@swiley By that logic, we should hand .net over to Microsoft.

@Parienve Why? That's not related.
Anyone can apply for gtlds: https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/applicants/global-support/faqs/faqs-en

@swiley
Sorry, I more meant that defending Apple's monopoly on .apple even when the use doesn't infringe on their trademark would be akin to letting Microsoft have .net, since they have a trademark on .NET

@swiley
Also, the application costs around $200k, so that's far from realistic for the vast majority of people.

@Parienve We only need a few tlds though. It's not like apple is really getting special treatment.

@Parienve That would be fine if the .net tld hadn't already existed IMO. It looks like Apple themselves applied for and created .apple https://icannwiki.org/.apple

@freemo it’s not, I was just looking at Apple’s IP webpage and saw that they own the .apple TLD, and became reminded how much power big tech has. Like, this goes way beyond traditional trademark law…

@rlamacraft What does it have to do with trademarks? apple owns the TLD, not because they own the trademark "apple" but because they applied for it witht he ICANN. If you have issue with the handling of TLDs in general the issue is more with ICANN than apple or trademarks.

@Parienve How would you have done it differently?
Stick with .com,.net, and cctlds?
Make registration in the root namespace cheap like it is for .com? (who picks the rules then? With the gtlds you get to choose registries.)

@swiley
I'd probably have just stuck with the existing TLDs.

@swiley @Parienve why couldn’t they have been distributed just like the old ones? Apple could own iphone.apple and mac.apple, and WSU could own cosmiccrisp.apple. Since when does Apple have a trademark on the word “apple”?

@rlamacraft @Parienve Because Apple applied for it. They also applied for the gtld which is in a separate namespace from trademarks.
Why can't I have swiley.com? Because someone else already registered it.

@Parienve sure sounds like it