
Why we will not be registering easydns.sucks - StuntPope
http://blog.easydns.org/2015/04/10/why-we-will-not-be-registering-easydns-sucks/
======
MichaelGG
Why does ICANN allow TLDs that are obviously trying to be extortionate? Locked
nameservers? Blocked registration? Sunrise period for trademark holders? It's
like they're just totally admitting that new TLDs are moronic and pointless
and have absolutely nothing to do with increasing domain name space or
providing value for the Internet community.

~~~
kudu
The whole NewTLD project is a misguided, worthless money grab by ICANN which
doesn't make sense on a lot of levels. At this point, why even expect them to
apply any sort of logic for the common good?

~~~
amelius
Having a bigger namespace leaves less room for domain squatters, so this is a
good thing IMHO.

Also, being able to get the domain name you want is a form of free speech, and
we should be open to it, even if the intent is to discredit a company.

~~~
rmc
> Also, being able to get the domain name you want is a form of free speech

Many places and people believe there should be limits to free speech if it's
in the public good.

~~~
rsync
"Many places and people believe there should be limits to free speech if it's
in the public good."

Those people are wrong.

~~~
SanFranManDan
So all copyright and trademarks are wrong?

~~~
Snesker
Many places and people believe there should be limits to copyright and
trademarks if it's in the public good.

~~~
rmc
The existence of _any_ copyright law means there are limits to free speech.

------
guelo
I think of ICANN like I do FIFA, an unbelievably corrupt bureaucracy at the
center of the most beautiful game around.

~~~
thomasvarney723
What's corrupt about FIFA? Genuinely curious as I don't really watch soccer.

~~~
jrowley
John Oliver sums it up pretty well:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJEt2KU33I)

~~~
thomasvarney723
That's hilarious and terrible.

------
miles
Mad props to Mark Jeftovic and easyDNS. Found his service by doing a WHOIS on
ycombinator.com when looking for a new registrar a while back. easyDNS has the
cleanest and most logical interface for managing domain names and DNS records
that I've found. And Mark's blog posts (like the one above) are great. Here's
another favorite: [http://blog.easydns.org/2014/01/29/welcome-to-easydns-
press-...](http://blog.easydns.org/2014/01/29/welcome-to-easydns-press-1-for-
support-press-2-to-get-the-last-4-digits-of-your-credit-card-number-on-file-
here/)

------
droopyEyelids
The main argument doesn't hold up to my mind.

It completely ignores the fact that ease of access to information is a greater
determinant of what people learn than existence of information.

Yes, right now it is possible to find discontents of a brand or company by
searching and reading through various forums and webpages of differing quality
and structure.

However, if there was an easy mnemonic like "just add .sucks to the end of a
name" to find the bad things about $NAME then the game would change. It'd be
easier for people to organize and oppose companies than anything else
imaginable.

And that makes a _huge_ difference. Think of how hard it was to find
programming help before stack overflow. This would be a much more potent and
wide-ranging way to organize information, because it can still be difficult
for a novice to understand what to search for on stack overflow. This would
remove even that last bit of friction.

I'm not denying that .sucks is a bold and roguish move. I _am_ asserting that
it is an _effective_ move.

~~~
nakovet
So they should also offer a .rocks, so people can say good things about your
company and/or product.

I can't understand how offering .sucks is positive for anyone, .reviews maybe.

~~~
alan_cx
I would suggest that a .rocks type domain would be redundant because the
official .com or whatever is usually where all the positivity is. Often the
owners of the .com try to manage negativity, and ensure their domain is a
positive place, so another place is needed for free criticism. Im not sure
many would trust a .rocks as independent.

Also, I can imagine something like an fabproduct.rocks would be a magnet for
troll types and quickly descend in to a general bun fight arena.

------
po
Can someone explain to me any benefit that the ICANN decision to rollout new
TLDs has provided? I am sure one exists but I cannot think of any. Trying to
be open minded about this but I really don't understand why more geeky types
weren't more anti-new-TLD when it was being proposed.

~~~
raesene9
AFAICS the nominal reason was that TLDs like .com were/are getting crowded and
country based one's (e.g. .io) were being mis-used as generic TLDs

So as a reaction to that ICANN allow new generic TLDs to be registered. In and
of itself, I don't think that's a bad idea. However the $180,000 registration
fee seems a bit like a money grab, the lack of restrictions on the allowed
names (e.g. .sucks) and the land-grabbing by large companies on a wide range
of generic names (mainly from what I've seen Google and Amazon) have made the
process a bit of a mess.

