The Interactive Advertising Bureau has come out against ICANN’s recent decision to expand the number of generic top-level domains, which will allow such suffixes as “.radio,” “.coke” or “.chicago.”
“This could be disastrous for the media brand owners we represent and the brand owners with which they work,” said IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg in a press release.
“We hope that ICANN will reconsider both this ill-considered decision and the process by which it was reached.”
Rothenberg claims ICANN approved the domain expansion without looking into potential economic repercussions and without consulting company stakeholders.
The IAB claims the new domains will come “at an extremely high cost to publishers and advertisers” and create the potential for “cyber squatters,” entities who use another’s domain name to damage their image, and/or sell the domain at a greatly inflated price.
The Association of National Advertisers called the move “economically unsupportable,” able to cause irreparable harm to the Internet business community and putting the safety of consumers in jeopardy.
New domains are expected to be available in late 2012.
