ICANN Asks FTC: If .sucks 'predatory, exploitive and coercive'

[engine]

Controversy over .sucks rumbles on as ICANN asks the FTC to investigate if the system is "predatory, exploitive and coercive." It's over $2,000 to register in the sunrise, and will be about $10 after June.

It does make you wonder when the rate id over $2k now as people and businesses will want to protect their name while it's in sunrise.

Importantly, I wonder if it was ever a good idea to release it in the first place.

Currently, only trademark holders and celebrities may register Internet addresses ending in .sucks at a cost of more than $2,000 per name. Once the early registration period ends, ordinary people will be able to register .sucks names for as little as $10 in June.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit that sets policies for the global domain name system, said in a letter to the FTC and Canada's Office of Consumer Affairs that companies have complained the system is "predatory, exploitive and coercive."

ICANN asked the regulatory bodies to determine whether any laws had been broken. ICANN Asks FTC: If .sucks 'predatory, exploitive and coercive' [finance.yahoo.com]

[Samizdata]

I wonder if it was ever a good idea to release it in the first place.

It's a good idea from the viewpoint of a predatory, exploitative and coercive business.

For a non-profit with any dignity, not so much.

...

[adder]

From my perspective it's just as ludicrous as any other new generic TLDs. Ok, must run, gotta register another .com domain.

[LifeinAsia]

I wonder who the first ones were to register icann.sucks and ftc.sucks.

[lucy24]

Ouch, missed this one. So there's a tld whose sole reason for existence is to make existing names look bad?

[RedBar]

To me all this is blackmailing of honest businesses...icann.sucks big time!

[lucy24]

Incidentally, some people may be amused to learn that an experimental visit to www.example.sucks currently leads to a network timeout. It doesn't (yet) live at 93.184.216.34 with all the other examples.