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Claim your namespace.

Claim your namespace.

Needless to say, the desk will remain uncleaned tonight, while I figure out how to get the HTTP server running :)

Who died and made ICANN boss? Support OpenNIC.

Step-by-step instructions are available on OpenNIC's web site on getting your nameserver to support both ICANN and OpenNIC TLDs.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.

Even if ICANN was to come out with a new TLD, it should be .parody . That way, the corporations can still sue everyone with a com/net/whatever for "false representation of their trademark"

That's why OpenNIC created the .parody domain. Install OpenNIC nameservers in resolv.conf (or the Windoze equivalent) and learn more at http://www.parody. (Note that you have to know somebody who has root on your mailserver to be able to send a registration request to hostmaster@parody.)
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.

Even if ICANN was to come out with a new TLD, it should be .parody . That way, the corporations can still sue everyone with a com/net/whatever for "false representation of their trademark"

That's why OpenNIC created the .parody domain. Install OpenNIC nameservers in resolv.conf (or the Windoze equivalent) and learn more at http://www.parody. (Note that you have to know somebody who has root on your mailserver to be able to send a registration request to hostmaster@parody.)
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.

I should have qualified my "boycott NSI" statement by suggesting an alternative root system, such as Opennic. There's a lot of progress being made in pulling together all the separate alternate DNS roots into one comprehensive root that can resolve all the alternate NICs as well as the ICANN NICs.

Think for yourselves. Don't be afraid not to fork.

I do think for myself, as do most people on the net with the expertise and clout to choose their own root servers.

Forking is a grand tradition of the internet. Disagreement and chosing one's own path is inherent in the very philosophy behind much of the internet.

What the ICANN is engaged in is a profound usurping of the open and free nature of the net and a powergrab of megalomaniacal portions, and should be resisted and fought by all good people everywhere.

Six months ago I changed my employer's root servers to point to opennic. I saw what ICANN was becoming then and chose not to wait until the proverbial fertilizer struck the rotating blades, but rather to act proactively.

I must say I have been impressed at how well opennic does work. Not a single DNS problem or complaint in six months, and name resolution times that are actually more snappy than before.

From a political/freedom point of view Opennic is good in that it is truly democratic, supports both the alternic and icann namespaces (sans the new domains), as well as democraticly created TLDs of its own.

I encourage others to take a look-see. It is my hope that FreeNet's pending naming/key service will allow us to dump DNS altogether, but until that happens opennic is at least open, fair, and democratic, unlike ICANN and many of its corporate rivals.

And so what if the internet becomes fragmented? Worst case, we can send each other our IP addresses in the exact same way we share phone numbers today. More likely, such fragmentation would take the wind out of the sails of such entities as ICANN, preventing both their power grab from succeeding and perhaps pre-empting similarly inappropriate powergrabs in the future and leading to some kind of reasonable and equitable compromise. Do you really think entities such as ICANN and NSI would compromise in any fashion otherwise? Based on their behavior to date, not bloody likely.

With any luck we'll be able to replace the heirarchical, centrally controlled DNS namespace with something less prone to corruption and domination, such as that being proposed by FreeNet. Until then, please consider opennic as a free, democratic alternative to ICANN and Alternnic.

As one of the folks quoted in the Reg article, I'm kinda surprised that the DNS project I'm working with hasn't be referenced here yet. Well, I'll take care of that ... ;-)

The OpenNIC

The OpenNIC is working on and promoting a system much like what's being discussed here. We want a global DNS root in which any person or group which can technicaly build and support a root is a welcome and equal participant and in which new TLDs are created simply by vote of the users.

Within OpenNIC, we operate several TLDs (.oss and .null, presumably, would be of the most interest to this crowd).

Cheers,
-robin

... it's called the OpenNIC.

-robin

May I also suggest OpenNIC as a democratic alternative to ICANN.

...It'll discourage all these crafty types that nab all the good names before anyone else. Although I do still agree that ICANN are pricing themselves out of the market.

For a fresh, minty, low-fat alternative, may I suggest supporting OpenNIC (go to http://www.opennic.unrated.net)

• .pro: Professionals? Protractors? Pronunciation guides? Pronouns? What the hell is this for?
• .museum: Are museums a major portion of the net? I can't recall ever, in my life, having looked at a museum website. Now they get their own TLD? Coming next year: .photo-kiosk and .larrys-truck-repair!
• .aero: Let's see... "boeing.aero", "airbus.aero"... ummm, yeah that's about it. Way to expand the scope of the net.
• .coop: One URL: "chicken.coop". That's all I have to say on this one.
• .name: So who gets to own "bob.smith.name"? This one'll be a barrel of litigious fun.
• .info: Having chosen one (relatively) good tld, and eight that are way too specific, ICANN must have thrown this one in so that the "way too general" lobby was placated. I mean, think for a minute here. Everything on the net is "info". It's an information medium. Look at the application for this one; the same people also proposed ".web" and ".site". We're playing with the mental giants now, folks.

