Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Brand New Branding War Coming

There's an interesting story over here about the coming revolution in internet suffixes. If ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers continues on its current path, the web world will not be limited to .com, .net and the few others currently available.

ICANN is still taking comments on the change and apparently won't start taking applications for new suffixes until the end of the year at the earliest. Opponents are worried about, among other things, the cost of defending trademarks. From the ICANN website:

There have been a number of overarching issues raised in the comment process that require further work and so remain unchanged in this draft. Those issues are:
- Trademark protection
- Security and stability
- Malicious conduct
- Demand and economic analysis

Look for squatters to get into high gear as this approaches. I wouldn't mind owning www.dell.a or www.yankees.boo because it's pretty easy to figure out who to sell it to.

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