How much do you think mcdonalds.com is worth? What could you sell mtv.com for? Is there gold in them thar domains, as a lot of people seem to think, or is it just fool’s gold? No one knows the answers to these questions … It’s easy to find an unused domain name, and so far, there are no rules that would prohibit you from owning a bitchin’ corporate name, trademarked or not.
Predictor: Quittner, Joshua
Prediction, in context:In a hilarious and extremely illuminating 1994 article for Wired magazine, Joshua Quittner explains how he came about “owning” the domain name mcdonalds.com. Quittner writes: ”There is no mcdonalds.com on the Internet. No burger_king.com either. Yet. ‘Are you finding that the Internet is a big thing?’ asked Jane Hulbert, a helpful McDonald’s media-relations person … Yes, I told her. In some quarters, the Internet is a very big thing. I explained … about the Net Name Gold Rush that’s going on. I told her how important domain names are on the Internet … and I explained that savvy business folks are racing out and registering any domain name they can think of: their own company names, obviously, and generic names like drugs.com and sex.com … ‘Some companies,’ I told Jane Hulbert, ‘are even registering the names of their competitors.’ ‘You’re kidding,’ she said. I am not, I told her … ‘I could register McDonald’s right now,’ I said, pointing out that the name is still unclaimed. ‘You could?’ she asked, then quickly answered my silence: ‘You could.’ ‘So could Burger King,’ I said, and Jane Hulbert rang off, looking for some MIS person with the answers. How much do you think mcdonalds.com is worth? What could you sell mtv.com for? Is there gold in them thar domains, as a lot of people seem to think, or is it just fool’s gold? No one knows the answers to these questions, though they are being asked, very pointedly, in federal court … In the meantime, a frenzy of domain-name registration is going on at the InterNIC, or Internet Network Information Center, the agency that assigns domain names and rules on requests. It’s easy to find an unused domain name, and so far, there are no rules that would prohibit you from owning a bitchin’ corporate name, trademarked or not. I spoke to Scott Williamson, the person who supervises InterNIC registration … ‘If we had to research every request for a domain name right now, I’d need a staff of 20 people,’ Williamson said … ‘Trademark problems are the responsibility of the requester.’ Which means, I asked, that I could register mcdonalds.com? ‘There is nothing that says I can stop you from doing that,’ he said. ‘We really need some policy. The problem with the Internet is, who’s in charge?’ he added wryly. In May [1994] only one-third of the Fortune 500 had registered an obvious version of their names … The top 15 companies all had their act together and had registered their domain names. But some other very big companies did not. Those include: Nabisco, Sara Lee, Anheuser-Busch, Kellogg, and Coca-Cola, or even Coke. Ooops. That was just nabbed as I write by one Rajeev Arora in Campbell, California. Way to go, Rajeev! About two weeks later, after filling out the Net-available domain-name application form, I got e-mail notification from domreg@internic.net: ‘[Your] registration for the domain MCDONALDS .COM has been completed … ‘ Oh, that’s McCool. I feel like McPrometheus. I have stolen McFire.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Billions Registered: Right Now, There Are No Rules to Keep You From Owning a Bitchin’ Corporate Name as Your Own Internet Address
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/mcdonalds_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney