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ICANN Registers Improper Domain Names
wetmondo writes "When ICANN was started in order to open up domain registration to competition, some people worried that this might create some problems. Well, here is proof that they were right. Yahoo! is reporting that they screwed up and registered domain names with dashes at the end such as e-.com. Domain names with dashes at the end causes ftp and telnet to fail."
Hurry! Register /..org before someone else takes it!
Post to a forum like Troll Talk and see if it shows up (it's never been listed there). I don't know why other stories aren't listed, but you could probably find out if the Slash source code was available...
It's really sad to see posts as clueless as yours. ICANN is stating that the domains were in violation of documents (RFCs, ever hear of them?) created long before you ever heard of the internet. So how many domains have you personally registered? You certainly seem like the type here to screw people and make a quick buck.
I'm by no means an Internet elitist, but it seems to have started to go downhill bigtime at the end of 1993. That's about when commercial ISPs really started to take off and more and more mainstream people started accessing the net. Before then you had hardcore geeks and educational and research people using it... now you have your mother, sister, brother, your idiot boss, the retard who sat next to you in Algebra who couldn't do basic arithmetic, etc. :-)
Go to http://slashdot.org/comments.pl
Of course micorsoft-.com DOESN'T exist though!
The Internet is a network of networks communicating via a standard protocol.. IP.
Fuck OFF!
So the restriction is an accomodation due to the limitations of various Unix shells. That explains it. If it won't work with Unix, it needs to be prohibited in a standard.
Can we register "/." so slashdot's URL would be http:///..com
The discussion about that story was listed as "active" before there were any comments. And sid=TrollTalk is not listed, even though it has lots of comments. The "active discussions" page is just a list of recently posted stories.
I know quite a few people that have started to use. Register.com to register their domain's. They may be some up and comers to Network Solutions. I used to like Network Solutions, but lately their support has been terrible and their system is always screwing up. Getting too big I guess.
I watch game shows which will generally have a higher cut of people than the rest, and it amazing me [sic] how dense they come to [sic] computer terms. They don't try to learn how it understands [sic], they just want it to work.
:)
Game shows have a higher cut of people?? Come on! The folks on game shows are tourists who think that a fun vacation is going to see where all the TV shows they watch are filmed. The only people they're a cut above are the people who also watch game shows but never do leave their house (sound familiar?).
Yeah, I know this'll probably be marked as flamebait and discarded, but jeez people, unplug yourselves and do something productive once in a while. At the end of your life are you going to look back and say "Wow, those countless hours I spent watching game shows were the most fulfilling moments of my life. I should have done that more!"
I don't think so...
(that reminds me I've already been online over an hour now; gotta log off before I become a hypocrite
hmmm..well, i've registered my last eight domains through joker.com. they charge only $40 per 2 years if you provide your own dns addresses and after the 16th it'll be even cheaper plus you can register for up to 10 years. no affiliation here whatsoever, but figured that a good business is worth a few words of free promotion. btw, to all that complain about no any good names left. bull, stop whining and use your noggin' a little. i've ran checks on access related names - which is the holy grail of internet - and registered only a few of the good names still available only because i don't have enough funds. so here are the ones i DIDN'T register thus it's first come first serve since these are the ones that came back in my search as unregistered status---------------- (fastestnetconnection.com/.net), (fastestwebconnection.com/.net), (fastwebconnection.com/.net), (fastnetconnection.com/.net), (highspeednetconnection.com/.net), (highspeedwebconnection.com/.net), (superfastweb.com), (superfast.net), (bestconnection.net), (superconnection.net), (fastinternetaccess.net), (fastnetaccess.net), (fastwebaccess.net), (fastinternetconnection.net), (highspeedinternetconnection.net), (highspeednetaccess.net), (highspeedwebaccess.net),------------ note that most of these are still within the original twenty something characters and except for the six first ones available in both .com and .net tld's (!), all with a great .net tld which originally applied more appropriately to "access" companies anyway. oh yeah, you're welcome for the tip. if more here would start using their brains instead of crying about no decent names still available, you'd find that there are indeed still many good domains waiting to be registered. just remember - if any here will grab these and then put them up for sale at more than what you've paid for, don't place any hypocritical posts about "them scumsucking cybersquatters" anymore, because that would make you much lower than us. oh, and although i'm a "cybersquatter", i plan to make my money using my domains not selling them. of course if someone will want to pay me a huge amount of money then i'll sell it. wouldn't you?
