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Kid-friendly domains could be reborn
With governments around the world increasingly looking at reducing the harmful effects on the internet on children, it seems child-friendly domain name projects may see a resurgence.
The US government’s new hunt for a registry operator for .us, launched this week, contains a fairly explicit call for whichever company wins the contract to “revitalize” the long-dormant .kids.us space.
And I’m aware of one potential new gTLD applicant that wants to apply for a regulated kid-friendly gTLD when ICANN opens up its application window at the end of the month.
The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration said in its .us RFP:
The Contractor shall offer one or more innovative approaches to revitalize the use of the kids.us domain that are consistent with its objective of providing a safe space on the internet for children age 13 or younger, as intended by the Dot Kids Act. In the event a decision is made to reactivate the kids.us domain without any changes to the Dot Kids Act or selection of alternative uses, the Contractor shall be prepared to maintain and operate the second-level kids.us domain as specified by the Dot Kids Act.
It’s not the first time NTIA has tried to get the .us registry operator — now GoDaddy, formerly Neustar — to exhume the .kids.us project, which was closed down in 2012 after fewer than 1,000 registrations and half a dozen active web sites. Prior attempts were unsuccessful.
.kids.us was created by US legislation in 2002, largely as a way for legislators could feel good about themselves in an era when the web was still quite new and frightening and a lot wilder than it is today.
But that was before the dawn of social media and smartphones, the two technology trends driving much of the political focus on child online safety in the 2020s.
At least one new gTLD applicant intends to apply for a child-friendly gTLD this year, known as The Reservoir Project or (preliminarily) the Child Online Safety Association, run by lawyer S Harrison Knudson. The gTLD in question would be .haven.
The early-stage concept would see the registry work patent-pending technology and with ISPs, which would charge customers service fees and split the profit with the registry.
There are already two kid-oriented gTLDs out there — .kids itself and the Russian-language .дети (“.children”).
DotKids launched .kids in late 2022 and has so far accumulated 6,368 domains in its zone file. That’s actually not bad for a niche new gTLD, and based on some of the most uncomfortable Google searches I’ve ever done it looks like the registry is doing a pretty good job of keeping the namespace clean.
.дети has been around longer but has sold fewer domains, with just 1,358 names in its zone file today.
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