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Actually, this happens all the time.

I have purchased ads from Google, and I have never been given their address. Google goes out of their way to make sure there is no way to find a human for technical support. Same goes for Steam, eBay, PayPal. Today companies give you a forum and expect the community to support themselves. It's almost impossible to find them unless they sell a physical product.

Well, maybe you weren't given their address, but Google certainly doesn't try to hide their address or make it difficult for people to find. You can even Google for "Google Headquarters". But more on the subject of what ICANN's doing, their contact info is listed in their whois record.

As for getting a human for technical support on ads: Start at www.google.com -> Advertising at the lower-left -> AdWords Help Center under Learning & Support at the bottom -> CONTACT US at the upper-right, followed by See local phone number. In the US, their number is 866-2GOOGLE, representatives available Monday to Friday, 9am to 8pm Eastern Time, in English and Spanish. Doesn't seem like they're "[going] out of their way to make sure there is no way to find a human for technical support"

Hello,

If one looks at MojoKid's submissions to Slashdot, one notes they exist exclusively of links to articles at HotHardware.Com, which according to the whois data, is registered to a Dave Altavilla of Mendon, MA.

Never to ActiveWin, Ars Technica, HardOCP, Neowin, TechReport, WinBeta or the scores of other web sites which discuss, review or "engage in coordinate PR disclosure" of technology news, but always to HotHardware, never anywhere else.

Are MojoKid and Mr. Altavilla the same person? And why is he (are they?) only posting links to Slashdot to HotHardware,a site which, coincidentally, seems to rely on links to partner.googleadservices.com, www.google-analytics.com/, cdn.taboola.com, tru.am and other advertising and privacy-invasive sites in order to monetize its page views. All these hostnames should be blocked in your hosts file before visiting any links to hothardware.com to ensure you are not being advertised to or tracked (which seem to be very similar, these days).

If MojoKid/Altavilla are going to use Slashdot to generate revenue for themselves, they should at least let Slashdot's management know and note in their submissions that they are sending Slashdotters to a site which they generate revenue from; to not do so is unethical and abusive of Slashdot.

And in case anyone wants to throw a stone at my glass house, I've submitted a grand total of one articles to Slashdot, and it mentioned a free service being offered through the auspices of the IEEE which not just my employer but dozens of our competitors were involved in. Not a single banner ad or privacy-invasive script to be had there at all.

Regards.

Aryeh Goretsky

I just keep adding these low-value (as in, user content) TLDs to blacklists, particularly for email. I'm sure I'm not the only sysadmin doing that

You are not the only one taking such a stance, however a couple years ago it became clear that a whitelist method will be far easier, quicker, and softer/fuzzier to your sanity.

There are currently 1300 active english gTLDs added and active in the past 16 months alone.
There are over 7000 unicode gTLDs for other languages and alphabets.
There is no end in sight for those numbers to stop rising.

http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-strings
http://money.cnn.com/infographic/technology/new-gtld-list/

Here at work I whitelist the following: .?? (aka two letter ccTLDs - though not really a safe assumption any longer) .com .net .org .edu .gov .mil .int .arpa - and for now .info

Be aware that along with .info were a few other restricted gTLDs in the initial batch that may be safe: .info .biz .name
(and I think .pro was restricted too, but I've never seen it used nor been asked to whitelist it here)

Ones I do not allow here, but others should be aware were in the same second-gen gTLD batch are: .pro .bank .aero .museum .mobi .post

Anything else came in the third-generation batch and should be blocked/ignored if you don't do international business (and in most cases, even if you do)

YMMV

Agreed! Domain Registration != Domain Hosting. If you ever wondered who owns the domain you have hosted somewhere, do a who is and find out who the domain is really registered to.

Anyone know a good petition site we could place a petition on? Maybe try and collect some opposition signatures, get some tech media coverage and -gulp- resist?

You already missed your chance to give your opinion on generic TLDs. If you were opposed to them, you should've said something 3 years ago. Not that ICANN bothered listening with the prospect of millions of dollars of free revenue weighing down the other side of the scale.

"BUY" seems to be a generic term to me.

http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/a...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....

