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.'"
Green is the new black (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgive my cynicism but in my experience, humans are not altruistic at all. Like monkeys, we do what we do because it benefits us.
While I fully support green causes for my own selfish reasons (my children), I am skeptical about the motivations of "green" groups. They seem to be using green as a fashion statement and an identity, and don't seem all that motivated to be effective.
But if given a chance to push us around for not being green... they're good at that.
Can't we just create the "Green Police" that ecosopher Pentti Linkola recommended, and be done with these irksome charities?
Who says that only those two ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Silly... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Green" is all the rage at the moment(or, at least, greenwashing is); but I don't see that changing the basic fact that, for anything besides highly recognisable
Re:Green is the new black (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who says that only those two ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the thousands of domain squatters and assorted bozos who would actually want to buy an .eco domain. Why do TLD's remind me of real estate sales in Second Life?.
Give it up already folks.
No one cares (Score:3, Insightful)
There are lots of TLDs that no one ever thinks about and hardly ever use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains [wikipedia.org]
When was the last time you visited a .biz site? Have you ever found a position using the .jobs TLD?
How cool is it that the TLD for mobile devices is longer than the usual 3 letter TLD?
Found a lawyer or doctor using the .pro TLD lately? Could you point someone to a good travel agent on the .travel TLD?
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.
Re:Green is the new black (Score:2, Insightful)
And "Green groups" can't even agree on what's "green".
Nukes? ...Ahhh, were all gonna die!. ...Causes medical problems and kills birds. ...Heavy metals in the manufacturing process. ..."Doesn't that take energy from the environment?" ...from a real Slashdotter.
Wind?
Solar?
Oil?...yeah, right.
Harness ocean waves.
GeoThermal?...causes earthquakes, kills the geysers.
And you want them to agree on managing a domain?
Re:Green is the new black (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't we just create the "Green Police" that ecosopher Pentti Linkola recommended, and be done with these irksome charities?
I think they're called the EPA.
The unfortunate truth is that only so much can be done by political activism and passing laws and funding bureaucracy. What really needs to be done, on a larger scale, is train or corporte leaders to understand the business case for environmental responsibility. There is one, although many refuse to see it because it does require investment.
Furthermore, the real environmentalists are the scientists and engineers that come up with better, safer ways to manufacture goods and dispose of them, and who convince their corporate overlords to put their dollars there. All the external activism in the world won't convince a hard-nosed businessman to burn cash on making his company produce less waste: it usually takes someone on the inside. The thing is, those people never get much credit: unsung heroes they are.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
We'll donate 57% of our profits! (Score:5, Insightful)
If organizations with "green" or conversationalist initiatives as basically your sole customers, why would you charge more than you need to for a domain name and then hand some of the profits back to the same set of companies? In this case, wouldn't it be best to just lower your prices and run as a straight non-profit?
Or for all the giving back bullshit, is this yet another poorly conceived attempt at cashing in on the popularity of the green movement? Who am I kidding? This yet another poorly conceived attempt at cashing in on the popularity of the green movement.
Pop Quiz: What's 57% of 0? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just how many domains do they think they're going to be selling? At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away.
Anyone here old enough? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone here old enough to remember the first ecology movement? It, too, was lame, with it's own lame, green flag. Just green-n-white bars like the US flag, but a silly character in the middle of the field.
Being good stewards, yes. Endocrinating young children into fairy tales, no. Things like Captain Planet get under my skin. The science they point to is grey at best, and it all serves political parties.
I mean, whether it's hotter than usual, or colder than usual, BOTH are a sign of ManMadeGlobalWarming(TM) for which money must be sent to Washington. That's not science, that's religion!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
TLDs supporting particular causes now? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the flipside, it would be kind of nice to have a .nut domain for all the right-wing neocons and nutjobs out there. It would be easier to just block anything in that TLD,... ;-)
So lets say they get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Will anyone even know its there, or care?
Oh yes it's "all about the green" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Green is the new black (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Anyone here old enough? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the message was that all factories pollute and all CEO's investors whatever are out to destroy the planet if they can make a dollar.
You may not see it as out to serve anyone but it was. Just read a few comment from slashdot about how those kids are indoctrinated into believing all corporations are evil intent on destroying the environment. There are quite a few of those idiots around here and that sort of proves his point.
Re:Green is Population Control (Score:5, Insightful)
China is their model. Our model I dare say. Modern population growth is preposterous. Unsustainable doesn't even begin to describe it.
We have too many people on this planet as it is, and there's no good way to get them off the planet, the energy requirements are simply too great. If we're going to colonize, we won't be sending more than a few thousand to start the colony, and then it will not be able to support any significant migrants from a Terran perspective. Population control is essential.
Re:Pop Quiz: What's 57% of 0? (Score:3, Insightful)
At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away.
Competitive rates compared to what?
