I came back to give you a friendly advice:
you had better slow down, the rate your ego is swelling, you may not fit through your doors if you keep it up.

I too would trade all my domains for

finance.com

that’s and easy call there.

but all in all

.Co

is where to build and invest at the present moment.

calling it like it is.

ICANN feels the need to put its own organization into a short list of “Reserved Names” that cannot be applied for. Among the list of 34 reserved names you will find…

.ICANN
.ARIN
.RIPE
.GAC
.IANA

This makes it extremely obvious that defensive registrations of TLD’s are an issue! Why does ICANN get special privileges over TLD’s that cannot be registered? Why can’t corporations apply for .GAC which is a common acronym used by hundreds, if not thousands of companies? It is pretty clear it is because the Governmental Advisory Committee is a committee within ICANN. And ICANN is afraid that someone might get this extension and dilute their brand over “GAC”.

It is crazy ICANN has to protect their own brand “GAC” (which does not seem to be trademarked), but can’t provide the same rights for companies that have legitimate trademarks on their brands. “GAC” is registered for 21 live trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, not one of them seems to be associated with ICANN. Why can’t these companies get an extension that matches their brand and why is ICANN given special rights to prevent delegation of this gTLD? Instead of doing a defensive registration, ICANN sidestepped the issue with its own power and made this extension off-limits!

It is obvious ICANN feels it important enough to protect their own name(s). The Draft Applicant Guidbook (DAG) should be changed to be fair to everyone, and allow companies to register .GAC, .ICANN, .IANA if they have interest. Or every company that has a brand should be given the same rights that ICANN is magically granting itself! Where is the fairness in all of this? Why does ICANN get special considerations over the very costly issues it is creating for thousands of companies worldwide?

Which begs to question.. Why are terms such as .gac reserved at all? In reality ICANN can go to a bidding war for the .gac extension and spend $200 million and outbid any of the competitors. They would just wind up paying themselves – in reality it costs them nothing. There really is no need to grant themselves special privileges brands worldwide are extremely concerned about! Oh, wait. There is one problem with this. You have to pay $185,000 to get to the bidding table to even know if someone else is going to apply for the extension you are interested in. It is apparent ICANN does not want to use .gac because it is a reserved name. More importantly putting it into the reserved list means it does not want other companies to be able to use this extension. However it is somewhat clear that ICANN would be in some serious legal issues if it applies for .gac only if another company applied. It would be similar to shill bidding by using their inside knowledge of the gTLD roll-out to determine if they should apply for the .gac extension or not. It would obviously put ICANN in a very tricky spot to bid on this extension. So why risk it – they just made the term unavailable all together! Easy enough for them.

What a totally unfair double standard! It is proof that ICANN realized the issues the expansion would cause with regards to defensive registrations. ICANN is going to make millions off of the fear of legitimate companies that don’t want their own gTLD, but more importantly don’t want anyone else to get it or use that TLD either. Given the option, tens of thousands of companies would opt to be in the free exclusion list ICANN granted itself under section 2.2.1.2 of the DAG. Unfortunately ICANN created such an unfair and distorted application process that it is forcing companies into applying for something they don’t really want. And how is this fair to other companies that might legitimately want to use .GAC or .IANA?

What would have been fair? First off don’t grant yourself rights nobody else can get. More importantly, make people pay $5,000 to indicate interest in their own gTLD. ICANN would not do any work on their end during this step, and would simply publish the list on April 12 of what companies want what extensions. Only after that list is published the companies that put down $5,000 for a spot would then have 3 months to submit their applications for $180,000 if they are still interested. You know what will happen next… 90% of the brands would realize they don’t have to worry about unnecessarily giving $180,000 to ICANN for a defensive registration because nobody else is applying for the extension they care about. It is so obvious this is how the gTLD expansion should be conducted. Of course this could be less profitable for ICANN so I have to assume this is why this solution was not proposed or used. I believe ICANN is setting themselves up for some very interesting lawsuits going forward. They could have made this process fair and made the Internet a better place by making this process transparent. Instead, ICANN has now become the mafia and shown to force people to paying them for things they do not want. (aka “Defensive Registrations”)

