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After more than a decade of disputes, lawsuits and arbitration proceedings, one of the internet’s most coveted domain names has finally found a home. Verisign, the operator of .com and .net, has secured control of .web and plans to launch registrations later this year.
The delegation of .web into the global Domain Name System marks the end of a saga that began with ICANN’s 2012 expansion of generic top-level domains. Although hundreds of new internet suffixes have since entered the market, .web has remained conspicuously absent. Its broad appeal—and its resemblance to the World Wide Web itself—has long made it one of the industry’s most valuable undeployed digital assets.
Disputes resolved: Verisign’s victory has been years in the making. In 2016, Nu Dot Co, backed financially by Verisign, won the rights to .web in a $135m auction, triggering prolonged challenges from rival applicants. The disputes have now been resolved under confidential terms, clearing the final obstacle to launch.
The company intends to leverage the same globally distributed infrastructure that has supported .com and .net for nearly three decades. For businesses and individuals seeking a recognisable online identity, .web offers both familiarity and flexibility at a time when digital branding remains increasingly important.
The domain also presents a commercial opportunity. Unlike .com, .web will not be subject to Verisign’s Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce, affording the company greater freedom over pricing strategies. Industry observers expect premium pricing for sought-after names and possible introductory offers to encourage early adoption.
Bottom line: The arrival of .web may not transform the internet overnight. Yet its launch closes one of the domain-name industry’s longest-running chapters and raises an intriguing question: in an era crowded with digital addresses, can a familiar four-letter word still capture the web’s imagination?
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A World-Renowned Source for Internet Developments. Serving Since 2002.
.web was an applied-for TLD (by IOD) in ICANN’s first round of new TLD efforts back around year 2000.
IOD was not turned down. IOD’s application was found valid and meritorious. The application was merely deferred. (And with the passage of years that deferral became a de facto refusal.) There were indications that the refusal (and indefinite deferral) was an improper reprisal against IOD and its founders.
I had entered into a valid, paid contract with IOD for cavebear.web. I used that name for many years, with an operational website. Although it was not in the legacy root system, cavebear.web was quite usable on the Internet by those who chose to use competing sets of root servers - which did exist and were operational outside of ICANN’s universe.
One of the claimed hallmarks of the Internet is that innovation does not require permission - innovation can freely occur at the edges. My contract for and use of cavebear.web is that kind of innovation.
Moreover, if permission is “required” one might ask how the Internet came to be despite the refusal of the telcos in the 1960’s and 1970’s to recognize the validity of store-and-forward packet switching and their resulting opposition.
Our contract was made in California. Cavebear.web was operational (until fairly recently). The name cavebear.web would resolve, email could be exchanged, and there was an operating website.
ICANN very much harmed IOD back in year 2000 and this new act harms me by effectively interfering with my legal contractual right to resume my prior operating cavebear.web here in California and perhaps the entire United States. And this new act creates the potential of confusion regarding the source and identity of “cavebear.web”.
I might suggest that there could well be legal grounds against ICANN and Verisign for intentional and tortious interference with my long-existing contractual, and actually implemented, relationship to operate cavebear.web, at least here in California. There also may be legal grounds because my use of cavebear.web may have established certain trade or service mark rights under California law.
I do not want to go back a quarter of a century to redress these wrongs or to fight the battles that would ensue.
However, I do believe that apologies for this kind of process should be made, and perhaps that compensation or accommodations be considered.