Generic domain name--problems arising from unregulated name selection

Within a particular TLD, parties are generally free to register an undelegated domain name on a first come, first served basis, resulting in Harris's lament, all the good ones are taken. For generic or commonly used names, this may sometimes lead to the use of a domain name which is inaccurate or misleading. This problem can be seen with regard to the ownership or control of domain names for a generic product or service. By way of illustration, there has been tremendous growth in the number and size of literary festivals around the world in recent years. In the current context, a generic domain name such as literary.org is available to the first literary festival organization that is able to obtain the registration, even if the festival in question is very young or obscure. Some critics argue that there is greater amenity in reserving such domain names for the use of, for example, a regional or umbrella grouping of festivals. Related issues may also arise in relation to noncommercial domain names.

Unconventional domain names

Due to the rarity of one-word dot-com domain names, many unconventional domain names, domain hacks, have been created. They make use of the top-level domain as an integral part of the Web site's title. Three popular domain hack Web sites are cr.yp.to, blo.gs and del.icio.us, which spell out "crypto", "blogs" and "delicious", respectively.

Unconventional domain names are also used to create unconventional email addresses. Non-working examples that spell 'James' are j@m.es and j@mes.com, which use the domain names m.es (of Spain's .es) and mes.com, respectively.

[edit] Premium domain names

In the business of marketing domain names, "premium" domain names are often valuable, and have particular characteristics that are used in the domain appraisal process. For example, the names are short, memorable, may contain words that are regularly searched on search engines, and/or keywords that help the domain name gain a higher ranking on search engines. They may contain generic words, so the domain has more than one meaning.

Very short .com domains are valuable as their number is limited. Among the 26 single-letter second-level domains, only 3 are currently registered (q.com, x.com, z.com) because the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority reserved them in 1993. Those that were already registered were not recalled. Among the 676 .com two letter domain name 59 have been registered or purchased by global branded companies. ^[7]