Slashdot Mirror

RLH - Excellent points. Presently, the theory is that if you've got unused address space, you should return it so that other organizations that have need can be assigned it. This actually has happened (again, http://blog.icann.org/2008/02/recovering-ipv4-address-space/) but realistically, may not be the most popular route. In 2009, the community adopted a transfer policy which allows one party to transfer their address blocks to another (and be compensated independent of ARIN) but the receiving party has to prove the documented need to receive it. Since there's still addresses in the free pool, there's not a lot of reason for someone to pay when ARIN will provide them directly the same space once they've documented their need. FYI.

We have been working on getting those with unneeded legacy blocks to return them, and have had some success: http://blog.icann.org/2008/02/recovering-ipv4-address-space/

Now I assume that is taken from United States International Organizations Immunities ACT, Public LAw 79-291, 29 December 1945, seems to not been much of a problem until now, and please note where I found a copy http://www.icann.org/en/psc/annex9.pdf. It would really be far more appropriate the list the actual current change rather than looking at stuff 60 years old. Also that it can be granted or withdrawn either by congress or executive order, executive order is of course much quicker. Finally "No person shall, by reason of the provisions of this chapter, be considered as receiving diplomatic status". Here is a nice article http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/12/just-what-did-president-obamas-executive-order-regarding-interpol-do.html.

Why doesn't the federal Government use the URDP to just seize the domains? If they're posing at the government, that should be a quick slam-dunk court case, and then the government just takes it to ICANN who forces their registrar to transfer to ownership:

http://www.icann.org/en/udrp/udrp.htm

I know it's not as simple as that, but once the ball is rolling it should stop them as appealing method of scamming. Plus, it's "the right way" to get it done without passing any new law that can be abused. Enabling any sort of China-like-firewall-filter is a *bad idea*.

Fear, doom and gloom.

Unfounded fear, doom and gloom, for the most part.

Homoglyphs are not a problem that somehow escaped the attention of the tens of thousands of people whose work contributes indirectly to ICANN. Top level domain registries are required to use a single script per domain, so you can't register a Greek and Latin 'A' in the same label. Mathematical symbols, including 1D694, are never allowed.

Multiple representations of the same character are already taken care of in the IDN ToASCII() operation; they are case-folded, order of accents is fixed, and composed and decomposed variants map to the same result.

There's been so much attention given to it, at this stage, that the riskiest form of domain name is the plain old ASCII domain name. We are on sIashdot.org. No, wait, s1ashdot.org. Or slashdot.org. (Your font may show these distinctly; mine shows upper-i quite distinctly but one and lower-l are nearly indistinguishable).

You're also always going to be susceptible to tricks like slashdot.org--comments.pl.sid.142242.op.Reply.threshold.0.example.org, depending on how switched on you are at the time. IDNs don't alter the potential for that at all. You're vulnerable to CSS fonts specifying a custom font file in which "example.org" renders as "citibank.com". And you're still vulnerable to a Kaminsky DNS attack, since DNSSEC is not enabled at the root, and many resolvers don't error on missing signatures in any case. Again, IDN won't alter that condition.

Slashdot won't take accept my links, but some examples are on this page

DHT. Thanks for asking. Efforts are already underway, quietly, so ICANN doesn't notice and cannot co-opt it. Oh, and name and address shortages? Thing of the past.

The end of an era where artificial scarcity to promote a monopoly to make the insiders very wealthy is nearly at an end. http://forum.icann.org/lists/bc-gnso/msg00134.html

I'm shocked nobody is asking "what have all those poeple done for 10 years and many many millions of dollars".

First of all any dedicated spammer or other miscreant can fake contact data with some that is valid but not theirs. Second, you go after the IP not the friggin domain. That's just a label, not the source of the damage.

