Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Archaeologists protest “televangelist” .bible gTLD

Kevin Murphy, June 28, 2018, Domain Registries

The head of the Biblical Archaeology Society has harshly criticized .bible and ICANN for the gTLD’s restrictive registration policies.
Writing in the latest issue of its Biblical Archaeology Review, Robert Cargill said .bible is on its way to becoming “the internet’s equivalent of televangelism.”
The gTLD is operated by the American Bible Society, best known for its “Good News” translation of the book.
Under its rules, registrants can’t use a .bible domain to “encourage or contribute to disrespect for the Bible or the Bible community”, with ABS determining what constitutes disrespect.
Cargill writes that his own publication could be at risk of losing its hypothetical .bible domain for publishing fact-based articles about Biblical history.
Cargill writes:

No one “owns” the Bible, and no one should have to submit to the American Bible Society’s ill-conceived holiness code in order to register a .BIBLE domain name. ABS should not be able to deny a .BIBLE domain name because it feels a website does not revere the name of God enough—or because it dares not endorse “orthodox Christianity.” How ICANN ever allowed this is beyond belief!

He’s also pissed that archaeology.bible is a premium domain with a retail price of close to six grand for the first year.
He’s not the first scholarly, secular voice to air concerns about .bible policy.
In March, the head of the Society of Biblical Literature was also critical of what he described as ABS’s “bait and switch” gTLD application.
The registry earlier this year revised its original policy to permit Jewish people to register names, after complaints from the Anti-Defamation League, among others.

Free speech banned from .bible

Kevin Murphy, August 27, 2015, Domain Registries

The Bible may be a piece of literature that belongs to the world, but in .bible it’s going to be a propaganda tool for Christians.
The just-published Acceptable Use Policy (pdf) bans any content that the American Bible Society, acting as registry, deems unsuitable. Specifically prohibited:

Pointing to any content that may, as determined in ABS’s sole discretion, disparage or blaspheme God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Christianity (to include any sects or denominations), the Bible, or any other such tenet, symbol, representative or principles of the Christian faith.
Pointing to any content that, as determined in ABS’s sole discretion, espouses or promotes a religious, secular or other worldview that is antithetical to New Testament principles, including but not limited to the promotion of a non-Christian religion or set of religious beliefs.

This would seem to ban, for example, a web site that used the Bible’s text to question whether human sacrifice and scapegoating are really moral precepts by which people should live their lives.
ABS is a non-denominational organization, so presumably you are allowed to set up sites that say Eucharistic wine is really magic human blood, and also that it isn’t.
The registry is the publisher of the “Good News” modern-English translation of the Bible, which ends with billions of people being cast into a lake of fire to burn for eternity.