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A money grab for whom? ICANN, sure. But if a company wants to spend the $200k, what is the big deal?

Some companies (ex http://www.nic.ovh/en/index.xml ) are using it for their customers.

Some companies (ex https://calculator.aws/ ) are using it for shorter URLs, while still being descriptive.

Sure some are just doing it because they can, other's have no good use case yet. But I fail to see how .bananarepublic being in the hands of one company is a detriment to me... the average internet user.



It's a money grab for ICANN, precisely. Neither users nor developers have any say in this process, and the body that stands to benefit financially from accepting trademarks as TLDs is _not_ going to be acting in the interest of users or developers, are they?

My argument wasn't specifically about .bananarepublic or .calvinklein. It was more that I don't believe trademarks should have been admitted, full stop. There's no way ICANN can make impartial decisions here that benefit the bulk of Internet users.

I reserve judgement on generic TLDs, although I really don't like the implications to user confusion caused by .photo, .photos, .pics and the like.


trademark names sure. But getting a TLD like .sucks is very nearly extortion.


Has the money from the heist been sustainably invested? I'd love to see it guarding the openness and availability of the internet infrastructure as a whole.




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