All these new TLDs serve nothing more than either vanity, or marketing purposes. .com .net and .org don't provide that same marketing/vanity. I do think you're right that this is a niche market and they won't sell a lot of domains. That means the price is going to be higher.
Re:Green is the new black (Score:5, Insightful)
God forbid that they might have some differences in viewpoint or emphasis, despite a generally shared goal.
There are some green groups that focus on biodiversity and preventing extinctions. Others focus on creating large undeveloped wildlife preserves. Yet others are worried about contaminants and pollution, or on green design of industrial objects, or an reducing the impact of processes and pricing externalities. The larger goals overlap, but the foci are very different.
Re:Green is the new black (Score:4, Insightful)
And sure, these are businesses in the end as well. Seems they both mean to make a profit off this, so naturally they compete, what's so crazy about that?
Re:Deprecate .com etc and emphasize country TLD's (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about multinational companies? International treaty organizations? Free software projects (should it be linux.org, or linux.org.us, or linux.org.fi?) or other web sites that have no desire to be associated with any particular country, but consider themselves Citizens of the Net? IMHO, true gTLDs are just as legitimate as ccTLDs.
Re:Green is the new black (Score:4, Insightful)
This just doesn't make sense to me... How can they be rival groups if they clearly have the same goal?
My naive self didn't think Corporate America's greed had made its way to environmental groups...
My you are naive, if there is money or power or prestige, greed will follow.
Re:Green is Population Control (Score:3, Insightful)
You're completely wrong. Our planet could sustain 8 billion people, 9-10 billion if we really tried. Come on. Rationing is never the solution. Necessity is the mother of invention. When we need more food, we'll invent more efficient processes of making it. The Earth will find its own equilibrium, we don't need to do it for it. That's terribly Arrogant and Elitist.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason we deride them is because they are all about problems, not about solutions. It is easy to point out the problems in life. Why? Because everything has a cost. Anything you do, there's a cost to, there's a downside. As such, no matter what choice you make, you can always say "This is the problem with that choice." That isn't hard, nor is it productive.
What is needed is to weigh the costs, and by costs we me economic and non-economic, of various solutions and then attempt to choose which one gives the most benefits with the least costs. They ALL have costs, downsides, that isn't the issue. The issue is which is the best.
Well green groups are notoriously bad for simply not caring. They just hate on all solutions. They say you are doing X poorly. So you say ok, well here's a way we can address that. They then hate on the new solution. They are whiners, not problem solvers.
The only thing they ever seem to agree is a solution is to give lots and lots of money to green organizations. They don't have a clear goal as to what will be done with it that'll make an improvement, but they need lots of money. That seems more than a little self serving.
That's why many people give them crap. If they want more people to take them seriously they need to grow up. They can't just point out problems, they have to start coming up with solutions. Also those have to be real solutions, not "We should all go back to preindustrial society, never mind that 90%+ of humans have to die for that to happen." So long as they just hate on any real solution, people are going to keep ignoring them.
Re:Green is Population Control (Score:2, Insightful)
The infrastructure we have is insufficient to give everyone a reasonable quality of life. Obviously, our planet could sustain 9-10 billion if we really tried. But they'd all be living in conditions looking roughly like modern India - crowded, dirty, cities where no one has enough.
If we backtrack a bit, reduce the population by about half, the infrastructure we have in place would be sufficient to give everyone a decent (yes, by which I mean like the United States) quality of life. At that point, maybe we can talk about increasing the population.
You are arrogant and elitist to suggest that people should take up all the space they can, because they'll deal with it just fine. The fact that you have a computer suggests that you haven't had to deal with it.
And by 'it' I mean no paved roads, roads that wash out in the rainy season cutting you off from important supplies, lack of flush toilets or outright lack of running water. I don't want the steady state, I want true equilibrium, with people having, on the whole, enough to sustain themselves without working day and night.
Re:Green is the new black (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
"Well green groups are notoriously bad for simply not caring. They just hate on all solutions. "
No, it's more that like Richard Stallman they keep rudely pointing out whenever someone proposes a 'solution' that is in fact a bigger problem because it violates the laws of physics.
The free market doesn't like to hear that! The free market knows you can just keep drilling for oil forever! The free market knows cabbages grow just fine on oil-based herbicides and pesticides and hormones! The free market knows fresh water comes for free everywhere! The free market knows exponential growth can continue forever!
Until it doesnt, then the free market will abruptly come to the same conclusion those naysaying greens did 50 years ago: that infinite growth is in fact unsstainable. So yes, in the 'long run', as Keynes said, the market is self-correcting. It's just that there might be smarter ways of managing that correction than just let it all jump on us at once.
"If they want more people to take them seriously they need to grow up. They can't just point out problems, they have to start coming up with solutions."
They do. It's just that the solutions proposed - deindustrialisation, organics, fair trade - are considered unacceptable by the market.
And of course, the market always knows best. Until it doesn't.
Re:Green is Population Control (Score:2, Insightful)