This is nothing more than a blatant attempts by the Intellectual Property lobby that has co-opted ICANN (Ironic, but an organization that was tasked with making new TLDs hasn't done so in a decade and as of right now, new TLDs are two years away from whenever you ask, just as they have been since 1996, which is exactly what the TM lobby wants) to be able to serve anybody with a summons for IP infirngement. It has nothing to do with any operational issues in the DNS. No really, I checked.

Never mind that even some of the women lawyers involved in the creation of ICANN have been stalked from their whois data (Mikki Barry for example).

If you need clear proof ICANN is just a nexus for the same types that do such good work in the RIAA and MPAA, check this out:

http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005957.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005960.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005961.html

ICANN is only "open and transparent" when you read between the lines.

First of all any dedicated spammer or other miscreant can fake contact data with some that is valid but not theirs. Second, you go after the IP not the friggin domain. That's just a label, not the source of the damage.

This is nothing more than a blatant attempts by the Intellectual Property lobby that has co-opted ICANN (Ironic, but an organization that was tasked with making new TLDs hasn't done so in a decade and as of right now, new TLDs are two years away from whenever you ask, just as they have been since 1996, which is exactly what the TM lobby wants) to be able to serve anybody with a summons for IP infirngement. It has nothing to do with any operational issues in the DNS. No really, I checked.

Never mind that even some of the women lawyers involved in the creation of ICANN have been stalked from their whois data (Mikki Barry for example).

If you need clear proof ICANN is just a nexus for the same types that do such good work in the RIAA and MPAA, check this out:

http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005957.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005960.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005961.html

ICANN is only "open and transparent" when you read between the lines.

First of all any dedicated spammer or other miscreant can fake contact data with some that is valid but not theirs. Second, you go after the IP not the friggin domain. That's just a label, not the source of the damage.

This is nothing more than a blatant attempts by the Intellectual Property lobby that has co-opted ICANN (Ironic, but an organization that was tasked with making new TLDs hasn't done so in a decade and as of right now, new TLDs are two years away from whenever you ask, just as they have been since 1996, which is exactly what the TM lobby wants) to be able to serve anybody with a summons for IP infirngement. It has nothing to do with any operational issues in the DNS. No really, I checked.

Never mind that even some of the women lawyers involved in the creation of ICANN have been stalked from their whois data (Mikki Barry for example).

If you need clear proof ICANN is just a nexus for the same types that do such good work in the RIAA and MPAA, check this out:

http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005957.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005960.html
http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2009q4/005961.html

ICANN is only "open and transparent" when you read between the lines.

WHO is the "global committee". You might think, at first glance, that it's you and me.

Well, no. It's ISPs. Big, very, very big ISPs. Think Verizon, AT&T, Telefonica, ...

I'm honestly not sure who to trust more, the dept. of commerce or these guys. Wait actually I think I actually prefer the government. These guys gave a monopoly to verisign. We all know what happened. Let's not pretend these guys are our friends, they're not.

The next step is to enforce ICANN rule 4.2.5 to prohibit registrars from warehousing or speculating in domains.

"Just how many domains do they think they're going to be selling? At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away."

Actually you have to sell 100,000 just to cover the filing fees. And that's without paying for any infrastructure or people.

Here's how the other new tlds have fared so far:
http://idashboard.icann.org/idashboards/engine.swf?dashID=159&serverURL=http://idashboard.icann.org/idashboards&guest=icannguest ( http://is.gd/28LvZ )

(Warning, slow and a cpu eater)

Plus, .green has been more vocal than .eco so far. Look at the Twitter public timeline (if you can).

Back in 1996 when this started and .com was under a million names a bunch of new tlds like Jon Pstel advocated would have taken the steam out of .com. But not that it's at 80M names most poeple who want a domain have one. "need" has not transformed to "want" and in this economy buying a .eco name or a solar AA battery charger becomes the decision of the day.

