Friday, March 18, 2005

Each year more and more top level domains get added to the internet to try to compensate for the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have bought all the good .com domains; each new top level domain being less and less desirable than the last. It seems to me that most worldwide sites (and a lot of more personal sites) want to have the dotcom domain rather than some third-rate dotbiz or dotinfo one and it is about time those who police the dotcom domains found a better, fairer way to deal with the demand.

I spend my days working on-line. The business I set up four years ago is the proud owner of a number of brands all of which have been chosen because we could actually get the dotcom domains. While looking we came across hundreds of suitable names which, although registered, weren't being used: they were either pointing to spammy directories or simply not pointing anywhere at all.

It seems to me that if you have a domain name then you should have to use it; after all, what's the point of having one if you're just going to leave it floating around, unloved, in cyberspace. If you don't use it within a sensible period of time you should be forced to surrend it if someone else wants it. Of course there would be independent adjudication to deal with disputes and, if needed, judge whether a domain was really being used.

Suddenly, over night, thousands of sad and lonely domains would be available to people who really wanted them. And there wouldn't be the need for second rate dotbiz domains.

Posted by Antz at 8:21 PM | Permalink | | |

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