I think this had to do with all traffic getting routed through the NSA servers. There was a minor indication of their co-opting of the the system back in 2012: http://blog.icann.org/2012/12/...

As usual, we have to go through two levels of blogs to get to the actual ICANN document. Which document you may find incomprehensible even if you know how DNS works.

Is that not disclosed in their Terms of Service or is it more like, "big boobs on TV so I didn't bother to read the agreement"?

Hi. Compliance with the accredited registrar policy is not optional; it is part of a signed agreement between the registrar and ICANN. ICANN posted an advisory clearly alerting registrars to their obligations: 1. Registrars are prohibited from denying a domain name transfer request based on non-payment of fees for pending or future registration periods during the Auto-Renew Grace Period; and 2. A registrant change to Whois information is not a valid basis for denying a transfer request.

GoDaddy adopted practices that were directly contrary to the ICANN policy.

It doesn't matter if GoDaddy disclosed it in the terms of service, the ICANN terms have priority: the practice was a violation of policies that accredited registrars have promised to adhere to, before being allowed to be accredited registrars, and before being able to maintain that status and any access to the registry database or the ability to be in the business of transferring or creating domain registrations.

There's no law per se, but there is a recent ICANN requirement called "Whois Accuracy Data Specification". It requires registrars to contact the registrant and click an emailed link as validation that their whois info is correct. The domain can be suspended if the validation isn't done within 15 days.

The intent is good but the implementation is pretty mindboggling. They're expecting every owner of a domain name to check that the email sent to them is not a phishing attempt...how that's supposed to work reliably is anyone's guess.

WDRP has been in place since 2003. Hardly recent by internet time lines

1) Uh. No, there is no such law.
2) If there was such a law, it would not require the email address listed to be read by a human being.

REFUTED on both counts.

There is no law. Stop saying things to sound smart.

REFUTED
Stop contradicting things I say just to try to astro-turf over your own misbehavior.

I'm a software developer, and dealing with unpredictable timezone changes is not fun. [...]

That's why you should never deal with dates/timezones yourself; use libraries and avoid lethal headaches. For instance, the good people taking care of tzdata are already working on it.

As someone who's been caught out let me tell you libraries are not bug free - even commercial ones in expensive enterprise operating systems. Governments update timezones arbitrarily. It's ridiculous. Change business hours in summer vs winter, not the fucking time of day. FUCK!

I'm a software developer, and dealing with unpredictable timezone changes is not fun. [...]

That's why you should never deal with dates/timezones yourself; use libraries and avoid lethal headaches. For instance, the good people taking care of tzdata are already working on it.

It wasn't agreed to... so just transfer your domains out and refuse to pay.

A registrar cannot decline to transfer your domain due to refusal to pay or due to a dispute over payment.

The Registrar of Record must not refuse to release an "AuthInfo Code" to the Registered Name Holder solely because there is a dispute between the Registered Name Holder and the Registrar over payment. ....

Instances when the requested change of Registrar may not be denied include, but are not limited to: Nonpayment for a pending or future registration period
....

General payment defaults between Registrar and business partners / affiliates in cases where the Registered Name Holder for the domain in question has paid for the registration.

...

The Registrar of Record has other mechanisms available to collect payment from the Registered Name Holder that are independent from the Transfer process. Hence, in the event of a dispute over payment, the Registrar of Record must not employ transfer processes as a mechanism to secure payment for services from a Registered Name Holder.

Believe it or not, there are also some instances where cryptography is not needed, such as for purely publicly accessible information that can benefit from being cached, etc.

I don't think there is any instance where cryptography would not be useful, as long as privacy is an option. Most Internet communications are point-to-point, so caching should not be done in between. From an opsec point of view, it's less risky to use encryption for confidential information if you also use encryption for everything else, too.

Even for publicly cached data, you could use cryptography for authenticity instead of confidentiality. For example, DNSSEC is about proving the authenticity of DNS information, so your name resolver doesn't get fooled by DNS hijacking. Authenticity turns out to be useful even for completely mundane stuff.

The servers are already distributed all over the world. http://blog.icann.org/2007/11/...