ICANN, once again, has demonstrated that it is just dumb. So I'll close with a plea for you to support OpenNIC. We already have the means and the motive to just ignore ICANN and improve the DNS heirarchy ourselves. Won't you please help?

----Clip from the Site----
The OpenNIC is a user owned and controlled Network Information Center offering a democratic, non-national, alternative to the traditional Top-Level Domain registries. In case you were looking for them, the traditonal TLDs are currently served by Network Solutions with policies set by ICANN
----End----

Try OpenNIC. It's small, but they have their ideas right and could use your support.

--

In fact, several such alternative root registries already exist. (See, for example Alternic, Name.Space, OpenNIC, and eDNS.) The problem is that there's not a critical mass of people converting to any one of them. These systems also threaten the uniqueness (if the same TLDs are set up on competing root servers), universality (the same URL should resolve to the same site for everyone, and everyone should be able to access all URLs), and technical stability of the DNS namespace. DNS cache leakage is a compounding factor.

The DNS is not like open source software; you can't fork it and make a version of it that you like better, and let people chose which one they like best. It is (at the moment) a shared global resource. Sure, lots of people grumble about ICANN's handling of the expansion process. But the community of name server administrators and owners has consistently recoginized that the dangers of fragmenting the global name space outweigh the likely benefits of doing so.

--Beland

Then do something about it. Support OpenNIC.

OpenNIC proudly lists .parody as one of its approved TLDs. Once you add a Tier 2 OpenNIC nameserver to your DNS configuration (in /etc/resolv.conf on Linux), you can access the .parody registration page.

OpenNIC proudly lists .parody as one of its approved TLDs. Once you add a Tier 2 OpenNIC nameserver to your DNS configuration (in /etc/resolv.conf on Linux), you can access the .parody registration page.

The important piece of this domain is that a dedicated parody TLD will remove any legitimacy from parody targets' to claims that a parody site could be mistaken for the business site and thus be an infringement on their trademarks.

A fully distributed, rootless name service would be something from the current DNS protocols and DNS implementations.

However, if one considers today's DNS to be a set of TLDs (Top Level Domains) that are found by consulting a "root" then it is indeed possible to create root systems other than the one most, but not all. of us use. Personally, I use one of these other root systems - and I have been doing for several years and have had zero problems. Take a look at http://www.superroot.org/ and http://www.opennic.unrated.net/public_servers.html

A while back I wrote a note on competitive root systems: http://www.cavebear.com/cavebear/growl/issue_2.htm #multiple_roots The IAB of the IETF takes a dim view of competive roots, but I don't accept the logic of their decison. (The IAB's note is in RFC2826.)

The best alternative i've seen OpenNIC's openly open OpenDNS.

Is there any technical reason why DNS servers (probably provided by your ISP) can't add OpenDNSs details too?

For more info, see ICANNnot.

Also, everyone should check out alternatives, like OpenNIC

Matt Bandy
Scientist
"Let my obsolescence blossom and propagate..."

OpenNIC, the Democratic Name System, has a .null TLD that is often compared to alt. of Usenet.
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XPlay Tetris On Drugs!

I'm surprised to see very little mention of the fact that you can choose your registry. With projects like OPENNIC available to us, we have much more choice than we think. Of course the great challenge is getting an "alternative" domain name system accepted, but this can be done on a server-by-server basis. Alternative DNS systems can co-exist with the mainstream and gain influence until we can overturn the current, corrupt, and f**ked up system.

Claim your namespace.

It's already happening. I found this link on Slashdot within the last month: http://www.opennic.unrated.net.

Well, not like it required as much effort as voting in meatspace, but I actually did activate my membership and endorse a candidate. It remains to be seen how well ICANN will work, but I'm giving it a fair shake (as well as not putting all my eggs in one basket and getting involved with projects like OpenNIC.

Well, as a candidate (my page is here), I hadn't prepared a specific recommendation on that. I am of the opinion that the dispute policies should be flexible depending on the charter of the TLD, while they should always try to be fair. Letting the "plaintif" select the arbiter is completely ludicrous, so I think that a set arbitration procedure and body should be included in the TLD charter. OpenNIC, for example, requires that domain disputes be decided by ballot of the registrants within the TLD.