Here's some more numbers:
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/internet/domains/dotcom/
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/internet/domains/tlds/
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/internet/domains/eyestar/icann/IAF/
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/internet/domains/eyestar/iana/idn/

As for "Rival Green Groups Bid To Snatch .eco Domain" I hate to say it but .snatch would probably at least break even.

Why even the FBI? Can't you make a complaint to ICANN and have them resolve the dispute? Also since it was a godaddy account that was hacked, couldn't they also complain to godaddy?

I propose that we don't use for-profit corporations that have proven multiple times that they are willing to literally break the internet in order to make a buck.

http://www.icann.org/en/topics/wildcard-history.html

The problem with the current system isn't that it requires a web of trust in order to work, the problem is that when a corporation has participated in untrustworthy behavior, they don't get removed from the positions of trust. If participating in behaviors that are openly hostile to the proper function of the internet can't get your CA status revoked, then it's useless to me.

And while insulting me by claiming I live in my mother's basement might make the claim that manually verified certificates won't scale seem more emphatic, it's still invalid. Sure, actually verifying the identity of certificate owners won't scale to the level of profitability that Verisign currently enjoys. So what? Scalability is not a requirement of a trust system. TRUSTWORTHINESS is. If you scale to the point that the certs are no longer verified, then you've already failed. Then it's not about trust, it's just about the racket. I'm not responsible for insuring that the CA is a profitable business case.

But I can confidently state that security certificate warnings don't work, because they are just fear mongering for a system that's broken.

No, I'm not being disingenuous. I'm being literal and honest, Verisign is untrustworthy.

http://www.icann.org/en/topics/wildcard-history.html

I address the troll issue here: http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/internet/domains/shills/

Paul Twomey for 8 years collected nearly a million dollars a year from ICANN and in ten years they've never made any new tlds to speak of. They do not have an elected board like they were supposed to and there is no viting membership in the legal sense, in ICANN - another guiding principle that was supposed to have been done but never was and still isn't. Let's be clear that ICANN was to create new TLDS, not to debate whether they should be created, the governments mandate was to do this as its primary function. It was also to study the trademark problem but lets not loose sight of the fact there are laws that protect trademark holders.

I met Paul Twomey at the beginning of his tenure. He's a professional politician and in my opinion his job has been to see there are no new tlds and no voting membership and a continuence of self perpetuating board.

The rest of that nicely written rant I agree with.

Epic fail. Domain name arbitration is done through filing papers. You don't have to show up anywhere because there is no hearing. All you do is file paperwork. Through the mail. It would probably cost a few thousand at most to hire a lawyer to prepare the appropriate paperwork.

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

And if you think arbitration is expensive, you should try litigation. There's no comparison, really.

If you went to the DMV and said "Hey, can I have a license for 'Steve Jobs'?" should they reply with "Let me just see if that name is taken yet? Nope, here ya go!" or should they say "Are you Steve Jobs?"

The TLDs have dispute resolution policies for that sort of thing. Here's how it normally works:

1. Example Inc. applies for a trademark registration on EXAMPLE for some sort of good in a developed country.
2. Realemain LLC registers the domain EXAMPLE.COM without having registered a trademark for EXAMPLE in any field of goods and services.
3. Realemain puts EXAMPLE.COM up for sale or uses the domain for a confusing purpose.
4. Example Inc. discovers this and builds a case for Realemain's bad faith and presents it to a WIPO arbitration panel.
5. WIPO finds in favor of Example Inc. and orders the registrar to transfer EXAMPLE.COM to Example Inc.

In addition, new TLDs often have a "sunrise" period, in which entities need to submit proof of trademark registration in order to register a corresponding domain, before the TLD goes live.

ICANN is primarily responsible for governing this sort of stuff. Section (i) below states it pretty clearly.

The difference is between someone who used the website, and someone who bought it and immediately set up a for sale sign.

According to the US anti-cybersquatting act, if the registrant is outside the U.S., you may bring the lawsuit in rem against the domain itself, not against the registrant.