The only thing we have to be thankful for is that ICANN has been so gracious to make .gac completely off limits with section 2.2.1.2 of the DAG. This shows us exactly what is going on and that ICANN has understood the importance of defensive registrations since the very first Draft Applicant Guidebook (version 1) which was first published on October 24, 2008. ICANN has taken unconventional measures to make defensive moves itself when it comes to the gTLD rollout. It abused it’s power while creating the DAG to grant itself special privileges nobody else has access to. Privileges that trademark owners worldwide are not being given an equal chance of getting! I expect as there are lawsuits against ICANN due to the gTLD rollout – section 2.2.1.2 of the DAG will be a point that is brought up to demonstrate ICANN’s understanding of the issues it created with Defensive Registrations. ICANN is now shaping up to be the biggest profiteer of trademarks the world has ever seen. Without even getting into the contested auctions which will generate untold cash for them. This gTLD launch is far worse than the “fear mongering” of the “protect your brand” campaigns that the .xxx registry did. After all, you only had to pay $200 to “protect your brand” in the .xxx extension. Interesting too that ICANN had no issues with that sort of mafia style promotion of the .xxx TLD and they did not do anything to curb that tasteless approach of goading trademark owners to paying to protect their brand. Which indicates ICANN is fine with such tactics of extorting money from trademark owners due to fear.

This whole thing makes me want to apply for a generic .brand extension just so I can get in on a future class action lawsuit for being given no choice but to apply for my .brand extension. Purely as a defensive registration. Of course FaceBook or Google probably do not have to worry because they have very specific brands. But what about a majority of companies out there like Apple? IBM? Philips? Java? Smith? Day? Word? Giants? XYZ? TBA? What about “GAC”? These are terms that many people might want to get a gTLD for. And the owners of these brands are being forced to BLINDLY apply so that nobody else can take control of their .brand! If the process were fair, I doubt anyone would take .Giants or even .GAC. But since you won’t know until it is too late, you have to apply in fear and without knowing what will come of your brand! I really don’t know why any company would want .gac, but the primary reason they would is to protect their brand.

To add salt to the wound, ICANN has now asked for public comment about Defensive Registrations so that they can most likely ignore all comments (as ICANN typically does in public comment periods) and say in the court of law “we asked for comments about defensive registrations.” Granted it won’t admit it was too late to derail their plan to be the world’s most profitable non-profit. Unless they care to stop the gTLD roll-out as it is currently slated. They need to enact a much more tactful and positive launch that does not entrap brands to paying an exorbitant amount of $185,000 to protect their brand! Instead ICANN needs to work in the public’s best interest, which the current gTLD launch is definitely not in the public’s best interest – it is only in ICANN’s best interest. Even after the public resoundingly said it did not want gTLDs to move forward, and with the Department of Justice, with the Senate and Congress and multiple agencies warning against moving forward, ICANN took no notice and failed to see what it’s organization was turning into. This issue of defensive registrations needs to get fixed! The solution is so simple. Let companies pay $5,000 for the opportunity to know who is applying for their string – and then let them decide if they should pay the remaining $180,000 when they actually submit! It really would not be too late to change the application process to do this. But as always, I have to assume ICANN won’t take such a simple solution because it would probably delay the gTLD rollout by another 3 to 6 months. Which somehow seems to be the last thing ICANN wants.

“So are we are now 40 days into the new year I can tell you we have sold including domain names pending in Escrow.com almost $400,000 in domain names.”

No wonder you make such a great Prophet

ps) I ‘ll give you $10,000 if you can turn expiring .info into .coms !

“if your planet is all women except for you and me, I’m in”

While we are dreaming, what kind of women? Because, that’s kinda’ important.