Whining down under.
Yesterday over 200 GAC early warnings to new top level domain applicants were published.
The biggest complainer?
Australia.
The country filed early warnings on 129 top level domain names covering everything from .baby to .weather.
’cause you know, weather is such a controversial thing.
One of Australia’s big peeves is that groups want to use generic terms exclusively. That’s its complaint about both .baby and .weather. Johnson & Johnson wants the first, The Weather Channel applied for .weather.
Australia also objected to strings that cover what are regulated industries in some countries, such as .architect and .accountant.
Also on the hit list are two applications for .city. The submissions say the applicants haven’t afforded enough protections to cities to protect their domain names at the second level.
My god, can you imagine what would happen if city names were freely available as second level domains? Like NYC.com or Boston.com? Man, that would be chaos.
(Germany also objected to .city applications.)
The United States, which many people view as being overprotective, basically only objected to three strings that refer to branches of the armed forces.
Roberto Markham says
Right on. Too many everyday words are being “grabbed” by too many. This sort of action should also be applied to so-called “Brand” or “Trade” names. Apple for instance has “brsnded” the word “pod” and anyone using the word has been told by Apple to desist. I would tell them to go jump. Why should anyone be allowed to “corner” an everyday word over which, in reality, they have no claim? Problem is in this day and age money talks and the greater the sum the louder the talking.