Anti-cybersquatting act:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:S.1255.IS:=

Icann regulations:
http://www.icann.org/en/dndr/udrp/policy.htm

b. Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith. For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present, shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith:

        (i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or

        (ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or

        (iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or

        (iv) 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.

Incorrect. Domain Tasting has pretty much been removed from the "game" by the new Add Grace Period rules which many registries, including verisign (com/net) adhere to.

ICANN even reports deletes are down by 84%

Also, wholesale domain prices, set by the registries (again verisign here for .com, though they did reduce .net somewhat) have increased as well. Even .biz and .info have gone up, and those TLDs are relatively useless.

Cybersquatting is considered an abusive registration, and therefore subject to 'expedited administrative proceedings' with an ICANN representative. Its likely to cost you a fair bit to go through the dispute resolution, but if their site is obviously a 'for-sale' site, then you're pretty much guaranteed to win - para 4, section b refers almost entirely to cybersquatting.

It might be worth going this route if a) the scumbag has registered several domains you want (eg .com, .net) , and b) also wants loads of cash for them. The cost for the NAF panel is $1300 (nice work if you can get it :) )

I do think the dispute-resolution process is pretty poor for the most obvious forms of abuse, and should be opened up to more, quicker and cheaper forms of arbitration, with anything other than the most obvious cases requiring a higher panel,but ICANN is run as an international body, so I don't expect anything to happen, ever.

Cybersquatting is considered an abusive registration, and therefore subject to 'expedited administrative proceedings' with an ICANN representative. Its likely to cost you a fair bit to go through the dispute resolution, but if their site is obviously a 'for-sale' site, then you're pretty much guaranteed to win - para 4, section b refers almost entirely to cybersquatting.

It might be worth going this route if a) the scumbag has registered several domains you want (eg .com, .net) , and b) also wants loads of cash for them. The cost for the NAF panel is $1300 (nice work if you can get it :) )

I do think the dispute-resolution process is pretty poor for the most obvious forms of abuse, and should be opened up to more, quicker and cheaper forms of arbitration, with anything other than the most obvious cases requiring a higher panel,but ICANN is run as an international body, so I don't expect anything to happen, ever.

The article refers to IANA, but I think it means ICANN.

The article's author apparently did not read IANA's About page, which states what every Internet geek already knows:

IANA executes policy; it does not create policy. Policy-making is left to working groups within ICANN and elsewhere.

Looks like ICANN at least takes public comment, though at this point I don't know how much good it would do. They seem pretty bent on doing this.

Looks like ICANN at least takes public comment, though at this point I don't know how much good it would do. They seem pretty bent on doing this.

Where do we sign up to have this not happen?

You must be new here. You had a chance. ICANN took comments on this last year. Apparently not enough people spoke up about the problems, because they are going forward with it anyways.

Preston makes it sound so simple and easy to accept. Who among us aren't concerned with information security and the Internet? Preston lists a laundry list of issues that plague the Internet today. Who wouldn't support battling these issues?

The question, however, is who is going to support it. Preston claims that's what the CyberSafety Constituency would do. But do their supporters understand that?

Take some time to view the ICANN mailing list to register comments on this proposal. Note the emails sent in support. Then note how many of Preston's laundry list issues are mentioned. You'll be hard pressed to find anything that doesn't directly (or imply) one single issue: pornography.

Go ahead and look at that list's thread index . It'll help make the form letters stand out. Pornography becomes even more apparent.

Preston claims that this is not an issue of the Mormon church. However, if you look at the proposed initial membership, two things tend to form the familiar pattern: ties to the Mormon Church and pornography.

I'm not sure who Preston thinks she's fooling. Us, or the various people who have written in to support her proposal.

