In a move that opened the floodgates of the internet to domain squatters and could possibly create domain squatting hell (or, rather, more domain squatting hell) for consumers, ICANN opened up TLD registrations. What this means for the internet is that for the cost of a few thousand dollars, nefarious squatters (and legitimate business also, of course) can claim a new domain as their own. Any new domain.

The BBC calls this a shake up of the Internet. I suppose “shake up” is one way to put it. This is going to turn the Internet on its collective ear. Already Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, Pownce and FriendFeed were full of people “staking their claim” on domains and bouncing ideas off of each other. I, for one, am wondering what on earth prompted ICANN to sell out like this after years of tightly controlling the internet to help keep traffic level and domains as kosher as possible.

To understand why this has me buzzing with annoyance, you need to know that TLD stands for top level domain. You usually think of this as .com, .biz, .net and the like. Think of it – now we may have .cocacola, .americanairlines, or worse, squatters who buy .leslieposton or .blorge and then try to hold the little guy (or the big guy) hostage for a huge fee to get their name back.

That’s right – this opens up a can of worms, and people who know the implications for what this will mean in terms of cost, spam, squatting and more issues are not happy about it. It’s too late to fight it now outside of court, and with ICANN, that means international court and a huge legal budget that most don’t have. For ICANN, it was a revenue based decision, but their full wallets may mean more headaches for consumers and internet users.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 5:16 am under Internet.

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