Rival Green Groups Bid To Snatch .eco Domain 223
Peace Corps Library writes "BBC reports that two rival environmental groups are lining up supporters to try to take control of the new .eco domain aimed at green groups. In March, former US vice president Al Gore backed a bid by the California group Dot Eco to operate the .eco TLD, but now a Canadian environmental group known as Big Room has launched a competing bid to manage it. 'We're two different applicants with two different business ideas. Ours is to sell domain names to raise funds for organizations who can effect change,' says Minor Childers, co-founder of Dot Eco. The group has already entered into contracts with its supporters — such as the Sierra Club and the Alliance for Climate Protection — to give away 57% of its profits from sales. Big Room also plans to generate money from the sale of .eco domain names to fund sustainability projects around the world, however, the consortium, which includes WWF International and Green Cross International — founded in 1993 by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, also believes that .eco could be used as a labeling system to endorse companies with green credentials. Despite having differences about a model for .eco, both groups will 'definitely have to sit down' together at some point, says Childers. 'We could be one of the biggest contributors to environmental causes anywhere in the world.'"
Re:Green is the new black (Score:3, Informative)
Can't we just create the "Green Police" that ecosopher Pentti Linkola recommended, and be done with these irksome charities?
I sincerely hope that is sarcasm [wikipedia.org]. Especially when these guys [wikipedia.org] seem to be some of his inspiration.
Re:Who says that only those two ... (Score:4, Informative)
As an aside, it's totally crazy that someone would change their organization's name simply for a domain name.
Re:No one cares (Score:2, Informative)
Face it, there are only 5 real, non-national TLDs: .com, .org, .edu, .Net, and .gov. All the others are just a waste of time.
I occasionally see ".info" used, actually. Not very often, that's true, but it does get used, whereas I've never seen anyone use .biz, much less .museum or .aero or .jobs.
".int" is also sometimes used, although the only example I can think of right now is http://www.eu.int .
And finally, since you're including ".gov" and ".edu", don't forget about ".mil", either. Chances are the average person won't use it as often as the other two, but it's definitely there, and it's very much being used.
Re:TLDs supporting particular causes now? (Score:3, Informative)
" I'm not sure if I like the idea of handing out a TLD that is basically going to support a groups in a particular cause. In the .eco realm, it seems to me like .org would work just fine, and it's broad enough to be all-encompassing of many points of view. Speaking of which, I think Wikipedia addresses this quite well"
It's interesting to compare the difference between Wikipedia and ICANN, who administer these top level domains.
Wikipedia is 10 poeple in a office, who work in New York and stay there. They rely on donations which they get because poeple find them useful. Wikipedia is their deliverable.
ICANN has 100 staff and burns about $100M a year and flies all over the world putting on five star trade shows for insiders. Their deliverables are... a bunch of reports that they got volunteers to write that don't tell us anything we didn't know in 1996.
Imagine ICANN running Wikipedia. Or the reverse.