From her most infamous, and probably well-connected, supporter:

In Support Of Cyber Safety Contstituency

        * To: cyber-safety-petition@xxxxxxxxx
        * Subject: In Support Of Cyber Safety Contstituency
        * From: Ralph Yarro
        * Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 22:22:32 -0700

It is amazing that it has taken so long to add a voice of family values, decency, and children's rights to the ICANN family. I am Grateful to all those within ICANN that have recognized and hopefully support this much needed Charter.

Though far from balanced, this gesture will serve as a signal that ICANN cares about the hundreds of millions of Internet users who want to see families needs and concerns considered in the formation of policies and representation.

Please approve this most important voice for decency. It is an important step in the right direction. Thank you in advance.

Ralph Yarro

It's a pitty that even Ralph Yarro, who's business is technology, is so badly misled. That is, if you believe Preston.

I don't.

Preston makes it sound so simple and easy to accept. Who among us aren't concerned with information security and the Internet? Preston lists a laundry list of issues that plague the Internet today. Who wouldn't support battling these issues?

The question, however, is who is going to support it. Preston claims that's what the CyberSafety Constituency would do. But do their supporters understand that?

Take some time to view the ICANN mailing list to register comments on this proposal. Note the emails sent in support. Then note how many of Preston's laundry list issues are mentioned. You'll be hard pressed to find anything that doesn't directly (or imply) one single issue: pornography.

Go ahead and look at that list's thread index . It'll help make the form letters stand out. Pornography becomes even more apparent.

Preston claims that this is not an issue of the Mormon church. However, if you look at the proposed initial membership, two things tend to form the familiar pattern: ties to the Mormon Church and pornography.

I'm not sure who Preston thinks she's fooling. Us, or the various people who have written in to support her proposal.

From her most infamous, and probably well-connected, supporter:

In Support Of Cyber Safety Contstituency

        * To: cyber-safety-petition@xxxxxxxxx
        * Subject: In Support Of Cyber Safety Contstituency
        * From: Ralph Yarro
        * Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 22:22:32 -0700

It is amazing that it has taken so long to add a voice of family values, decency, and children's rights to the ICANN family. I am Grateful to all those within ICANN that have recognized and hopefully support this much needed Charter.

Though far from balanced, this gesture will serve as a signal that ICANN cares about the hundreds of millions of Internet users who want to see families needs and concerns considered in the formation of policies and representation.

Please approve this most important voice for decency. It is an important step in the right direction. Thank you in advance.

Ralph Yarro

It's a pitty that even Ralph Yarro, who's business is technology, is so badly misled. That is, if you believe Preston.

I don't.

Maybe I'm wrong here, but doesn't it make more sense to get everyone trying to fight this virus/bot/whatever early rather than wait?

They're trying. Microsoft has released a patch that supposedly blocks the primary vector (a vulnerability in the Server service affecting all Microsoft operating systems since Windows 98), and updated their repair tool MSRT to detect and remove it (download it from a machine that's not infested). It has probably removed it from several million of the estimated 15 million infested machines. Microsoft is working with ICANN to block registration of the generated domain names in the case where they're not yet registered and the owners of the domains that were previously registered to mitigate downtime. Every managed service provider and major IT shop I know of has pushed out all of this stuff. Unfortunately, this is not even close to enough. The secondary vector, autorun, is pernicious. This thing is now on the root thousands of major shares and every time they remove it one of the thousands of Conficker clients puts it back. It's on millions of pen drives, millions of backups. It's been burned to millions of CDs. It's on iPods and mp3 players, Blackberries and iPhones and Windows Mobile phones, picture frames and DVDs. It's probably now in the root of DVD ISOs distributed via all the popular media distribution sites. Tertiary vectors include compromising network neighbors. Your grandchildren are going to be installing this thing if they don't figure out the whole "autorun is stupid" thing.

This thing is really very well engineered. The next one will be even better. And the next one better still. If you're in a Microsoft shop you're going to be working half your holiday weekends for the rest of your career, and a lot of planned vacations too. Remember that this is not the only Windows malware currently making the rounds. There are at least three major development groups and all of them have active botnets and a release schedule for new exploits.

