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For years, entrepreneur Constantine Roussos has been championing the .music domain extension - even though it
The reason? The potential for rampant piracy, of course. Imagine freemp3s.music, for example, and you also get the idea. "We are concerned that a music themed gTLD will be used to enable wide scale copyright and trademark infringement," wrote RIAA deputy general counsel Victoria Sheckler. "This fear is justified when we look at the massive copyright infringement battle our industries have faced over the past decade."
The "we" is a broad group of music organizations that co-signed the letter, including A2IM, IFPI, ASCAP, AIM, and BMI. And of course, these 'friendly' messages always come with a thinly-veiled stinger. "We prefer a practical solution to these issues, and hope to avoid the need to escalate the issue further," Sheckler concluded.
The complete letter to ICANN is available here.
Comments Closed
Calysta Rose Wednesday, January 19, 2011
I think that's one of the most inane lines of 'reasoning' I have ever seen. It's like something right out of a fairytale about monsters, "don't use that TLD name or the pirates will get you!" What a joke.
Visitor Wednesday, January 19, 2011
I'm registering pirate.music
aaccardo Wednesday, January 19, 2011
I don't understand what the RIAA's point is. freemp3's can be a .com, .net, etc.. What does it matter if there is one more domain extension? While you shouldn't just accept piracy nor should you stop making an effort to curb piracy, you should definitely not let fear keep you from implementing decisions that make sense.
nathan Wednesday, January 19, 2011
the riaa just hates life in general.
JanonymousR Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Before we condemn the record labels and PROs we should address this question: Why should anyone support a .music extension in the first place? What are the benefits of it? I haven't heard any benefits, only the fact that it would allow for cool new URL combinations.
Creating a .music URL would diminish the value of current music sites. Cybersquatters would just buy up as many ".music"s as they could. Sites like emusic.com would just buy emusic.music and add it as a parked-domain to emusic.com. I really don't see the benefit at all, other than additional registration fees for ICANN and web-hosting companies.
But your correct about part of the RIAAs' reasoning. It's not like a .music site would be more of a pirate hub than say piratebay.com. It would open up the floodgates for some premium domain names for the RIAA to work to shut down however....
The RIAA is 100% correct that it would allow for increased trademark violation from cybersquatters.
Constantine Roussos (.music) Thursday, January 20, 2011
Hey Paul,
Thanks for the coverage about this important issue. The .music top-level domain (TLD) initiative we are championing for is a community-based TLD.
There has been huge confusion about what the .music is and how it will function. I have been public at ICANN for years about the best model that would work and have proposed a community-based TLD that ensures fair representation of stakeholders of music as well as transparency in governance.
The premium domains such as rock.music will not be auctioned. These along with other major keyword, genre, linguistic, country, city will be used to benefit the .music community and be developed using our TLD technology. The goal is to create a win-win situation for .music domain holders.
Since this will not be a generic TLD like .COM, registering a .music domain will encompass rules. The .music domain extension will be a community-based initiative with stringent policies in regards to registration rules. Only members of approved .music Community Member Organizations (CMOs) will be able to register a .music address. CMOs will include .music-accredited Trade Organizations, Government Agencies/Export Offices, Music Educational Institutions, Digital Aggregators and Music Communities.
We invite these types of organizations to become .music Community Member Organizations, who will serve as gatekeepers to protect .music from malicious conduct. These CMOs will be assigned a validating ID that will be given to their members to use in order to register a .music domain.
You can email us at community (at) music.us if you are an organization interested in becoming a .music accredited CMO. We will be at Midem, New Music Seminar, Digital Music Forum East and SXSW as well. Contact us via our website http://music.us/contact.htm if you have questions or interest.
The issue of copyright piracy is not an ICANN issue since they are not a copyright regulating body. The .music TLD will be employ policies that stretch beyond ICANN norms for a TLD launch to ensure malicious conduct is prevented. Our biggest concern has been malicious content and gaming. While ICANN has not been very receptive to solving those issues, it is our responsibility to put together those policies and not rely on ICANN, who do not have copyright piracy as their role. They oversee the Internet in regards to Internet technical security, stability and interoperability.
ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments is ensuring there is competition, innovation, transparency, accountability and international participation. This is what .music will be all about. The question is how to ensure it is a safe haven for music consumption, collaboration and a tool to expand the pie for the music community. Being a nuisance is not the goal of .music. Creating value and serving the music community in a win-win situation is what the .music objective is.