I decided to try out opennic. It's very easy to make use of them. If you're not running your own nameserver, it's just a matter of putting a couple of their public dns server addresses in /etc/resolv.conf (in linux or bsd), or in windows putting them under network configuration, I believe. They have the instructions on their site for various operating systems.

If you are running a nameserver, you only have to make a small change to named.conf to get it to point at their root servers rather than ICANN's. It also is compatible with the "official" dns, so you will still be able to resolve all the standard addresses as before. Opennic also cooperates with other alternative standards, such as alternic, so you can check out, for example, .porn or .xxx websites (not that I would).

The system is still in its youth, but I think it's very exciting.

You are certainly correct about OpenNIC being unable to handle the scale of traffic the ICANN root gets. We are working on it, though in a slightly different direction.

Our goal is to get mirror servers for our TLDs dispersed as widely as possible so that, unlike the ICANN system, we would not have to handle much direct user traffic at the core machines. So, given time, we should be able to grow to the point that we can take as many requests/second as the ICANN root does.

I think it's doable, though the only way we'll find out for sure is to keep trying. ;-)

So nominate yourself, James! OpenNIC is aiming to have candidates with a single platform running in all 5 regions and we don't have a Euro candidate yet. Check out our site and then the stuff on my candidacy site. If you agree, jump in and we'll all be publicizing each other. "In unity there is strength" and similar ...

Point, and exactly what motivated us to set up OpenNIC. And, contrary to the other reply to this post, you don't need mondo boxes and wide pipes to start out. If you get enough volunteer servers spread widely enough around the globe, you'll never need more than that.

What I like with the ICANN is their democratic system. To propose a new TLD, you must pay 20 000 $US. How can they stay serious when they speak of democraty ?

ICANN "democracy" is basically a farce, although I wouldn't let that stop you from voting (if you've registered) and getting at least one or two intellegent voices of dissent into the loop.

If you want a truly democratic approach to domain name registration and TLD management, check out
Opennnic.

[shameless plug]

Note: I am an Opennic user and supporter, but not an ICANN candidate.

Opennic, an effort at democratizing the management of domains and TLDs, is putting forward ICANN candidates as well. I strongly urge everyone to support their efforts, as they are truly trying to make the entire domain management issue more equitable and democratic.

We are using Opennic root servers where I work -- allowing us to resolve both ICANN domain names (.com, .org, etc.) and Opennic domains (.opennic, .null, .oss, .paroduy). Opennic has cooperative agreements with other alternative domains heirarchies as well, allowing those who use their root servers to resolve their TLDs as well (such as .xxx, .biz, etc.). It is a far more equitable and democratic arrangement than what ICANN is doing (e.g. anyone can start a TLD by submitting a proposal to the mailing list and getting more than 50% of the vote), and worthy of support by anyone who values the freedom and liberty of the internet, particularly those of us in the free software and open source communities.

[/shameless plug]

OpenNIC supports the .oss domain, whose intent is for open source projects.

For more info, goto:
http://www.opennic.unrated.net/

An alternative, democratic heiarchy is OpenNIC, which you can find at www.unrated.net/projects/opendns/ or (once you've set yourself up to use the alternative root domains) www.opennic.

While this still doesn't help with injustices like this, it is a start. Personally, I would prefer a system which simply hijacks .com, .net, .org, .etc. and relegates the ICANN administered domains to .com.icann, .net.icann, etc.

That would put those power hungry f*cks in their place.

Whatever form a more distributed and democratic domain name service takes, it is past time for the netizens of the world to take it out of the hands of the beaurocrats.

Check out the OpenDNS Project. That's exactly what we're doing. If you'd like to join us instead of setting it up yourself, join our discussion list. If you want to do your own instead, would you let us know so we can arrage for the projects to cooperate?

Registering and voting can't hurt, so I think it's right to go for it (once their database recovers from being /.ed, of course). They don't seem to be making much of a privacy commitment, but I think that's a small risk. If you want to vote, but don't want the spam risk, you can always register with a deletable mail account. Heck, I've my own mail server, I'll give you an account to use if that's your concern.

I'm also going to self-nominate, since I'd like to see some more radical views get expressed in the debate, even if the election is rigged and the folks elected will be a small minority of the Board.

See The OpenDNS Project's pages for a description of a truly democratic name system.