back to article Meet the man who owns his own piece of the internet

In the ultimate sign of online vanity, the billionaire chair of Hong Kong telecoms company PCCW, Richard Li, has bought his own internet address: .richardli. for $250,000 While most are willing to settle for their name under a dot-com (he also owns richardli.com) Mr Li has used the opening up of the internet's namespace to …

  1. Ol'Peculier

    No it's not, it's just emphasising how stupid this whole debacle is.

  2. Roger Greenwood

    If I was him . .

    I'd buy .head

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If I was him . .

      dick.head?

  3. Mage Silver badge

    So it's $249,985 extra

    with richardii.com is there any limit to subdomains? They don't cost extra. So it's $249,985 extra to save typing .com

    Or 62496.25 per character.

    These TLD are rented or owned? Do you have to pay $250,000 every year?

    1. Ole Juul

      Re: So it's $249,985 extra

      $250,000 to acquire it. It will also cost him at least $25,000 annually in dues and running costs. A little excessive when $100 a year will buy and host a dot-com domain.

      It's in the article. However, I'd argue with the $100 part, since that's the level that I work at. One can actually get a .com for under $10 per year and annual hosting for the same or less. A C-note would be rather deluxe.

      1. Mage Silver badge

        Re: "It's in the article."

        Thanks, brain faded out during article.

  4. IglooDude

    I wonder if he's also snagged the TLD 'dickli'? If the goal is to 'secure intellectual property rights of the Chairman's name', it seems appropriate. And it seems appropriate for other reasons, too.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's how names are written in China, he wants com.richardli.

    1. Bert 1
      Coat

      Wholeheartedly agree.

      Except he wants .lildick

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    .con

    How does the governance work on these new gTLDs?

    .com is rather toxic now because it's run by Verisign, under direct control of the Murican government, and their insane dictatorial tendency to seize sites they don't like.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: .con

      To answer my own question, the US registrar Donuts runs the vast majority of gTLD, and Donuts is in the pocket of the MPAA.

      So yet another Murican company which will DMCA you under the table.

  7. PhilipJ

    you know what ? I think I'll blacklist his TLD on my DNS forwarder

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      why bother - it's not like anybody except Richard Li will ever visit sites in .richardli ...

  8. Mark 65

    Stamford

    He likely left without a degree because he isn't that smart but having a billionaire or powerful daddy gets you into any U.S. university. GW Bush and Yale?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Did you know that George W Bush was dumb?

      Oh grow up! Al Gore, son of Al Gore, at Harvard? (his grades weren't as good as GWB's) John F Kennedy, and every other Kennedy, who had Ted Sorenson write his thesis, before Sorenson wrote his Pulitzer winning Profiles in Courage? Ted Kennedy, thrown out of Harvard for cheating, twice? (Before he went on to abandon drowning mistresses to their deaths, calling lawyers rather than lifeguards, and sexually assaulting waitresses) GWB was bad, but try singing a different tune every once in a while.

      1. Pompous Git Silver badge

        Re: Did you know that George W Bush was dumb?

        try singing a different tune every once in a while.

        OK :-)

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0o0l7ekKvk

  9. Pompous Git Silver badge

    He's even got a spot in the Periodic Table of Elements on my coffee mug!

  10. Jan Hargreaves

    So he's spent $250,000 on getting his TLD but seems like not one cent on a web designer for 9 years. Priorities seem rather odd...

    1. Pompous Git Silver badge

      So he's spent $250,000 on getting his TLD but seems like not one cent on a web designer for 9 years. Priorities seem rather odd...

      Given the appalling design abilities of the average web designer, that may be no bad thing. Why the fuck do font-size Nazis insist on 6 point type (sometimes smaller given the average 40 year old has difficulty reading anything below 12 points on paper?

      1. Mage Silver badge

        And grey text, "flat" buttons that might just be headings, links that are only underlines...

      2. Jan Hargreaves

        I thought 9 was the very smallest you could go for text you want people to read. Maybe the legal garbage can be 8 or 7. 6 - I've not seen that. Are you sure you haven't got the site zoomed out or something? Other than that I only wonder that the font-size Nazis spend their days 3 inches away from their screen. Does seem bizarre.

        1. Pompous Git Silver badge

          I thought 9 was the very smallest you could go for text you want people to read.

          Part of the problem is that most web page designers use Macs where the default screen resolution is 72 dpi. Most web browsers run on Windows where the default screen resolution is 96 dpi. Text set at 10 points on a Mac is a tad over 7 points on a PC*. Avoiding the problem means allowing the user's browser to determine text size and giving up the illusion of control. Web pages and paper pages are very different beasts.

          * My ASUS Zenbook has a small, high res screen so text appears smaller still.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is what happens when...

    You are bored in front of your keyboard. The mind starts to wander and you get sloppy and click on a web ad. Next thing you know, you just whipped out the credit card for $250 large for your own TLD. But the rush quickly subsides after you post your awesomeness to your friends online and are immediately rebuked for being a narcissistic douchebag. And as somebody that is supposed to be smart enough to run a ginormous telecom company, yet not smart enough to know that vanity TLDs are nothing more than a money grab by ICANN, you hang your head in shame. You. Hang. Your. Head. In. Shame.

  12. Florida1920
    Coat

    It would be easier to read

    If he'd chosen richard51.

    The one with The Pot of Gold in the pocket.

  13. S4qFBxkFFg

    I wonder what his email address is?

    If it's me@richardli then he's quickly going to find out how many web developers are too stupid to correctly validate email addresses.

    Try entering #!$%&'*+-/=?^_`{}|~@com (it's apparently a valid address) into any website's email field during a sign-up and see what happens.

    1. frank ly

      Re: I wonder what his email address is?

      El Reg says, "Email address is not valid"

      Was it supposed to break it or something?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If all

    Us commentards chipped in we could buy and run .theregister that way we can control the quality of the content that we read we won't need this so called website and it's hacks anymore.

    We could write our own badly written bullshit articles at commentards.theregister and rip each other to pieces.

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