Haven't you guys been following the postings of this guy named NatePWIII. I mean are you guys blind, check out his site its been posted like a hundred times this last month. I thought it was a hoax until I actually registered a domain name myself. Judge for yourself. It's right here.
I dont know why these clients are having problems, i've written my own telnet client and it will accept any host name that is possible. Even if it is some kinda standard not to have the '-', you still should code your client to be flexable. So what if ms cant code their telnet.exe to accept these domain names? And thats another thing.. how lazy are ms exactly.. their telnet client has to be the most basic program ever written :).
Diamond Age had this scenario a bit.
Plus, living in Japan, I see lots of labels & stuff that I can't write. Kinda cool.
=td=
now that slashdot is a business, what do you expect. i thought all businesses were supposed to be unexplainably tarty.. it's one of those unwritten rules
Removed where and how? Clarifications to the DNS Specification, less than three years old, mentioned nothing of the sort. Somebody in charge of your network should have known better.
The DNS RFC allows one-letter labels. Which names a registrar will allow is up to them, but since x.com is valid and has been properly registered, any software that refused to resolve it would need to be fixed.
It would destroy the growth of the Internet? Superb - from your claim it'd act as a intelligence barrier, and the s/n ratio might move > 1. Keep the knuckles-on-the-ground brigade away from my Internet, that's what I say.
At last, the long-sought-for proof that Americans are, en masse, the dumbest race on the planet?
Slackware 7 box, unmodified nslookup (output trimmed for easy reading):
crashy:~$ nslookup
> microsoft-.com
Server: ns.golden.net
Address: 199.166.210.2
Name: microsoft-.com
Address: 209.207.246.170
seems to go OK for me.
Isn't the .com,.net thing part of defining what the site is about as much as anything. Most uk sites use .com as supposed to .co.uk which seems to defeat the point (plus someone told me that those sites are subject to american law in someway) Besides where would all the little island nations like tonga (.to) have a easy chance to get money for the sale of their domain names
if you have to ask such a lame question, then you don't even deserve an answer. think man, think. ten to one you're some 12 year old kid.
you're only barking like other dogs.... if you could actually use your head instead of whining and repeating what other morons say, you'd find that there are still plenty of great domain name possibilities in the .com and .net tld's. read my reply to "our answer..." in the first forum post on this page at the very top. i come up with good domain names every day and when i check for availability, most of them are unregistered yet. i just can't afford to register them. so think before you open your yap. i thought you nerdy guys here were supposed to be smart and inventive, but you prove over and over to just repeat the same bull that someone else comes up with as long as it suits your hypocritical anti-all-that's-not-pro-anarchist view......which makes you bigger sheep than anyone else. lazy, whiny bastards. man, if someone took away your 'puters you'd die out there for all that nerd-savy wouldn't count for jack in any reality other than "virtual". so turn your pathetic sarcastic index finger 180 degrees and try to work constructively rather than trying to topple the system. once you'll make people wary of the computer age by crashing/hacking/cracking just so you can gratify your selfish vanity, you'll bring on the demise of your own selves. and you'll deserve every bit of it..... crap, i was going to just comment on that bullshit statement re-no available domains but i guess i got slightly riled up. well, i stand by all i've said so i'll post the whole bloody thing.
hehehe, that's like saying let's move the finance business away from wall street, or any business away from manhattan. let's just make the world the business center. actually, internet does help blur the boundaries ergo giving a chance to new companies to get on the map. there's only so much physical real estate that you can fit in any district but unlimited space in virtual world. but a prestigious address will always be in demand and it's because of the customer who demands it not the business establishment. thus your half baked idea is illogical my friend. adding tld's adds more opportunities, eliminating tld's limits the possible good, memorable domain (address) combinations, therefore compounding the problem not solving it. can you imagine how much more valuable domains would become if there was just one version possible of each word/phrase? they'd instantly be selling for ten times the prices. there is simply no viable way to overcome the demand for a good domain name, because no self respecting business will agree to share an identical address with their competition. a unique and a good, memorable name/address guarantees traffic. some might say otherwise but the fact is that customers don't have the time or memory to type elaborate url's, yet companies/businesses need to stand out with a one that's not only unique/memorable, but also user friendly. putting a different 3 character addition at the end of a good address to differentiate between websites is easy enough. if there is no option like this, you'd have to put many competing business sites under the same address. think logically not idealistically.
