Hair Of The Dot. Dog

Dot.BMW, Dot.dog and Dot.Singapore may soon become three of many new domains now that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) the nonprofit Internet coordinating body has approved the development.

The only catch is that a  person, company or government wanting to secure such a domain-name suffix will need to fork out the princely sum of $185,000 to make their application and this will put such an initiative beyond the budgets of many SME's.

This however is not the end of the cost.  For having secured the domain, there is then an annual fee to Icann of about $25,000, among other costs such as hosting and domain management

Registering a new extension for your company is an excellent branding idea but the cost of doing so and maintaining it will be prohibitive for most.

So the Dot.Com party is finally a thing of the past and we have entered (to quote the WSJ) the age of Dot. Anything.

Will this development make it easier for the consumer, or more difficult as they search through an ever expanding array of domains for the company or service that they seek?

Going to the Dot.Doctor will never be easier.

Read All About It

While a plethora of new domains might make finding relevant information more of a challenge, a new service from the Newseum allows a reader to feel the pulse of the world through an interactive map of newspaper front pages.

Front pages of the World - Flash version

Through a special agreement with more than 800 newspapers worldwide, the Newseum displays these front pages each day on its website. The front pages are in their original and unedited form and are viewable in either the Flash or Bing Beta versions.  Personally I prefer the latter (see below) as the pop-up windows are easier to navigate.

Bing Beta version

Related articles

• Brand name Top Level Domains coming (zdnet.com)
• ICANN Approves Generic Top-Level Domains: New Era of Innovation or A Flood of Spam? (readwriteweb.com)

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Getting Tough But Will It Work?

Illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods sites are in for a shock.  The US Government has commenced a domain seizure programme in an attempt to close these illegal traders down.

According to CNet News, the seizures came after a Senate committee unanimously approved a controversial proposal earlier this month that would allow the government to pull the plug on Web sites accused of aiding piracy.

A division of the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),is handling the crackdown.

Not surprisingly there are critics of this action. CBS News and CNET Technology Analyst Larry Magid says
 
"This is a very controversial practice, which of course is supported by companies in the video and motion picture and music business, but opposed by some civil rights activists and organizations who feel that it's an improper use of government authority, because it's shutting down an entire domain in an attempt to get at some allegedly infringing material".

It also begs the question how effective such a programme of seizure actually is?  Pirate Bay for example, is still up and running despite its principals being found guilty in a court of law.

In addition, to prosecute pirates there needs to be evidence and this resides on a server, not within a domain name. 

Without a server no warrant can be issued and without a warrant, a prosecution cannot proceed.  To try and do so without following this due process would seem to contravene the USA's Fourth Amendment.

There a number of avenues available for site owners to circumvent these restrictions.  The US Government can only seize US-registered domain names so there is nothing to stop a US citizen registering a site in an off shore registry.

The Internet will respond to such censorship by finding a way around it, a process which has become the norm. The pirates will no doubt do likewise.

In another court ruling, this time in the UK, it has been decided that news monitoring agencies will have to pay publishing companies foer the use of their web content.

According to The Telegraph which reported the verdict:

"Headlines are now considered separate literary works, and thus subject to copyright, which means that clients of aggregation websites that charge for a service will have to pay for a license in order to use headlines, links and short extracts from online stories".

Related articles

• U.S. seizes sites linked to copyright infringement (news.cnet.com)
• U.S. Shuts Down Web Sites in Piracy Crackdown (nytimes.com)
• A Torrent of Gov't Seizures in Online Piracy War (cbsnews.com)