The idea is to enable businesses and others to create suffixes that are specific to their business or purpose, as opposed to the current generic “top-level” endings.  “Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for,” says Paul Levins,” ICANN’s vice president of corporate affairs.  So if the Museum of Modern Art wanted to attract visitors to its permanent collection, it could conceivably create a URL ending in “.art.” 

Most experts agree that there are numerous issues with this new proposal.  The first and possibly most obvious one is… who’s going to keep track?  Could Mars use “.candy” while Hershey uses “.chocolate” and “kisses” and JellyBelly uses, well, “.jellybelly?”  The answer seems to be yes, and the possibility of chaos for marketers and consumers is obvious.

Secondly, this proposal opens the door for scammers and squatters to purchase a brand’s name and simply invent multiple URLs to go with it.  This would not only mislead Web surfers, but could cause brand names to fall into the hands of those who wish to exploit them and possibly get money from the owner.  If your pet peeve is labor relations at Wal-Mart, you could purchase WalMart.unfair, Walmart.worksucks, WalMart.unions, WalMart.sickout.  There are no guidelines, at least not yet.

Third, who can own what?  Are all words in the common domain and therefore available for purchase?  The International Olympics Committee has already threatened to sue ICANN if the organization permits the purchase of the IOC’s trademarked and protected words.  And the Flemish government doesn’t seem happy, either.

2008 saw a record number of cybersquatting complaints from trademark holders as it is.

Fourth, what are the intricacies of the process?  Do I have to prove anything to purchase any URL I wish, how long can I keep it and must I meet some performance level to maintain ownership?  What happens if there are two potential buyers for a TLD - will there be a bidding war? 

Finally, ICANN proposes to charge an application fee is $185,000 plus an annual “continuance” fee of $25,000.  As the seller of services, what assurances of value and security will ICANN provide?  Is ICANN responsible for the protection of children who may wander onto a porn site at SpongeBob.fun? The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse estimates that it could cost big marketers up to $1.5 billion just to defend existing turf: what do these companies get in exchange for the millions of dollars they would suddenly have to pay to protect something that suddenly needs protecting?

ICANN is going to have to put some fencing up around proper names, brands, and protected words, but that won’t help the vast confusion that could result.  I suspect that larger commercial brands will settle into some industry-wide structures that try to minimize the information overload.  Because if you think spam is bad now…

First it was the company’s effort to keep us from the 21st century version of drunk dialing:  drunk e-mailing.  Cute. 

Now it’s Latitude, a program that allows users to track others with their mobile phones.  Each user must opt-in and can select which of her contacts may be permitted to track them.

I find this to be neither cute nor safe.  Anyone could get a hold of a user’s phone and change the settings, or a person could give a Latitude-enabled phone as a gift.  And once a phone is enabled, a second party could mask his own phone’s ID, thus ensuring that the first party – or victim, in this case – would be unaware that she was being tracked.

Google says that individuals’ increasing willingness to share personal information, on sites like Facebook, have encouraged the company to create services such as Latitude.

This doesn’t really fly.  My willingness to change my Facebook status to reflect that I’m enjoying a cup of coffee doesn’t extend to letting the universe know that that coffee house is on Lexington Avenue at 77th Street.  And how that location might change minute by minute.

It’s also a potential Big Brother nightmare.  Location data that may be useful to friends and family could also be valuable to the government, your competition, an angry ex or thieves happy to rob your home when you’re not around.  And while Google says it won’t store the data (having faced criticism on its privacy policies in the past), the government or others could still ask Google to help track someone being investigated.  “As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends,” says Simon Davies of Privacy International.

I see no clear need for this: it’s simply not a case where the existence of technology creates a unique and meaningful improvement or advantage.

I like Google, but its fundamental drawback is that it grants no status to honest or credible content.  Perhaps this is par for the search engine course – at least for now.  But products that overtly weaken personal rights and privileges?  That’s a slippery slope that I do not believe is worth the trip.
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