Comment by CalRobert
3 hours ago
I remember when I worked for a registry (not a registrar) before the first launch of gTLD's. Bizarrely one of the products they were excited to promote was not to register domains under a TLD, but rather, to _block_ them. The idea being that if you wanted to make sure someone else didn't register <company_name>.[sucks, stupid, whatever] you had to pay them (Donuts) to make sure it didn't happen. It felt extortionate.
Apparently it's still a thing. https://kb.centralnicreseller.com/services/brand-protection/...
http://caltechrejects.com/ takes you to https://mit.edu/: you don't need a .sucks TLD to be funny.
Similarly, someone I know set up http://factoryfloorsweepings.com/ to redirect to AliExpress. :)
> It felt extortionate.
Because it is.
I worked on the .name application, and it was a key thing we were basically required to demonstrate we could do even back in 2000. ICANN was obsessed with protecting trademark holders.
gTLDs include .com, .org, .info etc, so they have been around pretty much since the beginning of public dns
the domain industry is completely insane
In fairness, the problem they're trying to solve is insanely complex. Not surprising that the solution went off the rails.