the USG (indirectly). They can get a judge to take away a domain on a whim. Will that be the case with these new TLDs?

Are there restrictions or requirements for owners of new TLDs to offer domains for sale at a reasonable price? Or if someone wants a website at myrecipes.food do they now have to pay a premium extortionate amount to the gTLD owner?

I don't see domains like .movies or .brand-name working at all. On the other hand, new two-letters domain could be useful. Like .ng ("runnin.ng"), .ay ("pl.ay"), etc.

But I don't know if those are included in the new tlds?

A lot of the two-character TLDs are already associated with countries.

The .ng extension is Nigeria's, and goes for a whopping $50,000 per year. [1]

The .ay TLD belongs to Adygea (a republic within Russia). [2]

[1] http://www.101domain.com/ng.htm

[2] http://nationstates.wikia.com/wiki/.ay

Edit: Formatting

There is no .ay domain.

I think brand extensions will work in cases where the companies have a gigantic market of internet users -- like search.google. As for .movies, and the like, I agree.

Additionally, these new extensions are likely to include draconian rule sets with them, making them very unappealing for businesses and private owners.

How many domain-name filter regexs are hardcoded to .com/.net/.org/.mil and will never work on these new domains? Yeah, I know the countries are out there as well, but that's still a known whitelist, right?

...probably a lot that are written by those who do not care enough to read RFCs. I was recently asked on an interview to write regex that grabs "valid" e-mail addresses. I asked if I could review the RFC so I could write useful regex. I was denied, and I ended up totally uninterested in this trendy company with amateurish standards.

Slightly off topic, but even with access to the RFC you weren't likely to get that one right. Validating any email address correctly with a regex is nearly impossible (a canonical example of the horror: http://ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html and even that one has a limitation or 2). I think the only correct answer to that question is to suggest an alternative to a regular expression. It could be that was the answer they were looking for.

That seems like a really easy regex to write.

  .+@.+\..+

(note: I haven't reviewed the RFC, so this might be too strict)

two letter tld's are reserved for countries, so only 3+ are allowed indeed.

"He's put up $60 million of his own money to stake his claim on a giant"

Unfortunately this is a typical article simply quoting what someone says as if it is fact. If you do the math on what it cost to apply for the TLD's it would be more like $10,000,000 not $60,000,000.

At the very least it would have been correct to say "He says he plans to invest up to $60,000,000" not to make a statement of fact. This is exactly how the media builds legends. "He's put up" indicates a statement of fact that is to be believed.

Didn't the last land grab (.info/.movie etc) end soon? Why would this one be different?

After the initial land grab is over, will these ever reach a price where we can afford them as individuals? I'd like to own a few.

Depends on the company.

I don't imagine you'll be able to buy ipad.apple, but I don't see why google wouldn't start selling *.foo.

No running a registry is not a cheap or easy endeveor (I used to be one of the owners of .coop)

I would love to hear the story about .coop. Have you written about it anywhere or would you be willing to chat privately about it? my details are in my profile.

I was one the profesional servies side trying to keep poptel running - though I did sit next to the tech lead.

http://www.andrewbibby.com/socialenterprise/poptel2.html has some details. And I did have to chair a share holder meeting and put the founder in his place when we where discussing a reorg.

You coudl try contacting Malcolm Corbett hes on face book at http://www.facebook.com/malcolm.corbett.9

Thanks for that!

I dont understand how 'domainers' see opportunity in this. The market they operate in is being flooded with new product. This enables people to get more creative with their domains... running.com can now be run.ning.

Who do you think is going to try to buy all the domains like run.ning? Domainers, of course.

If this scheme takes up then domain names like mint.com which are currently make sense solely because they are short and easy, will have no way of sounding great for a financial webapp.

Many websites will have to revise their names.

At $185,000 per gTLD "processing fee", ICANN seems to have "earned" over $350M from this effort. Nice work if you can get it. I totally get why this is great for the Internet now.

We barely got people to use .net, .org, .ly, .info, .me, .tv. What makes us think they will use these effectively?

Moreover, I'm having a hard time imagining a situation where it would be a good idea to own www.foocorp but not www.foocorp.com

ICANN isn't doing this as a B2C venture -- they're targeting companies with enough cash to protect their names.

Which is exactly what .info, .biz and other new TLDs did to make cash as well. Each TLD that launched was assured something like 200-300k registrations from brands/speculators. Now, ICANN can jump on the money-printing bandwagon.

yep people have been contacting CEO's CTOs and CIOs of big companies (FSTE 100/DOW 30) trying to sell them on this protection racket.

A lot of the extensions his company is offering seem to have a pretty limited range of potential customers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com