Some potential there
di.ml/y
A site describing the thought process of the person that came up with this idea
African nation Mali will give away domains in its .ML digital demesne for nothing. The giveaway starts in May, when Freedom Registry will open the floodgates, a term we use because “There will be no restrictions to registrations of free domains and anyone can claim its own .ML domain,” according to Freedom Registry's press …
I imagine that the .ml domain will become synonymous with spam, scams and general crap now.
It's already so cheap to get a domain that the only people who will care it's free are those people needing a throw away domain for something.
Good luck to them though, it's not a bad idea in itsself.
Was thinking exactly the same thing, all it will achieve is to lower the quality of .ml domains possibly even to the point where mail server admins begin blocking the entire TLD.
Then again maybe 419 scammers make up a large proportion of Mali's GDP so it can be thought of a measure to stimulate economic growth?
How long can one have one of these domain names? If people can just register a bunch of them and keep them forever, then all the shorter ones will be gone, whether active or not. I think this will end up like Hotmail addresses and even Microsoft will be lucky to get "microsoft1975.ml".
Doesn't one of the major rebel groupings call itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb? That sounds quite affiliated to Al Qaeda to me. It's mostly a franchise anyway, so presumably you just have to pay your franchise fee, paint the name on the side of your vans, and you get to benefit from all the advertising that Head Office does. They're the McDonalds of terrorism, but the bacon sandwiches probably aren't as good...
I guess I can see what the government are trying to do, but surely they'd be better to give their addresses away to people who live in Mali, if they want to do that. Unless it's a honey-trap, to get all the spammers to sign up to one domain, so we can either catch them or ignore them.
Have any of the alternative domains done well? I keep getting offers from my registrar for .co addresses, and there was another one recently of a similar type, where they were more expensive than a .com!
Also, has anyone ever used .tel?
Similar thing with .tk domains a few years back where you could register them for free. Just checked and you still can. They just ended up being filled with junk, spam, virus and phishing sites. I see no reason why .ml would be any different.
In general I would think that operators of restricted/unpopular ccTLDs must be wanting to grab some of the cash before the whole raft of .whatevers dilutes the market for country-related domains.
That's what this should be ideal for. Register as short a name as you can, ending in .ml - then embed it in your own company's QRs on marketing literature. Using a short domain allows you to use more basic codes. Redirect to "full" domain for website. Done.
I can't honestly think of any other reason I'd want one, and I have a short domain for QRs anyway. So, all in all, "meh" from me.
Seriously, whats wrong with you people, viruses, malware, spam and general dickery is abundant today, adding another free TLD domain wont increase nor decrease the amount of malicious stuff on the internet.
I for one commend this move compared to ICANN's blackmail with "1000 new TLDs a year" controlled by corporations willing to fork +100k per TLD.
jira.domain.com
, now offers something.jira.domain.com