A New Internet Domain: Extortion Or Free Speech?
npr.org
npr.org
The new gTLD Program from ICANN did more than just instantiate new domains. It created new processes and most importantly the Trademark Clearinghouse(TMCH).
The TMCH is a database of validated trademarks from around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Clearinghouse
Along with the TMCH ICANN also created the Domain Protected Marks List(DPML). When registries open up a new gTLD for registrations they must start with a sunrise period. During this sunrise period a registry can allow trademark holders whose trademark is registered in the TMCH early access to their trademark.gTLD. This special sunrise price is set by the registry and can basically be anything. Initially .sucks was talking about charging $25,000, but they lowered it to $2,500.
After the sunrise period anyone can register a .sucks domain on a first-come, first-serve basis. The important thing to remember is that after the sunrise period the price discrimination goes away and both trademark holders and the general public pay the same amount for domain names.
I'm a grad student at UC Berkeley who researches this stuff so AMA. I also wrote the Wikipedia page for the Trademark Clearinghouse so I can vouch for its correctness.
If a domain is not TMCH-listed, it will be $250 after the domain launches--unless you can prove you're an unaffiliated individual, and then you can access a special $10 registration. But for that price you can't run your own website--instead the domain must redirect to a web forum that the registrar will run (and no doubt put ads on).
It looks a lot like a shakedown to me...
edit: speling
The DPML is a weird beast in that each registry chooses how they will run their program individually. For example, if you pay for DPML service for a TMCH listed mark from the Donuts registry your mark cannot be registered on any of Donut's gTLDs for the duration of your DPML block.
You're also correct in that a DPML block is not the same as a domain registration. A DPML block simply prevents others from registering a domain which contains your TMCH registered mark.
If your trademark is not in the TMCH then you gain no special rights to either defensively register, or DPML block others from registering it, during the sunrise period. I doubt Vox Populi can limit .sucks to a specific class of registrants. This does happen, but I haven't heard of it happening with .sucks.
Most recently ICANN ruled that .doctors must limit registrants to registered physicians. This pissed off a lot of people.
Without limiting registrants by class .sucks registry operator Vox Populi cannot charge one price to trademark holders, and another price to non-trademark holders. All they can do is offer sunrise period special rights to TMCH registrants.
I can think of no other TLD in the history of the Internet that has enforced price discrimination. TLDs can have class restrictions placed on registrants(.doctor, .edu, .gov), but they cannot price discriminate AFAIK. Vox Populi was able to introduce price discrimination by essentially abusing the sunrise period and the DPML procedure.
Have a listen to this. http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-226-pilots-and-mental-i...
http://domainincite.com/18246-halt-perverted-sucks-shakedown... "Sunrise Premium names will always cost $2,500, even after sunrise, when registered by the trademark owner."
This is basically without precedent, so it will be interesting to see how this shakes out.
It's hard to imagine that many consumers would confuse a website called ford.sucks for the real actual Ford Motor Company. If it goes to litigation, I could see a U.S. federal judge deciding that the entire .sucks TLD is basically immune to the consumer confusion argument, with possibly a few exceptions for vacuum cleaner companies, sump pump manufacturers, and others who might "professionally suck."
Personally I think it's foolish to try to preemptively register every nasty domain name. It's a big language out there, and crowdsourcing seems to work really well when it comes to insults.
But, a lot of companies are super sensitive to criticism, and Vox Populi is obviously trying to profit off of that.
It appears that it is cheaper to use the .sucks TLD for activism than for preventative purposes. Given the name of the TLD, however, "activism" could be conflated with denigration. Because of this, individuals likely to be targeted by such sites are claiming extortion.
Does anyone know of any other cases in which the price of buying a domain is dependent on who the buyer is?
No, but that's because domain names have, until now, been closely held and (relatively) heavily regulated compared to other products.
There are plenty of products where the cost varies based on the purchaser's ability to pay, or their expected use. In the realm of public discourse, newspapers and other publications have long had sections where anyone could write political or other opinions for free, even while they sold ad space to commercial interests for large amounts.
Not everyone does this of course, but anecdotally, some big companies have companies that scour the web looking for negative feedback. This dept often doesn't have the power to fix anything, so they'll buy up domains and give out freebies.
There was a big uproar in the mainstream press when Taylor Swift bought up a bunch of explicit domains that could be used to deface her online presence... ICANN could just open up more explicit TLD's and she'll have to buy more and more.
Or what about companies buying up entire TLD's without intent to be a registrar -- like Google's $25 Million purchase of .app.
In short order all the "good" TLD's will be squatted on and we'll be in the same exact boat we are now with .com,.net, etc.
It's important to note that ICANN does not set the pricing for each TLD. The pricing is set by the registrar who wins the right to control that TLD.
ICANN does get revenue from each TLD registrar, but I think it's the same for each TLD. I don't think ICANN gets a direct cut of each GoDaddy sale, for example, but GoDaddy pays ICANN a fee to be able to sell domains.
At least, that's the way I recall it so I could be totally wrong.
Is there a good reason why I shouldn't be able to go to some registry site and just buy ycombinator.clownpenis.fart if I want to, other than possibly being sued by ycombinator and/or NBC?
I'm not saying that TLDs having a measure of authority was good, safe, or barely anything more than barely useful, but at least you could teach grandma to make sure she was on facebook.com instead of facebook.click
The whole concept of a limited selection of TLDs needs to go.
The extortion angle is particularly interesting, because $2500 isn't exactly small money to prevent your personal name being registered on a .sucks domain. I think it would be wise for any of these new tld providers to offer free takedowns of malicious sites in order to avoid lawsuits. Extortion isn't a minor crime - it'll get you serious time in jail.
Ultimately, this is not a matter of free speech, which has always been a negative right: if you're not facing criminal charges or government harassment, your free speech rights are intact.
Rather, this racket highlights why the web deserves a decentralized naming protocol, rather than an institution that combines the worst elements of arbitrary federal beauracracy and predatory, rent-seeking capitalism.
> where if you use more computing power, you get to own more names
The major downside of a crypto solution is that names can be permanently and irrevocably lost or stolen if the key is mismanaged. But until OSs and browsers actually implement anything besides ICANN DNS, it's a moot point anyway.
[1] http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/.p2p_%28BitShares_DNS%29
>But if a person wants to preemptively block their name, that will cost $200 a year.
So you can buy a domain name on which to be critical about yourself for $10 per year, or fork out $200 to prevent others from doing so?
Do I have to be critical of myself in that case? Or could I have borgia.sucks and have it listing my accomplishments and how great a person I am?
In this case, I'm pretty sure a corporation protecting its' mark would win, and that it'd likely cost more than $2500. But for a corporation with a dedicated team of lawyers on-staff not a big deal.
If it's <company>.app or something then you're right. But 'sucks' is a unique case with precedent.
That's true of US law, in part because of the interaction of the US's unusually strong free-speech protections with trademark law.
US law is not the only law which provides trademark rights which might be infringed by the use of gTLD.
You can buy $yourname.sucks for $200/y, but someone who wants to criticize you can buy it for $10/y.
Tiered pricing that charges more to people who aren't looking to disparage themselves is predatory.
Or its bribery to prevent free speech.
No, really, they're just making stuff up as they go along. The idea of this kind of "extortion" has been around for decades, since the early rounds of DNS root name expansion.
/s
ycomibinator.sucks?
Maybe this is not such a bad idea. It can be a nice simple "living document" of criticisms to yCombinator.
Often times, creators of products and services often look towards negative feedback to see how they can make their product/service better.