New gTLD rush: The era of becoming a virtual property authority
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
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| Description | ICANN has recently finished evaluation of all 1,930 new generic Top Level Domains applications. ICANN’s new gTLD program has profound consequences for the information society and it will significantly change the face of the internet. On the other hand, it may appear that all these pioneering domain endings are a mixture of marketing and IP favoritism. But the recent development shows that the fragmentation of the internet is behind the door. Predictions emphasize that there will be a rise of brand and nonlatin characters domain names. If users accept new gTLD domains, the new gTLD operators will have significant influence on the internet traffic and obtain power, especially if they are also in a position of dominant internet search engine with a proprietary and non-transparent search algorithm. Therefore, new gTLD rush for valuable resources brings up a very interesting problem of virtualization of property which will be examined in this paper. By exploring the purposes of becoming a virtual property authority (new gTLD operator), I aim to answer the following questions: Can we still trust search engines' results on generic terms in the new domain name system? Or is it just new gTLD operators seeking for another bonanza? And finally, who will really flourish from this colonization based on virtual archery; and how the freedom of information will be transformed in the cyberspace ? |
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