I wish ICANN would finally give us some real "reserved" internal TLDs, but we do have a few we can work with:
RFC 2606 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rf...
      test, example, invalid, localhost
"gTLD Applicant Guidebook", Section 2.2.1.2.1 "Reserved Names" http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/a...
      afrinic, iana-servers, nro, alac, icann,
      rfc-editor, apnic, iesg, ripe, arin, ietf,
      root-servers, aso, internic, rssac, ccnso,
      invalid, ssac, example*, irtf, test*, gac,
      istf, tld, gnso, lacnic, whois, gtld-servers,
      local, www, iab, localhost, iana, nic

Most of those aren't really suitable for internal network names except perhaps "tld" and "local" but we can't use "local" because of multicast dns... but that RFC does reference some other names we're PROBABLY safe to use:
RFC 6762 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc...
      intranet, internal, private, corp, home, lan

It'd be great if we could just get the alternate example domains from RFC 6762 explicitly reserved.

Good summary. FWIW, People were using e.g. ".site" for local domain
for a long time. It was in the only draft RFC that addressed the issue,
and lacking any approved RFC people tend to follow the drafts. It was
noted on Wikipedia and many forums as to be used for this
purpose and along with some other TLDs had become a de-facto standard.
Then draft-ietf-dnsind-test-tlds-08 came along and removed it. Reserved
domains names continued to disappear from this draft document until they
were nearly all gone by the time RFC2606 was certified.

Then they started accepting and seriously considering applications for .site as a TLD and it looks like they are set to approve it. Boneheads.
So yes, in addition to unqualified names, there will be lots of problems with
software and configuration written when several TLDs were presumed safe.

RFC2606/RFC6761 have proper domains to use for test setups and documentation.
Unless/until they get suddenly ammended, which at this point, I wouldn't want
to wager on.

See right here, at http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

Specifically, he noted that in http://archive.icann.org/en/co... that it's a simple task to check outbound packets and drop them if the return address is for someone else.

The open question is ISP motivations: I used to work for Canada's first big ISP, and my management would have freaked out if they thought they were frivolously enabling a DDOS attack. See the queue article and comments for more info.

Multiple applicants applied for .dot

Google: https://gtldresult.icann.org/a...
Dish: https://gtldresult.icann.org/a...

Multiple applicants applied for .dot

Google: https://gtldresult.icann.org/a...
Dish: https://gtldresult.icann.org/a...

Excluding all ccTLDs, the original gTLDs are: .arpa .com .net .org .gov .edu .mil and .int
The first expansion added: .aero .asia .biz .cat .coop .info .jobs .me .mobi .museum .name .pro .tel and .travel.

Then ICANN opened this new gTLD program. The listing of new gTLDs approved are here

I had the idea to use it for pre-blacklisting each and every one in my mail and web filters, but opted instead to go with a whitelisting approach hoping for easier maintenance (Thus the easy copy/pasting of the list at the top - sorry, I don't have link references anymore)

The applicant status page makes for better comedy however, as it lists the existing company name that requested the new top-level instead of the fake company name setup to handle domain registrations. (Currently the english TLDs start at page 4)

Most make sense from the twisted world view of trademark holders, but some are true WTF moments...

Amazon for example requested some obvious ones like .amazon , .buy , and .cloud
But they also have some strange requests like .bot, .fire , .silk , and .pin

Amazon requested a whole 76 TLDs, Google requested 102, Microsoft only 11, and surprisingly Apple only requested .apple

ICANN bitched and moaned about not wanting to create .XXX for like 10 years, but they have already approved and delegated things like .dating , .sexy , and .singles

Also interesting is they already approved and delegated .democrat but have yet to even just approved .gop

Filtering on similarities shows .app has 14 requests, .art .bay .home have 10, and even 5 requests for the .tld tld :P

A whole 6 pages worth of results have objections linked to them, which sounds promising except there are 56 pages total :/

Sadly there is way too much money involved for much success of a massive grass-roots preemptive blocking and agreement to not allow such TLDs to resolve.
But I have no qualms about doing so and only white listing individual and specific domains if any of our customers or vendors go the retarded route of making their primary email or websites use one of these.

I'd give our non-english speaking friends a break, because despite the great technical problems involved at least they have a valid reason wanting a TLD in their native language.
Beyond that however, the rest so far look like money grubbing land grabs, stupid branding, or obvious scamming/spammer havens.

