New .Vegas Domain Sparks Turf War in Sin City

LAS VEGAS (April 12) -- Most tourists to this gambling mecca land at McCarran International Airport, stay on the Strip and depart believing they visited Las Vegas. And ordinarily, there's no reason for any authorities here to disabuse them of that notion.

Yet a feud is growing between the city of Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County. They are arguing over which has the more legitimate claim to decide what Internet firm controls a new top level domain name -- .vegas -- that the Internet's governing body is expected to create next year.

The city contains the town's original, oldest casino cluster. But the Strip -- including the iconic sign, "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" -- sits entirely in the unincorporated county.

The Las Vegas City Council voted in early February to grant a company called Dot Vegas its blessing in exchange for 75 cents of every domain name that is registered under .vegas. Two weeks later, the Clark County Commission approved a deal with Vegas.Com, long the tourist destination's dominant Web portal for travel information. Vegas.Com pledged $1.50 to the county per domain name registered under .vegas.

Since then, attempts to reconcile have been futile, said County Commissioner Steve Sisolak, because the city has rebuffed requests to try to negotiate a solution on grounds it made a good-faith deal with Dot Vegas and can't renege.

"Now it's up to the two companies to sit down and see if they can work something out," Sisolak told AOL News.

That seems unlikely, at least given the rhetoric coming from both entities. Dot Vegas had been in talks with the city for months before the vote that landed them the endorsement; Vegas.Com CEO Howard Lefkowitz said his company hadn't approached the city yet because the guidelines for how such domains would be awarded has not been issued by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigning Names and Numbers.

Web experts believe that ICANN's regulations will indicate that companies with the endorsement of the local government would have the inside track on landing top level domains, or TLDs, names that would replace dot-com in a Web address. ICANN said it will be doling out dozens of new TLDs.

Yet it's unclear how ICANN, a California-based nonprofit agency assigned by the U.S. government to govern such things on the Internet, will decide in the perplexing Vegas case. If it cannot decide which entity is right, it could put .vegas up for an auction between Dot Vegas and Vegas.Com.

The Las Vegas Strip's sprawling resort-casinos began springing up in the 1940s immediately outside the municipal boundaries specifically so they could avoid city regulations and taxes. About 558,000 people live within the Las Vegas city limits; more than 800,000 live in unincorporated Clark County and also receive mail to Las Vegas, Nev.

The national news media rarely delineates the difference, routinely calling Mayor Oscar Goodman for comment on topics specific to the Strip without ever indicating he has no jurisdiction over it.

"People fly into Las Vegas, but they don't fly into Las Vegas; they fly into Clark County" to an airport governed by the Clark County Commission, Sisolak noted. "But then the Clark County Government Center is in the city of Las Vegas. So it goes both ways."

ICANN is expected to reveal its process and guidelines this spring, at which point entities will have to pay $185,000 just to apply for a TLD. In all, getting a new TLD up and running, including the backend costs of the technology and administration, is estimated to cost at least $500,000, said Paul McGrady, a Chicago-based attorney who advises companies on the process.

What's at stake depends on who you ask.

Lefkowitz told AOL News that he's not predicting "a crazy rosy picture" for the .vegas TLD; Sisolak said commissioners were told by Vegas.Com that the county stood to gain hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each year. But for the county to receive even $200,000 at $1.50 per registration would take more than 130,000 registrations, a notion that Web experts find laughable.

By contrast, just 500,000 registrations have been purchased for the TLD .us in the eight years since it was opened to general use, according to Domain Name Journal editor Ron Jackson. "And that represented all of the United States of America."

Web users, he said, have largely rejected other attempts to popularize any TLD other than .com and .net and will frequently add a dot-com to Web addresses that end in .tv, .mobi and .tel, to name a few TLD flops.

"Dot-com has had billions and billions of dollars of free advertising behind it since 1985," Jackson said. "If you see a delivery truck or a billboard, it says dot-com. The only way any new TLD can compete with that is with a spectacular amount of marketing dollars that nobody is going to spend."

Lefkowitz believes it is important for .vegas to be placed in the hands of a company that would protect its use from nefarious purposes. Vegas.Com is owned by Greenspun Media Group, a company that publishes the Las Vegas Sun newspaper and is controlled by a longtime Vegas family. Dot Vegas is operated by entrepreneur James Trevino, chairman and CEO of Business Finance Corp., a Las Vegas-based company that specializes in corporate restructurings.

Trevino declined to be interviewed by AOL News but sent a statement indicating the company enjoys support not only from the city council but also from the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, the Nevada Development Authority and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The latter, however, has not voted on the matter and includes on its board two county commissioners who voted in favor of the deal with Vegas.Com.

The saddest part of this drama, said Lauren Weinstein of People for Internet Responsibility, is that the whole effort amounts to "something akin to a protection racket" in which companies and brands feel obliged to buy domain names in various TLDs just to avert mischief.

The famed casino-resort Bellagio, for instance, may play it safe and buy bellagio.vegas, but then ICANN could authorize other extensions and the resort may then have to buy, say, bellagio.gamble and bellagio.casino, not to use for commerce but to keep it out of the wrong hands.

"What is the real value added to anybody of being in one of these other TLDs?" Weinstein asked. "There really isn't any. The money goes to the registrars. It's about creating a situation where you have control over the TLDs and various parties feel obligated protectively to take part."

McGrady, however, insisted that the Internet's future, particularly as it becomes more cluttered and insecure, will be in TLDs. Some day, he insisted, people will look upon .com as the less professional, mom-and-pop segment of the Web where only small businesses and amateurs dwell.

That drew a hardy cackle from Jackson, who accused McGrady of saying such things because he's an attorney who stands to profit from guiding companies through the ICANN gauntlet.

"Anyone who would say that would have zero credibility because there's not a shred of evidence to prove that, and it's so lacking in any common sense that I'm flabbergasted," Jackson said. "I'd like to see him go to Vegas and put money on that in one of the casinos."