We've been playing this game for a long time and the black hats are getting more proficient than the white hats. The problem is that the target platform - Windows - cannot be made invulnerable to these threats without defeating its main selling point: application compatibility. Most of the people who work with this toxic stuff do their development on BSD, OS-X or Linux and refer to Windows boxes as "targets". If Microsoft makes Windows so secure that this junk won't spread, most of the apps for it won't run. You might as well run an OS that's not a target now as wait for that to happen.

But TFA is right. April Fools is the day the botmaster begins to harvest his crop of bots. May 22 is more likely the beginning of operations. I could be wrong about this because I previously guessed January 16.

http://blog.icann.org/2008/02/recovering-ipv4-address-space/

ARIN recovered a /8 in 2007. It's unlikely they'll get any more back. I know that doesn't sound much, but the amount of effort involved in getting address space back means that it is probably not worth it. Who pays for getting the company to move their addresses? How long will it take? I wouldn't be surprised if the legal wrangling took a long time to sort things out. Given that we're using about one /8 per month, it won't help that much even if we could get a few blocks back.

Comments on this petition should be sent to ICANN via the email address "cyber-safety-petition@icann.org" mailto:cyber-safety-petition@icann.org

Yarro's anti-porn crusaders are currently bombarding ICANN with form letters supporting this censorship initiative. See: http://forum.icann.org/lists/cyber-safety-petition/mail3.html

Here is more information on this issue from IP Justice and the Internet Governance Project: http://ipjustice.org/wp/2009/03/19/robert-yarro-and-his-anti-porn-crusaders-march-on-icann/ http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/3/17/4125801.html

Comments on this petition should be sent to ICANN via the email address "cyber-safety-petition@icann.org" mailto:cyber-safety-petition@icann.org

Yarro's anti-porn crusaders are currently bombarding ICANN with form letters supporting this censorship initiative. See: http://forum.icann.org/lists/cyber-safety-petition/mail3.html

Here is more information on this issue from IP Justice and the Internet Governance Project: http://ipjustice.org/wp/2009/03/19/robert-yarro-and-his-anti-porn-crusaders-march-on-icann/ http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/3/17/4125801.html

Comments on this petition should be sent to ICANN via the email address "cyber-safety-petition@icann.org" mailto:cyber-safety-petition@icann.org

Yarro's anti-porn crusaders are currently bombarding ICANN with form letters supporting this censorship initiative. See: http://forum.icann.org/lists/cyber-safety-petition/mail3.html

Here is more information on this issue from IP Justice and the Internet Governance Project: http://ipjustice.org/wp/2009/03/19/robert-yarro-and-his-anti-porn-crusaders-march-on-icann/ http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2009/3/17/4125801.html

Go here then, and click on the link to the PDF there. It looks like they're changing the link for every visit to prevent direct linking.

Should be: http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-guide/pdf5GxptFPV1D.pdf

The given URL is no good. Message with Department of Commerce document as attachment is here.

I'm amazed that something this good emerged from regulatory agencies under the Bush Administration. I suspect that some staffers are thinking very hard about what happens to their career once government regulation again gets, as Obama puts it, "adult supervision".

Try http://forum.icann.org/lists/gtld-guide/pdfVeSal4DHqu.pdf - it's linked off a linked page off TFA.

We've discussed before just how terrible of an idea it is to start selling gTLDs and let the spammers and con artists start running the entire show.

And there have been more than a few objections on the list about selling gTLDs, as well.

Yet apparently ICANN is set to go ahead with it, anyways.

Funny, most organizations would be opposed to taking action that reduces their own authority (which is one obvious effect of selling gTLDs) - but of course with the prospect of seeing a small, immediate infusion of cash from the process, ICANN is all over it.

Funny, in the name of profit, we are moving towards less regulation, less control, less accountability, and more resemblance to lawlessness.

