Is .Sucks Extortion?

Boston Globe tech columnist Hiawatha Bray doesn’t quite get around to calling it that, although he quotes a critic who does (a U.S. Congressman with his own controversial past), but what Bray describes in his update on the .sucks domain enterprise certainly fits the definition. The article does give the CEO of Vox Populi (the company that owns and administers the .sucks web domain) his say on the matter, and what he says is that it’s beneficial to have “a place where criticism can be seen in the full light of day.” But Bray points out that’s not what’s going on. Instead companies are buying up their own .sucks variation on their brand name, and paying the required premium price of $2,499 to do it, before it goes on sale to the general public for about $200. So far, according to research cited in the article, about 6,000 .sucks addresses have been sold, but virtually none actually appears on the Internet, presumably because these addresses were bought by the brand holder who essentially retires them. “Far from encouraging public debate,” writes Bray, “Berard is selling silence, by marketing Internet addresses born to be buried.”