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Vatican Says Hold On With Those .religion TLDs
from the ICANN-has-lots-of-domain-fun dept
ICANN is having one of its regular meetings in Mexico City, the kind where proposals for all the latest and greatest top-level domains get kicked around. But some TLDs you may not be seeing soon are .catholic, or .hindu, or .churchofthefsm, after The Vatican said it didn't think it was a good idea. Essentially, they don't like the idea of some registrar or other group being given control of the TLD of a particular religious tradition, with ICANN forced to determine who gets to be the gatekeeper for each particular set of beliefs. It remains to be seen how this will fit in with ICANN's plans to open up the TLD system, which would let people register nearly any TLD they wanted (assuming they fork over the requisite amount of cash, of course). Throwing the system open would certainly seem to be setting the stage for a huge number of disputes, as companies fight over who should get to own something like .apple. By allowing .religion TLDs, ICANN could be setting things up for holy cyberwars -- but if it's going to open things up, should it be playing censor, or determining who the rightful "owner" of each religion's TLD should be?
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
Reader Comments
(Flattened / Threaded)
Sadly I am dissapointed at not being able to see just how destructive religious zealots could be in a cyberwar.
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Cyberwar
re: "setting things up for holy cyberwars:
C'mon, let's see whose god is stronger!
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What could go wrong?
<sarcasm>The internet has always been such a haven for religious tolerance.</sarcasm>
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Vatican thinks?
Maybe they are afraid that the .catholic domain would just be a haven for pedophiles, and that would give the church a bad name?
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Re: Vatican thinks?
Hey! every religion attracts WEIRD people.
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God?
You people do you they have been lying to you your whole life right?
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no megusta
As a flaming conservative and man that is on fire for Jesus, I don't think that this is a good idea.
I can see the atheists really having fun with this one... .godhater .jesussucks ummm yea
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re:no megusta
they have to be a religion before they could get a domain (unless they fork over the money). Not something to really worry about.
unfortunately that means the cult of Scientology would also be able to get a domain
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Re: re:no megusta
Lordy. They'd probably get .sci, too!
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"Stupid is as Stupid does" -Forrest Gump
I wonder if Microsoft would object to a TLD of .bob? :-). In any case, if there was a .god TLD, then I would think that the Vatican, and other religious nut-cases would rejoice, as then they can truly attest to the fact that god exists.
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Does the world need any more TLD?
I'm certain there are more than enough already.
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Never overestimate people
Instead of discussing who should control the ".religion" or ".religious" TLD's, shouldn't the admins be discussing how hard this will be for people to spell correctly?
Will porn-squatters pick up the mis-spelled TLD to grab people? And will the Pope take complaints from people who go to www.church.relligon and get a hard-core sex site?
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