When The New TLD .SUCKS

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Mattias Geniar, April 12, 2015

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I’ve never been a fan of the new TLD’s. They won’t all .SUCK, but this is just criminal.

Consider that a “Sunrise Claim” (an early registration in a new TLD by holders of registered trademarks) typically run a few hundred dollars, under .SUCKS they start at $2,499. It gets worse – if your mark happens to be one the registry has designated as a “premium” name, the Sunrise price will be even higher. (Oh, they also renew at those prices).

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Nobody wants their domain.SUCKS. The only reason to buy a .SUCKS domains, it to prevent others from having it. And at 2.5k just to claim your name and have a yearly renewal at the same fee, that’s just criminal.

It’s like paying the mafia to keep your grocery store from being mugged. Except the internet doesn’t work this way. There’s plenty of alternatives to create a domain name with a negative name connotation. Buying your own .SUCKS domain does nothing to help you with this.

If someone’s willing to register a “yourname.sucks”, he’s now got more than a 1000 alternative TLDs thanks to ICANN.

There’s a reason most of the new TLDs don’t catch on. They were never needed in the first place.



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