The news is huge and it’s creating bigger waves than Google or the Samoan tsunami: ICANN is about to announce a new rule related to how domain ownership is perceived.
It’s a known fact that domains are leased each year for a fee, and the maximum lease cannot exceed 10 years. This method loosely ensures that ownership is retained only by those that have legitimate interest in a domain.
But starting at one minute past midnight on the eve of April 2nd, 2010, all known rules of the domain game will be changed forever. ICANN plans to ensure that every domain registered will be developed and used instead of parked or pointed to useless sites depicting photos of pets and girlfriends, or – even worse – personal blogs.
“We have been around since 1948, the dawn of pre-commercial Internet”, said Marcus Skopelus, technology analyst for ICANN. “The aspect of development of domain names has been the thorny subject of every engineer’s paper since the early 70’s. Now it’s time to enforce the elements of development as the main basis on which domain ownership is established.”
Asked whether that means higher prices for end-user domainers, Marcus explained the proposed mechanism in more detail.
“No, of course not – all pricing will be in accordance to the exclusive contracts that ICANN rightfully enjoys through lobbying of politicians. We do not condone ruthless pricing although we plan to stand competitive in the course of the economy’s trajectory and sustained pace of growth.”
In other words, ICANN plans to raise pricing to ensure more meal money is secured for its board of directors, when they gather in various places around the globe to discuss the deep issues related to domains, the domain world and the introduction of hundreds of new TLDs.