Excluding all ccTLDs, the original gTLDs are: .arpa .com .net .org .gov .edu .mil and .int
The first expansion added: .aero .asia .biz .cat .coop .info .jobs .me .mobi .museum .name .pro .tel and .travel.

Then ICANN opened this new gTLD program. The listing of new gTLDs approved are here

I had the idea to use it for pre-blacklisting each and every one in my mail and web filters, but opted instead to go with a whitelisting approach hoping for easier maintenance (Thus the easy copy/pasting of the list at the top - sorry, I don't have link references anymore)

The applicant status page makes for better comedy however, as it lists the existing company name that requested the new top-level instead of the fake company name setup to handle domain registrations. (Currently the english TLDs start at page 4)

Most make sense from the twisted world view of trademark holders, but some are true WTF moments...

Amazon for example requested some obvious ones like .amazon , .buy , and .cloud
But they also have some strange requests like .bot, .fire , .silk , and .pin

Amazon requested a whole 76 TLDs, Google requested 102, Microsoft only 11, and surprisingly Apple only requested .apple

ICANN bitched and moaned about not wanting to create .XXX for like 10 years, but they have already approved and delegated things like .dating , .sexy , and .singles

Also interesting is they already approved and delegated .democrat but have yet to even just approved .gop

Filtering on similarities shows .app has 14 requests, .art .bay .home have 10, and even 5 requests for the .tld tld :P

A whole 6 pages worth of results have objections linked to them, which sounds promising except there are 56 pages total :/

Sadly there is way too much money involved for much success of a massive grass-roots preemptive blocking and agreement to not allow such TLDs to resolve.
But I have no qualms about doing so and only white listing individual and specific domains if any of our customers or vendors go the retarded route of making their primary email or websites use one of these.

I'd give our non-english speaking friends a break, because despite the great technical problems involved at least they have a valid reason wanting a TLD in their native language.
Beyond that however, the rest so far look like money grubbing land grabs, stupid branding, or obvious scamming/spammer havens.

You seem to have missed the Montevideo Statement a few weeks back. All of the Internet governance bodies are going NGO.

Possibly, but the creation of the DNSSEC root keys was done completely in HSMs in a ceremony that was observed by many people from all over the world. No copy of the key was ever made outside an HSM.

The HSMs are stored in secure facilities and their disappearance would almost certainly be noticed.

Transferring the encrypted keys to another HSM is only possible if you get a quorum of people to approve such a transfer. Compromising sufficient people to do this would almost certainly be noticed, and many of the people are from outside the US.

The NSA could certainly steal (or legally compel the handover of) the HSM and try extracting the keys by taking apart the HSM, but the devices are tamper-resistant and would likely zeroise themselves prior to giving up their secrets. Even if they did succeed (the NSA might have some technique for doing so), it would be an expensive operation, technically challenging, and unlikely to be done in secret.

Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? No, not really.

Everyone go here and let them know we don't want this.

https://www.icann.org/en/groups/other/gtld-directory-services/share-24jun13-en.htm

They just fired the guy responsible for this form and want to outsource it.

Oh right, this guy: http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/cerf.htm

The guy who spent 8 years as Chairman of the Board of ICANN, one of the most corrupt organizations on the Internet.

As far as I can tell, not a single one of the new approved gTLDs can be written using standard ASCII, and only one of them can be written with Extended ASCII. While this does mean that there isn't a key on a standard US keyboard for every single letter in every one of these new gTLDs, there are (or at least a well-known key combination) in the countries which are the target market for these domains. With regard to SPAM, I think you will find that much (if not most) of it comes from non-US sources; places where they are likely to have the necessary keyboards to type at least one of these strings.

I would include the list of approved gTLDs, but Slashdot seems to filter non-ASCII characters. Here is a link to the list sorted sorted by status (with the approved gTLDs at the top.)

Alas, it appears I am the fool on this one.

Is applying for a new gTLD the same as buying a domain name?