I didn't expect a comment like that!
Are you:
A. On drugs?
B. Overworked?
C. Manic?
In any case, me thinks you might be a bit too obsessed by this topic.
I don't mind, I like original posts, but if this continues for more than a week, you might consider seeing your GP.
Prozacman, always there when minds are in danger.
PS: I like the idea about shooting them. Don't forget to post the pictures!
Yes, when you find a bug in a client, it is customary to fix it.
A DNS server should be prepared to cope with malformed domain protocol messages, but a DNS resolver should never generate one. In this case, though, the domain protocol must allow some labels that are otherwise invalid for DNS, because the IN-ADDR.ARPA domain requires using them.
I think the RFCs are pritty straight forward about what characters are permitted to be the first letter in a name of a domain zone and a number wasn't one of them. If Network Solutions has given up on the RFCs and accepted 2600.com then why should their compettion stick with sane naming rules?
telnet linux-.com
Wrong. Go to the address "http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl".
"But Anthony La Forge, who registered e-.com, e-.org, and e-.net for his Iowa-based business, calls O'Shaughnessy's claims "a
convenient excuse" and says he hopes ICANN's decision can be appealed."
It's not only emmett. Buts he's the only one that posts them exactly on the hour, making it much more noticable. Look at this article, posted by CmdrTaco on 12:58 PM January 9th, 2000.
Welcome to the Real World of Real Operating Systems.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to domains like johnsmith-----.net ie. the good ol' IRC style.
The RFCs say 64. Whose idea was 26, and where do they get the clout to begin or end that nonstandard restriction? Was it some dumb NSI-only policy?
You can type anything as the sid (and it's case-insensitive). Like http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=moderation, or sid=TrollTalk.
I noticed a domain a couple of years ago called "CYBER-.COM". It was deleted a while afterwards, but it seems like the same mistake has happened to NSI back then.
If you do not code to a standard then stupid people will BREAK them. If bind just happily accepted domains like "e-com%man&woman_for$$$$$.com" it'd be breaking the RFC.
The real question is whether [A-Z][-A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9] is a SHOULD or a MUST. The DNS specs predate that convention, and describe this as the "preferred name syntax" which "will result in fewer problems", so a resolver that sends such a label in a question is probably not violating the RFC.
Thanks, I hadn't seen or even remembered "host requirements" in years. Odd that the index doesn't mention 1123 updating 1034 and 1035.
I've been catching this every once in a while. How is it done? I've seen this list but don't know how these side topics get started...
As others have pointed out numbers may and are allowed in the first position.
Also domain names are limited to 26 characters not 64, Are there that many idiots out there to moderate that post up to 5??
My Spice Girls Dash Dot Com site at spicegirls-.com domain got cancelled. It was all about how the Spice Girls have to dash everywhere and are always in a hurry. You can check out the site at the link above.
Cheers, Spiceman
It's possible that he actually posted it at 12:58 PM today, and just moved the day forward. Or maybe it was 2:58, and he left the minute alone while incrementing it in hours/days.
If anybody wants a domain name ending with a -, why don't they have to buy the microsoft\-.com as well, no problems with telnet or ftp anymore :)
Is there really such a big difference between resolving slashdot.org and resolving slashdot?
This would also eliminate those lame national domains: ...oops!, Sony is japanese isn't it?
www.sony.com.us
I know some very well known ISP in America has a keyword for every company that hosts with them, does any of you know how well (or bad) this works?
--- Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
Balzac
If you would bother reading the relevant RFCs you'd know that. RFC's are ammended all the time. Imagine my horror upon reading the dynamic DNS RFC (don't remember the number off hand). Not sure whether it has been approved yet though. Basically I believe it allowed ANY characters in a hostname from the looks of it. MS's active directory crap wanted _tcp.domain.com, _udp.domain.com, etc.
A porn site could register in ANY domain they feel like. In fact, NetSol recommends when registering a domain that you register it in all 3 of the "Big 3" top level domains to make sure no one else grabs the others. So.. it was fun while it lasted to think the DNS system had any kind of heirarchy.. but today it just doesn't anymore. Might as well just get rid of .net, .com, .org, .edu, etc. and just have one TLD ".com" and everything would fall under that including government, foreign, educational, porn, etc.
They've been doing this for weeks (or maybe longer). Look at some old articles and check the date of the first post.