Unfortunately once they make this mistake there is no going back. We'll have unscrupulous registrars selling to criminals all over the world and we'll have zero control over the domains that turn profit on (counterfeit) drugs, (pirated) software, (counterfeit) fashion goods, (stolen) personal identification and the like.

• gtld-intro@icann.org

I strongly encourage people to write to that address and voice your opinion on the issue. That is, after all, why it is called a public forum.

Can you imagine how much money there is to be made off of .sex? Now I need to figure out how to raise the money and get it. Though I am sure there will be many fights over that one.

Its worse than that.

I pulled this from http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-draft-agreement-24oct08-en.pdf. Apparently they also charge a crazy QUARTERLY fee to keep it in existence. So much for my genius idea of creating a donation site and taking votes on the most inadvertently funny/abusive TLD to register.

"Section 6.1 Registry-Level Fees. Registry Operator shall pay ICANN a Registry-Level Fee equal to the greater of (i) the Registry Fixed Fee of US$18,750 per calendar quarter or (ii) the Registry- Level Transaction Fee calculated per calendar quarter as follows. For any quarter in which the Registry-Level Transaction Fee as calculated in this Section 6.1 exceeds the Fixed Fee, then the Registry-Level Transaction Fee shall be paid. The Registry-Level Transaction Fee will be equal to the number of annual increments of an initial or renewal domain name registration (at one or more levels, and including renewals associated with transfers from one ICANN-accredited registrar to another) during the applicable calendar quarter multiplied by US$0.25 (the âoeTransaction Feeâ) for calendar quarters during which the average annual price of registrations (including all bundled products or services that may be offered by Registry Operator and include or are offered in conjunction with a domain name registration) is equal to US$5.00. For calendar quarters during which the average annual price of registrations is less than US$5.00, the Transaction Fee will be decreased by US $0.01 for each US$0.20 decrease in the average annual price of registrations below $5.00, down to a minimum of US$0.01 per transaction. For calendar quarters during which the average annual price of registrations is greater than US$5.00, the Transaction Fee will be increased by US $0.01 for each US$0.20 increment in the average annual price of registrations above $5.00."

If the domain were just his name, none of this would matter. But the fact that the company's name matches the domain makes it a potential trademark dispute, so you must be mindful of ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. It explicitly lists several types of "bad faith" registrations, and the first one is acquiring a domain primarily for the purposes of selling it. If you throw out a number, that can be interpreted as evidence of intent to sell, and thus bad faith and grounds for losing your domain.

Instead, get them to make an offer first. Something like, "I hadn't really thought about selling it, but my bills have been getting kind of high recently. How much were you thinking?" Although the most bulletproof is, "Sorry, not interested" and hope they make an offer.

Go to Moniker's domain auction site for some ballpark figures of how much domains similar to yours are selling for.

Maybe we'll finally find a useful application to all these $$$ spend in R&D for building artificial intelligence systems (I mean, something else than japanese pet robots) ? May I suggest this game ? If that doesn't work, I'll just be happy with tons more stupid domain names. Hands off, "www.my.ass" is mine.

You're being deliberately pedantic. I thought it was perfectly clear exactly what they meant:

Normally, A records for icann.com, www.icann.com, iana.com, www.iana.com and similar FQDNs point to IP addresses of web servers that are configured to send an HTTP redirect (via the Location header) that tells the browser to request e.g. http://www.icann.org/ if http://www.icann.com/ had been originally requested.

While more technically specific, this takes a lot more words to say than "Visitors to those addresses are normally redirected automatically to the organization's main sites at ICANN.org and IANA.org." But we all know what they meant, and anyone who doesn't know what they meant probably doesn't care. So why explain the details?

Perhaps you can explain what is not valid in the WHOIS information for these domains?

Perhaps you could open both links and see for yourself.