No. Nowadays, organizations and individuals around the world can register second-level and, in some cases, third-level domain names. (In a URL such as maps.google.com, "google" is a second-level name and "maps" is a third-level domain.) They simply need to find an accredited registrar, comply with the registrant terms and conditions and pay registration and renewal fees. The application for a new gTLD is a much more complex process. An applicant for a new gTLD is, in fact, applying to create and operate a registry business supporting the Internet's domain name system. This involves a number of significant responsibilities, as the operator of a new gTLD is running a piece of visible Internet infrastructure.

I guess that settles it.

Or, simply follow the long established rules of the gTLD process. Brazil and Peru didn't file an application for "amazon," Amazon the company is the only entity which did. Now those countries are trying to get out of playing by the rules. Their objection simply doesn't fall into one of the categories allowed.

PS: Thanks for remaining civil throughout disagreeing with me on this - I don't think you're right, but I do appreciate it that this hasn't degenerated into name calling like many /. threads seem to do these days.

LOL, thanks right back. I don't usually bother with AC's, but you are a good one.

I've already listed different ways in which you don't have to use ICANN.

I agree that you don't "have" to use them, as in there are technical ways to reach someone without DNS - the simplest being straight IP addresses. That said, there is no practical way for someone to have a successful web presence without ICANN. I've never seen a high-traffic web site without a domain name.

But you don't have a right not to be at a competitive disadvantage in libertopia

I'm definitely not claiming that he has a right to be profitable, or even that he has a right to monopoly-free internet hosting. It's just that you want a successful web presence, there is only one way to do that without breaking the ICANN monopoly. I disagree that he is bound by his libertarian ideals to fight every possible free market fight. Like all of us, he can pick his battles, or even have none at all.

He could use ronpaul.org, ronpaul.biz, or whatever he likes

That is true, but it leaves him with two problems: First, those others are the internet ghetto compared to .COM. Nothing screams "crappy site" like a .BIZ or even a .ORG when you aren't an organization. The second problem is that he'd have these people camped out on RonPaul.com, which could confuse his target audience.

The going rate is the rate at which the domain owner is willing to sell, in the case of sex.com and ronpaul.com.

Welllllll, yes and no. The contract with the registrar is not so simple. There is a fairly good-sized section on how to resolve domain disputes. Here's the one for one of my registrars. It's possible that they violate 4.i.B:

"by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location. "

or maybe C:

"you are making a legitimate noncommercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue. "

or maybe none of those :) Point is, the whole dispute resolution system is built in to the ICANN contract. Ron Paul isn't subverting anything, he's activating a clause in a contract. As part of the dispute resolution, you have to choose from this List of Approved Dispute Resolution Service Providers. All Ron Paul seems to have done is read the standard ICANN contract and contact the appropriate service provider, which happens to be UN-affiliated.

The whole thing is simple hypocrisy - if you espouse libertarian ideals you should be willing to pay the asking rate for property owned by others or let them have it.

Had he used his influence to contact the UN (or some other organization) to pull strings outside of the normal process, I would 100% agree that he was being a hypocrite. However, he's just doing everything by the book (AFAIK).

From my understanding, the group made a good faith offering of ronpaul.org to Ron Paul for free but wanted $250,000 for the commercial ronpaul.com in order to recoup the work and effort they put in. On top of that, I see nothing malicious, untruthful, slanderous or libelous on ronpaul.com -- quite the opposite!

Please read the UDRP. The amount of money and time you put into building the website is irrelevant and non-recoupable. All you can legitimately ask the trademark holder for is your costs to acquire and administrative costs directly related to maintaining the domain. If you're upset that you'd be losing all the work you put into building up the site and the mailing lists, well then you shouldn't have built it on a domain name which clearly infringes someone else's trademark.

The fact that there's nothing malicious, untruthful, nor libelous on the site is irrelevant. The standard used is whether the site name and content could be confused as belonging to or being endorsed by the trademark holder. You're judging Ron Paul using your own made-up imaginary rules which don't even match the actual rules. I think it's a dick move by Ron Paul against people who clearly are (or were) his supporters. But the rules you're using to evaluate it carry no legal weight.

I was under the impression ronpaul.com was a volunteer effort. But if you're correct that it's commercial (the site owners are making money off of it), then that's two strikes against them - commercial use of a domain matching someone else's trademark, and asking the trademark holder $250,000 for it. ICANN is virtually guaranteed to take the domain away from them. Anybody who owns a domain needs to read the UDRP so they know exactly how tenuous their "ownership" of the domain really is.