If he wants to register e-.com then so be it. What a friggin idiot he'll look like when he realizes that his domain is NOT standards compliant and thus nobody can go to his web site unless they have a broken non-compliant web browser. (let's be honest, this guy isn't going to care less he can't ftp or telnet to his e-commerce site. People think the web is the internet remember?). I wonder if ssh supports e-.com. ;-)
Go read it. EOM.
That's a good way for first posters to get right in there before people even see the article on the front page. :)
As the president of NPS Interne Solutions, LLC I'm not going to make any comment about the above posting since the last time I did every Slashdotter from here to Mars labelled me a spammer and practically stoned me to death (not literally of course). I am happy to say that we with a few other companies have spearheaded the decline in domain name registration prices. My only hope is that the prices will continue to decrease so that everyone can realistically afford a domain name. I agree with some of the other postings here... The domain name business is to money hungry. It doesn't take $35 from every customer to maintain a rather simple database. I project that the price of a domain will probably decrease to around $30 per two year registration. In fact, right now we are looking at reducing our own price to $50 for two years and then $25 thereafter. Lets just say the war is on, and everyone is a winner. Happy Y2K to all you /.ers. This is my first post of the new millennium and it sures fills good to be back (can't beat a good holiday).
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
"Get your domain name for $55"
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Call it what you will, spam, marketing whatever... But after visiting some of our competitors and realizing just how heated this price war has become we realized that our price must ultimately come down (almost to the point where there is no profit margin for us at all). Therefore, as of today our price for two years registration has now been decreased to $45 and $22.50 every year thereafter. Granted we still may not be as low as some international registrars (or as low as they claim to be) but we are the lowest price for domain names in the continental United States and Canada. We are proud to spearhead this domain name revolution and ask everyone to spread the word. Why let NSI get fat and rich off everyone else when their just simply ripping the end customer out of their few hard earned dollars. The way I see it a domain name should not cost even half as much as your web hosting account since it really doesn't consume any valuable resources such as space or bandwidth. I know some slashdotters are now going to crucify me for this post, but I don't care. I'm just so excited to say that we can actually offer this price to our retail customers and to everyone for that matter. Anyhow, if you don't think this is for real or it sounds to good to be true, call me and I'll answer whatever questions you might have. To all you erked slashdotters, I repeat this is not spam I am not necessarily trying to sell our services to anyone I am just trying to say that their are options and the masses, especially the technically adept masses, should know what is out there if they are willing to look.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
"Get your domain name for only $45"
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Ditto for 3Com, which some systems have never been able to resolve. They hired incompetent network geeks; sucks to be them.
Should they? I thought the philosophy was something like "Be conservative in what you generate, but liberal in what you accept".
I would rather have the news show up when it's news. Sounds like that other poster had the right idea when he said "to keep people reloading and looking at ad banners".
I don't know why anyone is supprised about this.
This type of cluelessnes has been running rampent on the Net for at least the last 2 years...
It's too bad the 'open DNS' guys didn't bother to read the RFCs for the service they claim to be supporting, before allowing this kind of crap.
I had just the opposite reaction- if you get NSI (of all people!) cleaning up after you, you know you've screwed up.
Slash lets authors schedule when their story appears.
I bet the folks at 800.com might take issue with this. Whoops...
kidding of course, but then who's ever seen him in public? :)
I don't think anyones going postal over the screwup. And FWIW, I agreee with you. I do think however that the folks that had registered these domains are probably getting screwed, especially if they've widely advertised their sites. Reprinting promotional materiel, business cards and whatnot can get very expensive. I wonder if they have a way to get some form of reimbursement/cost coverage for the error the registrars made?
Postings by emmett
I'd hope porn sites aren't getting domains under the .org TLD. They should be falling under the .com TLD.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I second the motion. Anyone happen to have an address for him?
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I believe that's correct. But the domain isn't x.com, it's x.org (the official site for the X Consortium, the caretakers of the X Window System codebase). Certainly a special case if ever there was one, wouldn't you agree? Why should they have to go by xconsortium.org or whatever? I know when I think X, I think of X (Window System). Don't you? :)
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Postel registered all of the single-letter/digit domains in his name.
look at w3.org, exodus.net, nethead.com. All stolen today by script kiddies.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Actually, I'd probably call it a MUST at this point. They wrote into the contracts that way =)
BTW read http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2119.html for the MUST/SHOULD definitions if you don't know what is up with all this.
