Unknown creators of a fake news webpage in the new gTLD .WEBSITE gave handle to talk about adaptation of the new domains in the US. Website msnbc.website, that was apparently created to imitate the site of a popular TV news network MSNBC, but that has nothing to do with it, reported that 34-year old actor Macaulay Culkin mostly famous for films “Home alone” and “Home alone 2” died. Before the news was officially refuted, it managed to spread out to Twitter. Also a dozen of serious and respected media referred to the article, including, for example, International Business Times.
Now TV network MSNBC obviously has a good reason to seek blocking of the domain msnbc.website or transferring it under network’s control: this is a clear case of cybersquatting. However, another thing is interesting from the point of view of domain business. Almost all American media when quoting the fake article referred to the source as mscbc.website.com, not mscbc.website. Analysts point out that for Americans, even journalists of serious editions, a default top-level domain is still only .COM. It seems they are not able to believe in the possibility of existence of any other domains.
