Republican Lawmakers Oppose New TLDs
Lamar Smith and Howard Coble, two of the House Judiciary Committee’s top Republicans, have sent a message to ICANN to express concerns about the proposed introduction of numerous top level domains - stating that vast expansion and absence of price caps in the new registry deals could hurt business owners and consumers in the United States.
In their letter to Rod Beckstrom, the CEO of ICANN, Smith and Coble stated that they were worried about the addition of numerous TLDs and that they could carry “serious negative consequences” due to cyber-squatting, fraud, and overall confusion in the online marketplace.
Additionally, the two believe that the absence of price caps in the new registry deals could mean that legitimate business owners would need to pay a premium whenever registering or renewing their domain names.
Richard Tindal, senior VP at eNom disagrees. “There is only so much Internet traffic and so many cyber-squatter dollars available at any given point in time. Doubling the number of [domains] will not double the amount of cybersquatting.”
[via NextGov.com]
What are your thoughts? Will the new TLDs benefit business owners by improving the quality and relevancy of their domain names - or will it hurt businesses and consumers by creating confusion in the marketplace?
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