DOMAIN NAMES
Some snickered when the tiny South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu (population 10,600) offered to sell the rights to its top-level domain, .tv, to broadcast outlets trying to escape the .com crunch (see "Buy This Domain," Wired 6.09, page 106). Look who's laughing now. Tuvalu has already received nearly $20 million from dotTV, the idealab!-hatched company that began auctioning off .tv real estate in May. So far, nearly 50,000 .tv addresses have been sold at prices from $100 to $1 million to outfits like the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (emmys.tv!), local television stations, and the family-friendly network PAX TV, which singlehandedly snapped up 168 domain names.
But in .tv land, appearances can be deceiving. Although dotTV brags that TV is "the most recognizable, most meaningful two-letter symbol in the world," not everyone takes those letters to mean television: Adult sites consider .tv shorthand for transvestite. shemale.tv, crossdresser.tv, and tranny.tv have been snatched by eager buyers, while dotTV's own search engine helpfully offers related names that are still available, including trannie.tv, drag .tv, and transvestites.tv - yet again proving the transcendent power of convergence.
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