Vatican to control new 'Catholic' Internet domain [CNAU]

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This is big news, for anyone who does not understand the implications. This is a new Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) with as much global reach as .COM or .BIZ. To have a TLD controlled by one organization is almost unheard of. It will be a great thing if the Holy See can collect and curate many official websites under this one umbrella. I look forward to its implementation.
 
Hmmm…

Thats pretty cool. Catholic sites are getting a .catholic domain?

I think this is a pretty good idea because if you log onto a site with the .catholic in the address, at least you’ll know that it’s approved by the Vatican.
 
Wow, that’s impressive (especially considering that each gTLD cost $185,000).

And not only that, but the Vatican was the only group to apply for .catholic, which is good, because it would be terrible if some dissident group (like Call to Action or something) got ahold of it.

This is very good I say. Currently, things like diocese are spread out over .com, .net, .org, .ca (in Canada, including in third level domains like *.ab.ca). So now we could have newyork.catholic for the Archdiocese of New York or stpatricks.newyork.catholic for St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We could get some good standardization of Catholic groups, and we could be assured that anything under .catholic has canonical status (that’ll settle a few arguments by itself for sure).

If anyone wants to look at the full list, see here. The list confirms that the Vatican Pontifical Council for Social Communication is the official applicant.
 
👍 A smart move. It would pay for itself too in preventing dissident, or worse yet, pornographic or some other trashy organization from getting ahold of it and then having to hire lawyers to see if there was any recourse available.

Maybe that would be hard to do with an entire domain name anyway, but some years ago I heard of impostor URLs that had “Catholic” in their name and took people to bad sites. :eek: :mad:
 
Elizium23 said:
This is big news, for anyone who does not understand the implications. This is a new Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) with as much global reach as .COM or .BIZ. To have a TLD controlled by one organization is almost unheard of. It will be a great thing if the Holy See can collect and curate many official websites under this one umbrella. I look forward to its implementation.
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Not really, most of the geographic TLD’s are controlled by the respective governments.

The Vatican is a State itself, so would thus have the same authority to regulate .catholic as the government of Tanzania would have to regulate .tz, or the Dept of Defense has to regulate .mil
 
Brendan said:
Not really, most of the geographic TLD’s are controlled by the respective governments.

The Vatican is a State itself, so would thus have the same authority to regulate .catholic as the government of Tanzania would have to regulate .tz, or the Dept of Defense has to regulate .mil
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…or the Vatican to regulate .va… 🙂

This would be pretty cool. They have indicated that the .catholic extension would only be given to groups with canonical recognition. So no bloggers. 😛

I wonder if Catholic Answers could get catholic.catholic. 😃
 
curlycool89 said:
If anyone wants to look at the full list, see here. The list confirms that the Vatican Pontifical Council for Social Communication is the official applicant.
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Interesting. I didn’t see many multiple bidders until I got to .app. Then I was like, why does everyone want .A-P-P? :confused: Then I realized, oh it’s “app” as in “There’s an app for that.” :newidea: I can understand there being a lot of competition for that one.

I notice some other groups applying for things like .church, .bible, and .christmas. Too bad the Holy See didn’t go for those, too. :o

I noticed in many cases, the same person was requesting multiple TLD’s on behalf of different groups. For example, the same guy made an application on behalf of AARP, Johnson & Johnson, Comcast, Walmart, and Major League Baseball. Actually, if I do a word search, his name pops up 68 times. :hmmm:

And some of the applying companies seem to be holding companies created specifically for the application process, which makes it rather difficult to know exactly who is behind the application.
 
So does that mean these forums will be controlled by the Vatican? forums**.catholic**…😃
 
Joe_5859 said:
I noticed in many cases, the same person was requesting multiple TLD’s on behalf of different groups. For example, the same guy made an application on behalf of AARP, Johnson & Johnson, Comcast, Walmart, and Major League Baseball. Actually, if I do a word search, his name pops up 68 times. :hmmm:

And some of the applying companies seem to be holding companies created specifically for the application process, which makes it rather difficult to know exactly who is behind the application.
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Some of them are likely squatters (although, I can’t really see the point in that since it costs $25K a year just to maintain the gTLD), but some are likely consultants working on behalf of other companies. Like people who are good at filling out the right paperwork, experts in internet laws and regulations and such.

And some are probably trying to take advantage of generic names like .app. Those conflicts go to some mysterious dispute resolution process. Most of these will probably end up being fairly irrelevant in the end.
 
curlycool89 said:
Some of them are likely squatters (although, I can’t really see the point in that since it costs $25K a year just to maintain the gTLD), but some are likely consultants working on behalf of other companies. Like people who are good at filling out the right paperwork, experts in internet laws and regulations and such.

And some are probably trying to take advantage of generic names like .app. Those conflicts go to some mysterious dispute resolution process. Most of these will probably end up being fairly irrelevant in the end.
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That’s what I figured.

I’m curious to see how this huge influx of gTLD’s will effect the internet overall. It seems like we’ll have more to keep track of.

Though I guess I can see how it might simplify things as well. Having one’s own TLD would basically make the “.com” at the end superfluous. Just type in “walmart” and you go to Walmart’s website.
 
curlycool89 said:
Most of these will probably end up being fairly irrelevant in the end.
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Hm, I’m not so sure? The gTLD concept has the capacity to be quite relevant. In the not so distant future, it may be one of the generally accepted processes to find authorities on topics/matters as well as finding trusted info on products.
Joe_5859 said:
I’m curious to see how this huge influx of gTLD’s will effect the internet overall. It seems like we’ll have more to keep track of.
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Thankfully many foresaw the serious problems of a shortage of IP Addresses. (IPv6 to the rescue)

Yet with the growing influx of domain names - DNS security needs to be more of a priority.

I find this move to allow more organizations to effectively act as a registrar quite an important event.
 
M-Dent said:
Hm, I’m not so sure? The gTLD concept has the capacity to be quite relevant. In the not so distant future, it may be one of the generally accepted processes to find authorities on topics/matters as well as finding trusted info on products.
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I can see it for a few, but most will probably go nowhere. Some may end up even worse as completely reviled (joining the ranks of .biz, .info, and .cc. I’ve gone and blocked .biz completely on my email spam filter).
 
I take it .katolicki, .catolico, .catholicam, etc are out as well? Or are Anglophones the only ones who set up websites?
 
curlycool89 said:
I can see it for a few, but most will probably go nowhere. Some may end up even worse as completely reviled (joining the ranks of .biz, .info, and .cc. I’ve gone and blocked .biz completely on my email spam filter).
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If this simply becomes a battle of greedy registrars - I agree with you on some being reviled.

For example, the gTLD .guitar has great potential beyond just applying for it to be a registrar. (applicant uniregistry.com applied for this as well as quite a few generic names/terms)

.guitar could host a wide and enthusiastic community. From vendors (i.e., fender.guitar, gibson.guitar, ibanez.guitar, etc…), to artists (i.e., andre.segovia.guitar, eric.claypton.guitar to unknown-listen-to-me-play.blues.guitar) right down to the average listener. If such a registrar has the technical know-how, is innovative (in multiple protocols) and aimed at growth of a community it can be exciting.

Time will tell.
 
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