[billpatrianakos]

It's simple, really. A domain name like poetry.com is as accessible to the average person as it is to a company. A TLD on the other hand is something you need to take out a mortgage to own.

The difference is in the democracy of it all. Acquiring domain names is a very democratic process even if you take into account squatting and other shenanigans. Scrounge up ten bucks and a web connection and it's yours. TLDs aren't even close. It's a total plutocracy and ICANN seems totally unapologetic about it while the companies snatching them up look ridiculous when they put a line in their proposal about how their ownership of some random word as a TLD is in our, the users, best interest.

How can anyone overlook that? It's practically beating us over the head, taunting us.

[dfc]

Well this is a separate argument than above but I will bite:

"Acquiring domain names is a very democratic process even if you take into account squatting and other shenanigans."

Since when?

But more importantly how am I harmed by the new TLDs?

[adventureful]

And how many mortgages do you suppose it would take to buy poetry.com? It's not even close to accessible to the average person. Maybe if the average person saved every penny they earn for a lifetime, they could buy poetry.com.

[billpatrianakos]

Yes but domain names that are unclaimed all start at the same price. Now poetry.com is unattainable but before it was bought anyone who wanted it had an equal chance. TLDs are starting their life as unattainable unlike domains which only end up that way later.