He was offered (a) an option to buy the site, for, given that it's a political site, quite a reasonable sum

That's a violation of ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. Offering to sell a domain matching a trademark to the trademark holder is evidence of bad faith registration (section 4b(i)), and grounds for awarding the domain to the trademark holder. If Ron Paul had offered to buy it and stated an amount, they would have been fine. If they'd told him to piss off and given him the finger they would've been fine. But they really screwed the pooch by stating on their own that they'd sell it to him for $250,000. There's a good chance they're going to lose the domain to him.

Remember this if you own a domain that someone else wants to buy. Never ask for an amount. Even if they say they're interested in buying and how much would you want for it, don't state an amount. Let them come to you with an amount first, then you can negotiate. If you're the first one to state the amount, they can nail you with section 4b(i). The guy who owns nissan.com (he sells computers and Nissan is his last name) almost lost it because Nissan (the car company) kept bugging him to sell. And out of exasperation one day he told them (in Dr. Evil fashion), "$1 million dollars. How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not going to sell it."

Contrary to all the knee-jerk criticism heaped upon him by anti-liberterians who've probably never heard of ICANN or the UDNDRP, Ron Paul is doing the right thing here - working within the rules of ICANN to get the dispute resolved.

If they decided to oppose RonPaul in the coming election and inform their 170k following of his mistakes, would he then get the right to shut them down for not playing nice? When does the First Amendment kick in and the UN's rights become secondary? To the merit if his detractors "Old Ron Paul" would have said the First Amendment trumps any UN opinions. He should go back to being Old Ron Paul and write them a check and be done with it.

In fact, yes he could have them shut down and the domain name forcibly taken from them. Activision obtained the ModernWarfare3.com domain for those very same reasons. The First Amendment is not, never has been, and would be a travesty if it ever were able to be used as a "Do whatever you want" clause. It very specifically only applies to things that are said, not things that are owned, and it doesn't make wishful thinking into a reality or automatically correct people who misunderstand their free speech limitations.

Ron Paul's main problem here is that he doesn't understand the Internet itself. If he has a domain name dispute, the UN is not the place to go to have it resolved. He should be talking to ICANN.

ICANN
File a complaint with the domain name registrars or ICANN, alternativley it is ICANN policy to revoke domain names if served with a lawsuit by the entity holding a trademark or name when another entity has established the domain for no commercial reason.

http://www.icann.org/en/help/dndr/udrp/policy

The submitter sounds like they are describing textbook cybersquatting.
So alternatively, they can try Domain Name Dispute Resolution
https://www.icann.org/en/help/dndr/udrp

Disputes alleged to arise from abusive registrations of domain names (for example, cybersquatting) may be addressed by expedited administrative proceedings that the holder of trademark rights initiates by filing a complaint with an approved dispute-resolution service provider.

You can register [person]sucks.com and shit on them all day long, but you can't expect to register [person].com and keep it.

You can easily get the domain name that matches her name.

1. Have her trademark it
2. File a UDRP


For the rest, SEO.

BTW, you are not the crazy ex trying to figure out how she can take away your cyber-stalking, right?

From hereL

Most TLDs with three or more characters are referred to as "generic" TLDs, or "gTLDs". They can be subdivided into two types, "sponsored" TLDs (sTLDs) and "unsponsored TLDs (uTLDs), as described in more detail below.

Fail.

The worst part about that particular complaint is that there is nothing about the internet that requires that other countries use the US's root DNS servers. They are free to implement their own.

And many of them have..

The problem is that the root zone is controlled by the US Department of Commerce ("National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) - which is an office within the United States Department of Commerce - authorizes changes to the root"), so their root servers serve up information that's ultimately US-controlled.

If you go to the list at https://gacweb.icann.org/display/gacweb/GAC+Early+Warnings , you'll see a jumbled hodgepodge of requested TLDs, impossible to find anything (except exact matches with Find-within-page). I immediately wished that the list were sortable.

