I’ve received a lot of deceiving emails and letters in my years of domaining but this is the first actual site that has drawn my ire. YourSiteCan.be (not going to give link) is a site that sells “information” regarding the registrations of new TLDs. The problem, you can make up your own TLD. Any TLD. Here are some recently “ordered” domains
- make.money
- grandrapids.auction
- order.takeout
- find.boats
- motorcycle.brake
- air.filter
- greenbay.packers
- microsoft.cmo
- mobile.phone
- superior.liquidnatrition
- texas.football
- leather.jackets
According to their website,
By Ordering with us, your domain name will be stored in our database and be displayed as “NOT AVAILABLE” to other users looking for the same domain name. Purchasing our service will keep you in the know before the gerneral public as ICANN releases and permits new domains.
In reality, this is very deceptive. Sure, they DO state several times that this does not guarantee that you will get this name but merely provides information about it. The problem, as I see it, is that it is set up exactly like a domain registration service and gives the feeling that you are really registering a domain. Anyone with the slightest bit of knowledge of domains realizes only ICANN can release a new TLD and that exactly 0 of these “registered” names will ever exist, but some people may not. They are playing the same game as the fake IDs sold in the back of Cracked magazine in the 70’s and 80’s. You were pretty sure they were going to be terrible but it was worth a shot.
The fact that people are paying $8 dollars is a shame. I’m sure that yoursitecan.be has hired a bunch of lawyers to make sure they are legal but that doesn’t make it right.
I received the same email. I told them to go “eat.shit” 😀
Regulation? It’s the wild west, only not in terms of opportunities to excel but to deceive. Just search for “domains” in twitter to see the crap references that come up.