A battle rages on in a galaxy far, far away – a virtual galaxy actually, and a bidding battle, to be exact. And all over three little (lowercase) letters – e c o.
The battlefield is the ‘greenternet’ and hanging in the balance is the rise (or fall) of ‘green’ online. Now, meet the opponents.
A California based company, already named Dot Eco LLC, is pitted against Big Room Inc., a Canadian company based in Vancouver.
Both have some pretty prominent proponents backing them. Al Gore, former U.S. vice-president, has thrown his support behind Dot Eco LLC. Big Room has on board the likes of WWF International, the David Suzuki Foundation, and, indirectly, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, through the support of a charity he founded called Green Cross International.
Battle strategies differ, but the goal is the same – to gain exclusive control over the territory of the dot eco domain. The domain extension could become available as early as next year, after the internet regulator body ICANN (Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers) goes through a comprehensive evaluation and ligation process for each bidder, and confirms the victor is ready to run a registry.
Big Room Inc., according to co-founder Trevor Bowden, will base its modus operandi on transparency and moral accountability. It pledges to create a platform by which companies must truthfully disclose why they should be considered ‘green’ and will only award a domain to groups that give proof of their green credentials. They also promise that, if successful in their bid, they will donate a quarter of the revenue from domain name sales to environmental and social causes.
Dot Eco LLC also claims to be committed to the global village, according to co-founder Minor Childers, and says it would donate 50 per cent of profits to environmental groups fighting global warming. However, they would award a domain to any entity that declares support for the principles behind dot eco.
With both sides claiming they want to do what’s right for the global community and achieve worthy goals, the fact that almost no one has turned down the idea of owning a dot eco domain makes it clear that financial benefits are, if not the sole reason, at least the primary motivation for winning the battle. The new top-level domain could be worth millions.
Questions arise by skeptics and opponents of greenwashing concerning the ability to actually police content online. Will companies or products simply be recognized as green based on their location on the web? Or will ‘bad apples’ be able to hijack the idea that they are eco-sound? Can you hear the public outcry when Exxon Mobile acquires Exxon.eco? For example, owners of domain names for dot org extensions are not subjected to a rigorous application process to ensure that their group is actually non-profit.
Some experts say that the truth will be revealed, and that traffic driven to dot eco sites will be due to quality of content – that a site name, is in fact, bigger than a domain extension. Time will tell whether the dot eco domain proves to be a way of either ‘greening up’ or greenwashing cyberspace.
