[humorix] Last TLD Sold To Commercial Interests

[James Baughn <jbaughn@ldd.net>]

Last TLD Sold To Commercial Interests
June 28, 2000

VADUZ, LIECHTENSTEIN -- During the past year, the
governments of small nations have been selling their Top
Level Domains (TLDs) to commercial interests in exchange
for the kind of money that only a Silicon Valley company
could spend. Liechtenstein was the last holdout -- until
today.  Earlier today they inked a deal with VA
Linux/Andover to license their .li TLD for US$50 million
per year. This comes on the heels of a deal VA Linux made
last week to acquire the .sd domain from Sudan to use as a
home for SlashDot.

VA Linux said in a press release lacking any semantic
content, "This strategic acquisition leverages the global
cross-platform domain name system to increas the corporate
enterprise mindshare of Linux and Open Source development
methodology paradigms, along with synergizing our dotcom
E-Commerce and B2B strategic partnerships, and, most
importantly, making us a lot of money."

Red Hat had also expressed interest in the .li TLD, but
instead purchased .gl (Gnu-Linux) from Greenland and .lu
(LinUx) from Luxembourg for a much lower price two weeks
ago. Red Hat also scooped up redh.at from Austria and r.pm
from St. Pierre-Miquelon.

The Research & Caffeine-Guzzling Department here at Humorix
collected this list of TLDs that were handed over to
corporations during the last year:

* .pl (Poland), .pm (St. Pierre-Miquelon),  .py (Paraguay),
  and .cc (Cocos Islands) - O'Reilly snapped up these
  domains to use for Perl, Python, and C++ sites.

* .pn (Pitcairn Island) - X-Rated X-Citement X-Travaganza
  Inc. purchased this TLD to use for PorN. 

* .er (Eritrea) - Network Solutions grabbed this TLD to add
  to their monopoly portfolio. They've already sold domains
  like spamm.er, lawy.er, ambulance-chas.er for $10,000
  apiece. 

* .mc (Monaco) - McDonalds snatched this TLD to use
  exclusively for their website.

* .bg (Bulgaria) - Not to be outdone, Burger King bought
  this TLD.

* .md (Moldova) - An association of doctors with too much
  money chipped in to buy this TLD for vanity websites.

* .mv (Maldives) - A dotcom that was about to fail trashed
  their business plan (written on a napkin) and pooled just
  enough Venture Capital to buy this TLD for movies.

* .ms (Montserrat), .mn (Mongolia), .bb (Barbados) and .ie
  (Ireland) - Microsoft literally acquired all of these
  countries so they could claim these TLDs for Microsoft,
  the Microsoft Network, Microsoft BoB, and Internet
  Explorer,  respectively.

* .co (Colombia) and .cm (Cameroon) - An entreprenuer
  snagged these TLDs hoping that newbies will mistake them
  for .com.

* .sm (San Marino) - Porn-O-Terrific Inc. leased this TLD
  in February to house smut sites. This decision was a good
  one, as orga.sm and sado-masochi.sm are now quite
  popular. Our own Jon Splatz was hoping last year to
  convince the San Marino government to sell him
  lawyercly.sm, but negotiations fell through.

  Porn-O-Terrific also snagged .fo (Faroe Islands) for
  "FOrnication" and .re (Reunion Island) for "REdlight
  district". Porn-O-Terrific expects an IPO next month,
  which analysts predict will be spectacular. Said one,
  "Adult sites are the only Internet content companies that
  are making any money right now..."

* .bz (Belize) - LinuxOne scraped together enough capital
  to lease this TLD hoping to house Open Source (BaZaar)
  projects here. It didn't work at all, since all real
  nerds prefer dotorg domains.

* .st (Sao Tome) - Paramount purchased .st for Star Trek
  sites. A company spokesman said, "Sorry, George Lucas,
  but there isn't a .sw domain for Star Wars sites.
  Sucker!"

* .no (Norway) - Ralph Nader acquired this TLD for a
  collection of boycott sites. We hear that microsoft.no is
  quite popular.

Except for .us (which many people have never heard of),
.au, .ca, and .uk, all other two-letter TLDs are now in the
hands of private companies hoping to get-rich-quick from
the sorry state of the DNS system. Still, one TLD-o-preneur
defended his business, arguing, "Nobody used many of those
domains anyways. So what if we're using the system in ways
it wasn't intended for... that's a small price to pay to
have such cool domains as no.sp.am, big-naked-bu.tt,
emacs.vs.vi and linux-rul.es."

-
Humorix:      Linux and Open Source(nontm) on a lighter note
Archive:      http://humbolt.nl.linux.org/lists/
Web site:     http://www.i-want-a-website.com/about-linux/