TV On Demand

I've been watching with interest the changes happening to the .TV domain name.

For those of you unfamiliar with the suffix, it was originally assigned to the tiny, sinking South Pacific islands of Tuvalu (formely the Ellis Islands).

The domain was auctioned off and ended up being managed by Verisign, who also commercialise the .com domain.

However, more recently the domain management seems to have been transferred to a company called enom, part of Demand Media. Demand Media is the latest vehicle of Richard Rosenblatt, former Chairman of MySpace.

The transfer to this company was a complete hash and there should be real cause for concern that commercial organizations like this are able to hold whole industries to ransom.

The latest scheme to evolve from Demand Media is Channelme.tv - whereby they are integrating the .tv domain with a UGC system to enable individuals and organizations to build and manage their .tv domains easily. A clever move, but it does compete with their own customers.

This is a clever piece of intermediating on the internet tv market.

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