Policy-making is of great importance and we have invited all music stakeholders to contribute, participate and actively get involved with .music. We trust there will be a commitment by the music industry, not just the music community, that they will do what is best for global music interest in order to create value and a governance based on trust, collaboration and win-win in the next phase of the Internet.
For this to be accomplished we need open dialogue, discussions and addressing the issues straight on. That entails asking the tough questions and being committed to creating value while ensuring governance by all key stakeholders from the music community, both commercial and non-commercial constituents.
I voice the same concerns as the RIAA and the Coalition. However, I have been an active member of the ICANN community for years now and would attest that there is a slim chance ICANN would go beyond its commitments and trail the areas of copyright. It is our responsibility to the music community to make this happen and not rely on 3rd parties.
I urge the music community understand what we are proposing in regards to launch and creating value, protecting trademarks and limiting copyright infringment. Getting on board and discussing these issues is critical. We have launched our global communication outreach campaign for years now and have addressed many issues of concern by many. We certainly would like to work with as many global music organizations and communities to get this right and ensure pirates do not get a hold of music-related TLDs. Our public comments to ICANN confirm this commitment we made. This should be a unified effort on behalf of all of the at-large music community and that is what we are striving for.
Constantine Roussos
.music Top-Level Domain Initiative
http://music.us
Eric Lyons Thursday, January 20, 2011
Weighing in on .music, both the RIAA fears and the dreams of would-be new domain "extension" owners are unfounded. No one cares. .com won, the war is over. The only reason for other top-level domains to exist is to fund ICANN, so they can afford to pay people like Bill Clinton at their meetings.
Do either the RIAA or Constantine Roussos believe that .music will have any effect whatsoever on piracy? What, exactly, is the difference to a song thief between freemp3s.music and downloadyourfreemp3s.com? The only difference is that the former is completely unknown, while the latter is understandable by -- literally -- the entire Internet audience.
Love your rag; read it every day.
Constantine Roussos (.music) Thursday, January 20, 2011
Eric,
Thank you for your comments. I agree with you. The .COM TLD is currently considered the king of all generic TLDs (especially in the USA).
However, ask a German and they will say .DE is king. Ask a Dutch and they will say .NL is king. The .COM extension has lost the war in almost every major country except the USA. The reason why ICANN is launching the new TLD program is for other extensions to be able to not only compete, but also innovate.
You can give examples such as .BIZ, .INFO or .MOBI as an indication of failure but I have to say that these TLDs had no component or attributes that would set them apart from .COM that would make registrants be proud to use. Other countries incorporated their cultural heritage in the TLD extension that was highly receptive. In the UK, the TLD of choice is .CO.UK. In the USA, the .COM beat .US because big brands associated .COM as the American brand and consumers understood it so, especially after billions of marketing dollars marketing .COM.
The goal of .MUSIC is not just launching a vanity TLD but creating an ecosystem that is secure, collaborative and works for the benefit of the at-large music community. We believe music can be as strong as a country-code TLD and strike a chord for musicians and the music community. Like .DK associates the Danish and is the TLD of choice in Denmark, the .MUSIC will be the association for a TLD of choice for the music community.
The benefit of the .MUSIC we are championing is that it will serve as a trusted badge with policies that outlaw piracy and cybersquatting. Consumers will be able to trust a .MUSIC domains as opposed to a .COM which lacks the policies to prevent piracy. The .MUSIC initiative will incorporate policies found in COICA as well as incorporate a stringent set of rules for .music registration using accredited .MUSIC Community Member Organizations (CMOs).
For the past few years or so I have also been quite vocal about ICANN allowing Vertical Integration of Registries/Registrars so that a new TLD can innovate and compete against the .COM monopoly. I lobbied ICANN for this quite extensively and since it was consistent with the Affirmation of Commitments to increase competition and bring innovation in the domain space, the ICANN Board voted to allow this. You might be right if you are playing by the old rules of domaining.
We will be offering an extensive set of data to the music community that can be collected at the macro level. This can help predict trends, improve decision making as well as for statistical purposes. Sort of like a Big Champagne but using the DNS. The other is our patent-pending DNS platform that we built to power the .MUSIC premium domains that will be .MUSIC registrant-generated. This will help .MUSIC registrants with marketing, gaining search traffic, for discovery as well as social connectedness and collaboration.