Turns out, it is. The column headers are hotlinks that trigger sorts on the associated column. It's just not at all obvious that that's the case, because they've suppressed almost all standard hotlink cues. The hotlinks are bold, black and centered, standard highlighting for the TH tags that they also are. Nothing but the index finger pointer indicates that the headers are hot. They also didn't provide any commentary that it was sortable, either in title tooltips or in introductory verbiage. Very cool and minimalist, but not in a good way.

In other words, the table sort feature is inaccessible, even to sighted readers, because it denies the reader the information that it's sortable. It might as well not be sortable at all if you don't let the user know.

Anyway, if you want to get a clearer view of the competition for TLDs, you might want to sort by Application (the TLD itself), Applicant or Filing GAC Member. YW.

Yes, the answer to the poster's problem is to not use .info domains with this highly restrictive policy: http://info.info/information/anti-abuse-policy

What is interesting about all of this is Afilias (the registry operator for .info) appears to be using the Spamhaus DBL in an automated fashion to add "serverHold" status to listed domains. ("serverHold" effectively removes the domain from the TLD root servers and can only be modified by the Registry. "clientHold" does the same thing, but can be modified by the Registrar, in this case eNom.)

This is the official ICANN agreement and related documents that allows .info to function: https://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/registries/info

This is the Registry-Registrar Agreement (RRA) containing section 3.6.5 referred do by the .info anti-abuse-policy: https://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/registries/info/appendix-08-08dec06-en.htm

In all of those documents, I see no mention of the registry operator (Afilias) being able to invoke their rights of RRA section 3.6.5 in an automated (API-used) fashion. You could email Afilias about it, but doubt they would respond. If we want to get to the bottom of how they are auto-serverHold-listing domains, it seems a lawsuit is the only way. Perhaps someone really did email abuse@afilias.info, and a human checked the SBL and looked at the batch of domains created near the same time from the same registrar.

Thanks, Bennett Haselton, for posting this article and telling us about these shady practices from Afilias.

If you wish to continue using .info, and eNom (namecheap), then it appears you should create separate accounts, and register 1-2 domains in each account, so at least they are not blocked as a group. Additionally, using multiple sets of nameservers will make the domains look "different" from each other.

Yes, the answer to the poster's problem is to not use .info domains with this highly restrictive policy: http://info.info/information/anti-abuse-policy

What is interesting about all of this is Afilias (the registry operator for .info) appears to be using the Spamhaus DBL in an automated fashion to add "serverHold" status to listed domains. ("serverHold" effectively removes the domain from the TLD root servers and can only be modified by the Registry. "clientHold" does the same thing, but can be modified by the Registrar, in this case eNom.)

This is the official ICANN agreement and related documents that allows .info to function: https://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/registries/info

This is the Registry-Registrar Agreement (RRA) containing section 3.6.5 referred do by the .info anti-abuse-policy: https://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/registries/info/appendix-08-08dec06-en.htm

In all of those documents, I see no mention of the registry operator (Afilias) being able to invoke their rights of RRA section 3.6.5 in an automated (API-used) fashion. You could email Afilias about it, but doubt they would respond. If we want to get to the bottom of how they are auto-serverHold-listing domains, it seems a lawsuit is the only way. Perhaps someone really did email abuse@afilias.info, and a human checked the SBL and looked at the batch of domains created near the same time from the same registrar.

Thanks, Bennett Haselton, for posting this article and telling us about these shady practices from Afilias.

If you wish to continue using .info, and eNom (namecheap), then it appears you should create separate accounts, and register 1-2 domains in each account, so at least they are not blocked as a group. Additionally, using multiple sets of nameservers will make the domains look "different" from each other.

http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en

For those of you, like me, who weren't sure what UDRP meant, it means Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy and ICANN has a page on it.

Anyway, this indicates a major problem with the domain name system. One which could be solved by a simple, careful and widespread application of OpenPGP. That is, if everyone encrypted emails for recipients, people like this would not be able to read them.

