ronin - 8:32 pm on May 17, 2007 (gmt 0)

Much like other companies, a client of mine simply didn't want anyone else grabbing their names.

Every time a new TLD is created, thousands of corporations have to do defensive registrations of hundreds of domain names.

Corporate sector specific TLDs are extortion rackets. How could they be anything else?

If you start up a transatlantic cruise company and call it Titanic Travel, either titanictravel.com is taken, in which case you might opt for titanic.travel and lose most of your first time customers to titanictravel.com anyway.

Or else titanictravel.com is free, in which case you start renting it... and then why would you ever also rent titanic.travel? To stop someone else renting it, presumably. In which case the .travel TLD registrar has generated an expense for you which didn't exist before. Money out of nothing.

Why not also introduce TLDs for all the most popular and lucrative sectors on the internet - they would be sure to make money (just not for the domain renters).

.888
.#*$!
.pharma
.dating
.ringtones