Last month Canadian company Vox Populi began selling .sucks domain names after initially receiving approval from ‘The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’, aka ICANN. But the future isn’t looking so bright for .sucks domains, as ICANN (the ruling body of ‘internet names’) is already back peddling and requesting via letter that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs investigate Vox Populi and .sucks names to see if they’re up to any illegal activity. So if you were planning on buying ‘YourMom.sucks’ or ‘Boston.sucks’ then you should probably hop on that now, because there’s a chance that Vox Populi and the .sucks domains will disappear forever.
In an AP report, it is alleged that Vox Populi began forcing celebrities and their PR companies to purchase the .sucks domain for celebrity names. The domains had been selling for around $2,000 on the reseller market, according to the AP, which is a ridiculous markup from the $1 price tag of many domain names on GoDaddy.
The AP Reports:
The body that regulates Internet addresses is checking to see if it can crack down on a Canadian company accused of using the new “.sucks” domain name to extract exorbitant sums from celebrities and companies seeking to protect their public brands.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, on Thursday sent a letter to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Canada’s Office of Consumer Affairs to see if the actions of company Vox Populi Registry Ltd. are illegal.
ICANN initially approved of the so-called top-level domain name, among nearly 600 it has added recently to expand beyond common names such as “.com,” ”.org” and “.us.”
But it is backtracking after an advisory panel made up of industry groups and companies like Microsoft, Verizon and eBay complained last month.
Vox Populi began accepting registrations using “.sucks” on March 30 from trademark holders and celebrities before it’s released to public applicants. It has recommended charging $2,499 a year for the privilege, and according to Vox Populi CEO John Berard, most of the names have been sold by resellers for around $2,000 a year.
So far, purchased names include Youtube.sucks, Bing.sucks, Visa.sucks, Bankofamerica.sucks, Yahoo.sucks, Telusmobility.sucks and other major brand names.
Berard said Thursday that the domain name is meant to create destinations for companies to interact with their critics and called his company’s business “well within the lines of ICANN rules and the law.”
Two weeks ago, the advisory body called the Intellectual Property Constituency representing major companies and industry groups asked ICANN in a letter to halt the rollout of “.sucks,” calling it a “shakedown scheme” and “predatory.”
It’s pretty sucky that such an awesome domain is getting investigated for being so sucky. The .sucks domain is brilliant, and has so much potential. It’s a sucky shame that .sucks may cease to exist, because it could’ve led to the ‘Great Blog Wars of 2015’ we’ve all been hoping comes to fruition.
For more on this story you can read the AP’s full report HERE.