Also, if I were this "security researcher" I would set up legitmate looking websites at the various domains. Perhaps giocondolaw.com could be a website for Grand International Operations. ConDoLaw., a website trying to put together a convention about law for lay peoples, run by GIO, an organisation setup by our hero... Or something. You know, it doesn't even have to be clever, just appear to actually have a real use for the domain name. In the case of the lockheedmartun.com website well, maybe a shell company called Lockhe, which makes an editor (ed) called Martun, Lockhe Ed Martun. Perhaps repackage and sell (for only $5000 a seat, this wonderful software, complete with source code, and what we won't tell you unless you buy it, is that it's just GNU EMACS or perhaps VIM (depending on what you hate the least).

Speaking of "technical", how wise do you think this all Miscroft shop really is?

This came out just now: http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-23jun12-en.htm

If you think ICANN is the "best and the brightest" or "runs the Internet" then you don't understand life on this planet.

"Very interesting! (adding both of your posts to my Evernote for later detailed reading/analysis)." - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20, @11:39AM (#40385939)

Thank you, & I hope you find it useful...

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"Any plans to offer the "APK Hosts File Engine 5.0++" at "normal" looking website, with FAQs, screenshots etc." - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20, @11:39AM (#40385939)

Yes, eventually, Mr. Burn of hpHosts/malwarebytes + Henry Hobbitt of hostfile.org asked me the same... right now, I am building in filtration for the NEW "gTLD's" that are coming out... it's important, for the future.

The version you can get now doesn't account for them (tld's like these -> http://newgtlds-cloudfront.icann.org/sites/default/files/reveal/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en.csv )

It will, soon... about a week, tops.

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"(OTOH, I can understand privacy/safety concerns of any individual challenging the multi-billion dollar scamming/advertisement industry)?." - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20, @11:39AM (#40385939)

I'm not "Bruce (ad) Banner's" (lol) enemy...

OR

That of the security industry (be that antivirus/antispyware or even the DNS system itself with all of its faults I noted) either - I'm actually MORE THEIR FRIEND...

Simply by pointing out they have issues that needed supplementing via this tool or one like it!

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"It does everything (and more?) HostsMan does for me: automatic updates from multiple sources, 127.0.0.1->0.0.0.0 conversion, comments and duplicates removal... ." - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20, @11:39AM (#40385939)

A bit more, but all of what it can do, afaik... & it imports from as many, if not MORE, sources for valid hosts file data (all sources are known & reputable). It even checks or can check, sites you MAY wish to remove (but should be checked vs. known databases of malicious sites first, prior to removal, for safety).

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"Moving "DataBasePath" to RAM - how much does it speed the process up?." - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20, @11:39AM (#40385939)

It does so (here) by my moving the hosts file to a TRUE SSD (Gigabyte IRAM 4gb DDR2 based ramdrive board), & that's for FASTER SEEK/ACCESS (since they're known for that vs. std. HDD's), & then, the diskcaching subsystem in the OS does the rest (caching hosts file data to RAM), since the hosts file is just a file, like any other...

That, & SuperFetch in Windows does the rest (better, since it keeps frequently accessed data better & doesn't 'flush' as easily as caches do, so as long as you're surfing & thus, using the hosts file for fav. sites especially hardcoded into it (going to be GOOD on July 9th 2012, when the DNSChanger trojan starts getting 'flushed' worldwide)).

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"Just in case you did not see this, here is the link to the page of Fravia (who had unfortunately deceased in 2009 :-( ) on blocking malicious IP ranges (is there such a functionality in APK?):
http://www.searchlores.org/antiadve.htm#rout" - by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20, @11:39AM (#40385939)

NO, I do IP addresses in firewalls (since hosts files can't stop those) via PowerShell scripts for "enmasse import"... but, the GREAT MAJORITY of what malware makers use? Hosts-Domain names!

Why? First - they pay for them, & they do, because they're "recyclable"/reuseable... the RBN (Russian Business Network), a known gang of criminals online in the past, was notorious for it.

(Makes sense - because once IP Addresses are known bad? Th

It is:
http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/application-results/strings-1200utc-13jun12-en

Incidentally, I seem to remember that Coca-Cola was one of the companies not getting involved. They, like a number of "big brand" companies, complained that this is nothing but an attempt to extort money out of them on threat of losing their precious trademarks to someone else (which is probably a pretty fair assessment of the whole thing).

If the "drawing ire over batching by punch the monkey" is real, it should have happened as early as March 30 this year, when the notification about "digital archery" was made public by ICANN.