ICAAN Concerned About .sucks Domain Name
On March 27, one of ICANN’s advisory panels, the Intellectual Property Constituency, sent a letter to the organization asking it to step in and stop Vox Populi’s “predatory, exploitive and coercive” practices.
“ICANN is the sole entity in the world charged with the orderly introduction of new gTLDs in a secure, reliable and predictable manner,” president of the panel Gregory Shatan wrote. “If ICANN is unwilling or unable to put a halt to this, then who is?”
ICANN has since sent letters requesting an evaluation from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the US and the Office of Consumer Affairs in Canada, where Vox Populi is based––a rare course of action.
The main issue here for me is that the .sucks TLD vendor is charging significantly higher fees ($2500 per year) for businesses to secure registered trademarks. It is clearly trying to exploit the fear businesses have about ‘hate domains’ springing up using the .sucks suffix. If the vendor charged the same fee to companies as they do individuals, I wouldn’t have any problem with it.