~~~
niklasni1
Money grab? Protection racket.

------
BinaryIdiot
Good for them. The new TLDs are really worthless in my opinion. For instance
they already have .net and added .network.

The majority of people will recognize .com and maybe .net. Beyond that it's a
stretch in my opinion and you're only going to get visitors via searches or
links. I can't imagine anyone is going to think "oh I wonder what microsoft's
latest press releases are; I'll just go to microsoft.press". No, they're going
to search for it.

In all honesty domains in general are not very user friendly. I wouldn't be
surprised if they are eventually replaced for a system that's more of a search
than anything. I mean just look at all of the domain names being squatted on
and for what? Half the times you can pick a different domain name, still name
your product what you want and people will still find you due to search.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
_I wouldn 't be surprised if they are eventually replaced for a system that's
more of a search than anything._

There's no need to replace anything. Nobody[1] uses domain names any more to
browse the web. That's what Google, the default browser home page, and the
omni-bar is for. I don't know a single non-web-developer who uses domain
names. Everybody just drops "facebook" or "google"(?!) in the search box that
shows up when the browser opens.

1\. Well, nobody except for a rounding error number of people who hang out in
places like HN.

~~~
MichaelGG
Hell I'm a developer and sorta technical and I can never remember the
URL/domain to login to Office 365. So I end up using Google and trying to find
a reasonable-looking result and then check for a cert that looks right.

~~~
rhplus
[https://www.office.com](https://www.office.com) gets you to the main landing
page.

~~~
MichaelGG
It's actually faster to Google and follow the link than to deal with the
convoluted system on Office.com.

------
ak217
This and the "great TLD expansion" in general seems like a great way for ICANN
to make itself irrelevant. People will just stop trusting TLDs they don't
recognize.

~~~
yk
Well, people should not trust TLDs in the first place. So this is actually
progress.

~~~
david_shaw
I think the parent comment was implying that people will stop using services
that end in ".io" or ".co" or, really, anything but ".com" because of the
large number of shady websites on the off-brand TLDs.

~~~
hueving
There are an order of magnitude larger number of untrusted domains on '.com'
than any of these new ones.

~~~
B-Con
But many trusted ones are, and most importantly most of the ones a user
interacts with are legit.

If a significant portion of the domains a user visits on a new TLD are shady,
they may just write it off.

------
fsk
Domain names aren't as important as they used to be. As long as you rank #1 in
Google for "name of your business", that's good enough.

Someone who googles easydns will find the official easydns website.
easydns.sucks will rank lower, if at all.

------
leereeves
If the $10 fee simply turns on the domain and points it to a captive forum,
hosted by the registrar, how is the registrar going to avoid being sued for
trademark infringement over every domain name?

~~~
dangrossman
For the same reason PayPalSucks.com has been online for 15 years without being
sued: it's not trademark infringement. Nominative use (using a mark to refer
to that product) and fair use (criticism and commentary, protected by the
first amendment) are affirmative defenses to trademark infringement.
Registering a trademark doesn't prevent other people from using that word,
only from using it in ways that are likely to cause consumer confusion as to
the source of some goods or services.

~~~
leereeves
I'm not a lawyer, but this seems different.

This isn't using a single mark to refer to a product for criticism and
commentary; this is using an unlimited number of marks for promotion of the
registrar's sites. (In addition to using the mark in the ways you mentioned.)

That is, the registrar's goal isn't to refer to PayPal, but to use the domain
PayPal.sucks (and potentially every protected mark plus ".sucks") to draw
traffic.

I guess the legality of this use will need to be decided by the courts.

~~~
callum85
You're allowed to criticize any company you like (as long as you don't lie),
and you can even profit by doing so. For example, media companies can sell
newspapers containing negative reviews of trademarked companies, and make
money from it.

