• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 12, 2014

No one should be able to create a Web site that ends with the term “.sucks,” the head of the Senate Commerce Committee said on Wednesday.

Such a top-level domain “has little or no socially redeeming value,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Wednesday in a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. He adds that allowing people to use “.sucks” as a top-level domain -- meaning the letters to the right of the last dot in a site's URL -- would subject companies to shakedowns.

Several years ago, ICANN embarked on a controversial initiative to allow generic top-level domain names, like “.book.” ICANN has received numerous around 1,000 applications for such domain names, and is in the process of deciding which to approve.

The Association of National Advertisers opposed ICANN's plan from the beginning, arguing that companies would have to feel obligated to purchase top-level names defensively, in order to prevent their purchase by rivals or detractors. Companies with trademarked names have the ability to stop their names from appearing in URLs, but even those companies could end up paying to police cybersquatters, according to the ANA.

The ANA also disapproves of allowing phrases like “.sucks” or “.wtf” to serve as top-level domains, on the ground that companies will worry about their names appearing in unflattering URLs.

Rockefeller makes clear that he agrees with the grade group about the prospect of a “.sucks” domain. “Three companies ... have applied for this gTLD, claiming that it will foster devate and benefit consumers,” he writes. “I vew it as little more than a predatory shakedown scheme. The business model behind this gTLD seems to be the following: forcing large corporations, small businesses, non-profits, and even individuals, to pay ongoing fees to prevent seeing the phrase 'sucks' appended to their names on the Internet.”

If so, that business model is problematic for at least one reason: Even if companies can prevent their name from appearing before a phrase like “.sucks,” they can't stop someone from creating a gripe site that uses the word “sucks” and ends in “.com.” That's because courts have held that people have a free speech right to use a company's trademarked name in an unflattering way.

In other words, whether ICANN listens to Rockefeller on this point or not, companies still face the prospect of seeing phrases they don't like appended to their names online.