Furthermore, we will differentiate from .COM by enabling Internationalized participation by launching International Domain Names for .music to facilitate the music community from regions with languages in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi etc. In other words, we will be vying for the internalization of the music space on the Internet. The .music initiative will cater to the needs of a culturally-diverse global music community. Besides English/Latin, .MUSIC will also be translated and launched in 8 other languages, including French (.musique), Germanic (.musik), Hindi, Russian (.музыка), Japanese (音楽), Korean (음악), Arabic and Chinese (.音乐).
We have built a host of tools and technology to facilitate this to ensure that a .MUSIC will be a stronger value proposition than a .COM for the music community. Not only that, it will serve as a tool for expanding the pie for the music industry and not a nuisance. We stick to our commitment to build this and employ this for the music community and serve their interests.
Thank you for your comments,
Constantine Roussos
http://music.us
SocialSoundSystem Thursday, January 20, 2011
It's a great concept... But it's such a confusing sell. From what I remember from my conversation with Constantine, it wasn't just buy the domain and that's that... It was buy the domain and pay for services and premium packages and such... That's where you lost me... Why can't I just build my own website on that domain? Or if anything, just redirect it to my real website.
Correct me if I'm wrong Constantine... I just don't see any of that information in your website pitch
Constantine Roussos (.music) Friday, January 21, 2011
Thanks for the comments,
The policies we have built are to prevent cybersquatting and to create value for fans/users visiting a .music website.
Parking pages are ways that domainers have been using to monetize on domain names. We want to prevent this type of content because it is be not true content. It is merely a paid-links where the owner gets paid everytime someone clicks like Adsense. A .music domain must be music -related content.
Another issue is redirects. Unfortunately, allowing redirects can compromise the system as well as be a loophole for piracy-direction. Let us say PirateBay registers pbay.music and then after 6 months of legitimate use decides to redirect the site to the PirateBay.org site, then the usage of .music will be to direct users to pirated, illegal content.
Also the the platform we designed is to help with SEO and direct navigation as well as get all .music registrants listed in the search results within hours. Building pagerank and link popularity for the whole network of .music sites is the goal. This is why it is a community top-level domain. Everyone benefits from this strategy. Of course you can build your domain out just as long as there is content related to music and a link that says "Member of the .MUSIC community". This is how we we build all the premium domains and built traffic to .music registrants' websites. Redirects do not add any value to the .MUSIC community and neither do parking pages. The goal is quality and trust as well as creating value. The value of the entire network creates dividents for all members, not just a select few. What we are aiming for is creating this network effect.
All of this information is quite technical, especially when talking about PageRank, SEO ranking etc, so we chose not to confuse users. One of the complaints we got about the Music.us website was it was full of ICANN-lingo and technical terms that people outside of ICANN could not understand. We chose simplicity over explaining the technical specifics of the technology. We are quite excited about it that is for sure.
Hope I have answered your questions.
Constantine Roussos
http://music.u
JanonymousR Friday, January 21, 2011
So the premium domains like rock.music will not be auctioned but used to benefit the .music community? So in other words you guys will own the rock.music? And you will probably post links to rock bands with .music endings? Am I assuming correctly?
Also if I wanted to make my small band have a .music website what type of costs are we talking here. Could I even join the CMO?
I still do not see a benefit for the powers that be. They already have internet realty they operate from and sell music from. Why should they have to pay you guys premium charges now to continue doing this but with a different extension?
Also won't there still be the same disconnect internationally? You say .com isn't the king in germany but .de is. Will the .musique and .music be the same? or will they lead to different sites?
Thanks for answering the questions. These are true questions, not attempts to belittle your work.
Constantine Roussos (.music) Friday, January 21, 2011
Thanks for your questions. They are very important.
So yes, the premium domains will function to market all .music registrants as well as increase the pagerank/search link popularity of their domains. The benefits will be many.
Auctioning premium domains is not aligned with our mission statement. The focus in long term and to serve the community. What we are doing will be a first on the Internet and excited to use our DNS platform to innovate the field to benefit the music community and create value.
You will be able to join a CMO, just as long as you have music content and not using a .music domain for parking or redirecting it away from the network or engaging in piracy. The goal is creating the network effect and using it in a new innovative manner to expand the pie for the music community.
Thanks for your questions.
Constantine Roussos
dot.MUSIC Top-Level Domain Initiative
http://music.u
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