ICANN address from whois record (on domain):
      Registrant:
            Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
            (IANA) (IANA)
            4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
            Marina del Rey, CA 90292 US
            Email: *****@icann.org

      Administrative Contact:
            ICANN
            Roman Pelikh
            4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
            Marina del Rey, CA 90292
            Phone: +1.3103015821
            Email: *****@icann.org

      Technical Contact:
            ICANN
            Mehmet Akcin
            4676 Admiralty Way #330
            Marina del Rey, ca 90292 US
            Phone: +1.3103015810
            Email: ******@icann.org

The other link, containing their address, is a paper on ICANNs own website, titled "Letter from Louis Touton to Bruce Beckwith Regarding Breach of VeriSign Registrar's Accreditation Agreement (Whois Data Accuracy) - 3 September 2002"

    Bruce Beckwith
    Network Solutions, Inc. Registrar
    505 Huntmar Park Drive
    Herndon, VA 20170
    Tel: 1-703-742-4817

So to answer your question: Everything. The entire address, and their phone number. Even the full company name doesn't match!

Just to continue talking to myself.

The web server does not seem to be configured well either. If a webmaster cares about search engine visibility (optimization) then (s)he wants to really redirect the aliases for that server to a single normalized domain name. This is not the case with this web server, it responds under http://www.icann.com/, http://icann.com/, http://icann.org/, http://www.icann.org/ and even http://208.77.188.103/

This leads to duplicate content in the search engines, makes it harder for readers to identify the server as authoritative and is (in my book) simply not an indication of a well managed web server.

Just to continue talking to myself.

The web server does not seem to be configured well either. If a webmaster cares about search engine visibility (optimization) then (s)he wants to really redirect the aliases for that server to a single normalized domain name. This is not the case with this web server, it responds under http://www.icann.com/, http://icann.com/, http://icann.org/, http://www.icann.org/ and even http://208.77.188.103/

This leads to duplicate content in the search engines, makes it harder for readers to identify the server as authoritative and is (in my book) simply not an indication of a well managed web server.

It's obvious they didn't follow their own rules by providing valid whois contact information.

Hey IANNA, why not free up some of the "LEGACY" Class-A allocations (see below) That would free some 650 MILLION addresses!!! Some 15% of the address space.

http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space [iana.org].

That'll do us for what? Another 10-15 years or so? Plus if the US gov wants to release a bunch too since they are going IPv6.

This whole "OMG! We're going to run out of addresses (and ponies)" scare is starting to be more pathetic and fake than Nostradamus predictions!

Take a read of this blog post to find out what's really happening:

http://blog.icann.org/?p=271

They allocated more than one /8 per month in 2007, so even if they did recover all 650 million addresses from the allocations you mentioned (very unlikely), it would not buy us another 10-15 years. It would buy us about 3 years assuming the demand for IP addresses doesn't increase.

Reclaiming address space doesn't solve the problem, it just delays it. And it doesn't even delay it by that much.

> The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), which acts
> as a sort of regulator for the net as well as overseeing the domain name
> system, has been working towards opening up net addresses for the last three
> years.
>

This is so much bullshit. What happened three years ago is Joe Baptista went to the Netherlands and terminated an ICANN experiment hereinafter known as HEX. The experiment involving such entities as INAIC and the Unifiedroot et al. Now I terminated the experiment in August of 2005. ICANN had been monitoring their activities for some time. The experiment proved very successful. It showed anyone can run a root or a tld and furthermore made it very clear that the market demand for TLDs was there and would be met with or without ICANNs participation.

As a result there are now thousands of independent TLDs and many countries participating in providing TLD services. Those people who know ICANN is nothing more then a smoke screen also known they have no control over the root.

Turkey is the first country that signed up to my little experiment in the Netherlands. That rocked ICANNs boat big time. There are now hundreds if not thousands of new TLDs in Turkey.

When ICANN started up it tried to convince the world it was a monopoly. The world has poopood that as utter nonsense.