For trademark infringement, there has to be "likelihood of confusion", i.e.
your use of their trademark could lead to people thinking that your
goods/services originated from the trademark owner. In the case of someone
explicitly _critisizing_ a company, this could never be argued.

~~~
leereeves
Have the courts ever ruled that you can market a series of magazines/etc
called "_____ sucks"?

It's an interesting legal question, essentially arguing that adding the magic
word "sucks" allows using trademarks to promote their site (perhaps even to
advertise competing products).

The law is fluid, and nominative use is a fairly new legal idea. We're not
going to settle the question here, but it will be interesting to see what the
courts decide.

~~~
callum85
You don't need a court ruling to allow you to do something. It's the other way
round.

Of course it's fine to market a series of magazines called "_____ sucks". It's
just expressing an opinion. Trademark law doesn't come into it, unless the
trademark owner can prove that consumers might reasonably think your use of
their trademark is somehow authorised or affiliated with them. In the case of
"____ sucks", that would be self-evidently _not_ the case.

~~~
leereeves
Downvote me if you want; I don't care and it doesn't make you right.

Simply adding "sucks" is not a free pass to do whatever you want with a
trademark.

~~~
callum85
I didn't downvote you!

I didn't say it was a free pass to do anything. You can't lie about the
company, for example. But that would be libel, not trademark infringement. As
long as it's obvious to consumers that your use of the trademark is not on
behalf of or authorised by the company, then it's not trademark infringement.

And yes, simply adding "sucks" would pretty much always be a free pass against
trademark infringement , except in really contrived scenarios, like if the
trademark was a brand of vacuum cleaners :)

That said, the Dumb Starbucks example is interesting, I think that's in a grey
area, the kind of edge case you're talking about. Starbucks might well be able
to demonstrate that some customers thought it was official (albeit obscure)
marketing effort by them, especially because it's a coffee shop.

------
shostack
My opinions on the matter:

\- It is dirt cheap to bid on paid search brand terms for "brand sucks." Be
smart in where you take people and you manage against concerns.

\- Having an exact match domain is not anywhere near as useful as it used to
be per Matt Cutts[1]. Someone would have to also manage to rank for your brand
terms consistently for it to be of any note. I would laugh so hard if this
went the route of .info and became recognized as a poor quality TLD that
didn't rank worth a hoot.

\- There is no avoiding the vocal minority of upset customers. If you have an
awesome product/service, you have nothing to worry about. Focus your energy
and budgets on positive things and don't look back.

[1] [http://moz.com/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-
data](http://moz.com/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data)

------
Stratoscope
I wonder who will own this domain:

icann.sucks

~~~
oalders
How about

sucks.sucks ?

------
lucb1e
Without all the background info, in paragraph 15 (after 644 words) they answer
the initial question from the post's title.

TL;DR: anyone can register easydns-sucks.com or anything like it anyway. No
need to "protect" yourself by buying [yourdomain].sucks at exorbitant prices.

------
Sealy
If you register a .sucks domain against a company you want to complain about,
then the last laugh is on you for paying that much.

------
smoyer
I see a great public service business here ... become a consumer advocate and
buy a huge number of domains for $9.95/year. Charge the trademark holders a
few dollars above that per year and deprive these trolls of the huge fees (>
$2,499 per year per domain for premium names) they were expecting (yes, I'd
rather they made nothing too).

It should be pretty easy to automate the process. The down-side is that if
you're Comcast (or one of the other common targets) you're probably going to
have to live with a .sucks site. Try not to incite people into believing you
suck so much!

~~~
toast0
The $10/year option doesn't actually let you control the domain. It just turns
it on for the registry's captive forum.

------
luckydude
We've used easydns for more than a decade (yes, my new marketing people are
trying to move us away from then, I'll fix that).

My experience with easydns is that they are like us. They care about their
customers, they care about doing the right thing, and they do that even when
it hurts.

Great company. Very slightly more expensive than the cheapest but they are
definitely in the you get what you pay for category.

------
bhauer
What sucks most of all are the concept and execution of gTLDs.

------
fiatjaf
Possible solutions to this mess: GNS, IPNS.

