If I’m understanding right, you can buy “twitter.sucks” for $200 and you own that, regardless of who owns .sucks as a TLD? Or is it a rental? You can separately purchase ALL “.sucks” for 185k? What happens if the owner of .sucks dies or goes to prison, do you also lose “twitter.sucks”?
Getting twitter.sucks is just leasing/buying a domain name, which is a lot more simple. Generally you pay for a set period, and have the option to renew it. I’m not sure what happens when a registrar closes down, other than it’s likely someone else takes it over. The agreements linked below have sections describing what happens if a registrar closes down or gets shut down by ICANN for breaking the agreement… presumably someone else takes it over. There are surely other people who know more about this than I do.
You can start a new gTLD that nobody else has for $185,000, plus the cost of operating the registry. From what I understand it’s basically a lease. As a registry, your job is to maintain a zone file for the TLD, and sell domains. (edit!) reading the contracts, you also pay them about $6,000 a quarter plus .25c for each registration for revenue over $50,000.
If I’m understanding right, you can buy “twitter.sucks” for $200 and you own that, regardless of who owns .sucks as a TLD? Or is it a rental? You can separately purchase ALL “.sucks” for 185k? What happens if the owner of .sucks dies or goes to prison, do you also lose “twitter.sucks”?
Getting twitter.sucks is just leasing/buying a domain name, which is a lot more simple. Generally you pay for a set period, and have the option to renew it. I’m not sure what happens when a registrar closes down, other than it’s likely someone else takes it over. The agreements linked below have sections describing what happens if a registrar closes down or gets shut down by ICANN for breaking the agreement… presumably someone else takes it over. There are surely other people who know more about this than I do.
You can start a new gTLD that nobody else has for $185,000, plus the cost of operating the registry. From what I understand it’s basically a lease. As a registry, your job is to maintain a zone file for the TLD, and sell domains. (edit!) reading the contracts, you also pay them about $6,000 a quarter plus .25c for each registration for revenue over $50,000.
Here is the agreement ICANN has for people who start TLDs: https://www.icann.org/en/registry-agreements and it is fairly legal and arcane.
They have a FAQ about the gTLD program: https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/global-support/faqs/faqs-en