Vatican Says Hold On With Those .religion TLDs

from the ICANN-has-lots-of-domain-fun dept

Fri, Mar 6th 2009 2:40pm — Carlo Longino

ICANN is having one of its regular meetings in Mexico City, the kind where proposals for all the latest and greatest top-level domains get kicked around. But some TLDs you may not be seeing soon are .catholic, or .hindu, or .churchofthefsm, after The Vatican said it didn't think it was a good idea. Essentially, they don't like the idea of some registrar or other group being given control of the TLD of a particular religious tradition, with ICANN forced to determine who gets to be the gatekeeper for each particular set of beliefs. It remains to be seen how this will fit in with ICANN's plans to open up the TLD system, which would let people register nearly any TLD they wanted (assuming they fork over the requisite amount of cash, of course). Throwing the system open would certainly seem to be setting the stage for a huge number of disputes, as companies fight over who should get to own something like .apple. By allowing .religion TLDs, ICANN could be setting things up for holy cyberwars -- but if it's going to open things up, should it be playing censor, or determining who the rightful "owner" of each religion's TLD should be?

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Filed Under: religion, tlds, vatican

13 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2009 @ 2:48pm

Sadly I am dissapointed at not being able to see just how destructive religious zealots could be in a cyberwar.
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Ron (profile), 6 Mar 2009 @ 2:59pm

Cyberwar
re: "setting things up for holy cyberwars:

C'mon, let's see whose god is stronger!
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Yakko Warner, 6 Mar 2009 @ 3:42pm

What could go wrong?
<sarcasm>The internet has always been such a haven for religious tolerance.</sarcasm>
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Theoden, 6 Mar 2009 @ 4:05pm

Vatican thinks?
Maybe they are afraid that the .catholic domain would just be a haven for pedophiles, and that would give the church a bad name?
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- Guy One, 6 Mar 2009 @ 5:02pm
  
  Re: Vatican thinks?
  Hey! every religion attracts WEIRD people.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2009 @ 5:00pm

God?
You people do you they have been lying to you your whole life right?
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Sam, 6 Mar 2009 @ 5:15pm

no megusta
As a flaming conservative and man that is on fire for Jesus, I don't think that this is a good idea.

I can see the atheists really having fun with this one... .godhater .jesussucks ummm yea
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Dave, 6 Mar 2009 @ 5:31pm

re:no megusta
they have to be a religion before they could get a domain (unless they fork over the money). Not something to really worry about.

unfortunately that means the cult of Scientology would also be able to get a domain
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- Washii, 7 Mar 2009 @ 12:19am
  
  Re: re:no megusta
  Lordy. They'd probably get .sci, too!
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spaceman spiff, 7 Mar 2009 @ 9:23am

"Stupid is as Stupid does" -Forrest Gump
I wonder if Microsoft would object to a TLD of .bob? :-). In any case, if there was a .god TLD, then I would think that the Vatican, and other religious nut-cases would rejoice, as then they can truly attest to the fact that god exists.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Mar 2009 @ 1:22pm

Does the world need any more TLD?
I'm certain there are more than enough already.
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John (profile), 9 Mar 2009 @ 1:01pm

Never overestimate people
Instead of discussing who should control the ".religion" or ".religious" TLD's, shouldn't the admins be discussing how hard this will be for people to spell correctly?

Will porn-squatters pick up the mis-spelled TLD to grab people? And will the Pope take complaints from people who go to www.church.relligon and get a hard-core sex site?
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Articles on Spirituality, 7 Dec 2011 @ 8:48am

Good Idea
It's a good idea not to allow anyone to use TLDs related to religion. It's a good thing that they don't have a control over these domains. Main reason is that negative or anti people might use this for a wrong or bad website/blog.
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