Over the past two years, more than 500 new top-level domains
(TLDs, or the words to the right of the dot in a domain name, such
as .com or .edu) like .attorney, .consulting, .menu, and even
.rocks have launched. But none has garnered the attention and
concern of the business community as much as .sucks, a TLD
launching this year and being billed by its registry (the
appropriately named company Vox Populi) as a place where consumers
can find their voice.
While several large organizations like Google and even
celebrities like Taylor Swift and Oprah have taken pre-emptive
steps to protect their brand by preregistering for their domains,
criticism of the .sucks TLD has remained strong. Former U.S.
Senator Jay Rockefeller called the .sucks TLD offering
“little more than a predatory shakedown scheme.” Amidst
mounting pressure from large corporations within its Intellectual
Property Constituency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN), which