Based on http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1035.html they point out that http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html should be taken into account when making mail domains since you don't want to break mail address parsers. I'd say the world is complicated enough withou changing the rules now!
--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
Yeah, trademark namespace is filling up. What ICANN needs to do is start a new 'Trademark Name' service. This would generate seemingly random names that people could use for their products (e.g. Pentium, Itanium) that could then be registered as domains.
NOTE: This post not for the humor (or humour) impaired.
Well, most of the stuff posted here is just as much news at T+1 day as it is at T.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Only TLDs are not supposed to start with a digit.
Why would you want to do that, when the dotted IP notation is shorter? The reason that it doesn't work is that there are different kinds of records for those names - PTR (pointer to name) rather than A (IP address) records.
NSI's ugly sales pitch for .net and .org domains is just another example of why .shop, .biz, .firm (why not .inc?), .nom (.nom? what was wrong with .name?), .arts, and the rest are only a solution to ICANN's need for more money.
Just a couple of weeks ago I got all excited when joker.com seemed to accept -.com as an availble domain name. I got all the way to the creditcard info page before the filtering software caught it. Major disappointment.
I disagree. For instance, I live in Canada, yet my website is hosted in Texas. We should be moving away from the international TLDs, at least in my opinion. :-)
I've been talking about more top-level domain names on Slashdot for months. Once again, here's my plan:
Rather than simply adding a handful of new TLDs, allow the creation of an unlimited number of them. Before, where you might have had apple.com, you could also have apple.apple. The catch is, you only register the rights to the SECOND-level name, allowing others to have apple.linux or linux.apple.
What do others think about this? The only feedback I've ever recieved about my thoughts for domain name reform basically consisted of a good deal of anti-United Nations ranting.
So we just add more letters to the alphabet!..
--
07/01/98 01:52PM 8 Ftp.txt
03/01/99 01:07AM 1,029 logosmall.gif
10/11/99 04:12PM Directory mummersftp
04/02/98 12:18PM 1,431 New2.gif
08/22/99 09:07AM 28,804 privacyscanbanner.gif
01/16/98 12:26PM 1,641 stars500x21.gif
07/01/98 02:36PM 386 Test.asp
07/20/99 06:48PM 765 trustefinalmark.gif
-------------------------------------------------
Account Name: guest
Password:
This copy of the Ataman Telnetd Server is
registered as licensed to:
Computer_Services_Group,_Inc
Login failed: unknown user name, password or
privilege incorrect.
--------------------
--------------------
Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
Next we'll be hearing about "Why isn't there a way to just 'get a domain name' by changing your machine's name under windows?"
Actually there is - just not a second level domain name.
At work I have a zone automatically updated from the DHCP database. Just change your machine's name under windows and it shows up on DNS.
----
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Actually it was the competing registars (i.e. competing with Network Solutions). Given them a f---- break. It's not like Network solutions hasn't had it's share of screw ups, even with years of experience behind them.
Based on what someone said earlier, I expect that any telnet client that allows telnetting to such a domain name is not implementing the standards for domain names correctly. unix telnet returns quickly with an unknown server error, not even having done an nslookup.
Sounds fun. I think its all going to stay messy though, until something "really" different comes along.
:)
I want the.end btw.
Active Directory uses existing NT domain names as second+ level Internet domain names. Since the hyphen is a valid NetBIOS name character, Win2000 has to accept Internet domains with a hyphen.
So for example, if upgrade the NT host with the netbios name BLUE-SCREEN in the LanMan domain BCAST-STORM, the Active directory hostname could become blue-screen.bcast-storm.microsoft-.com. So, the hyphen might be ambigous in traditional definitions, Microsoft pretty much has to accept it for back-wards compatibility (as changing an NT domain name is virtually impossible.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
There you go. Over 5 years in the making and Microsoft *still* releases a broken OS. I just can't believe it is true...
-BrentThat would just increase the costs for regular people like you and me who want to register domains... we'd have to get a huge amount of domains to cover all our bases...
Besides... what's the advantage of
WWW.IBM.SALES
versus
SALES.IBM.COM
or
WWW.IBM.COM/SALES?
I don't see any... In fact I see a huge amount of overhead being created by your concept. No offense, or anything.
Although objective journalism is important, the danger is not domain names ending with hyphens, it's a single company (i.e. Network Solutions) owning all the domains.
Thankfully, that disaster was averted at the proper time-- when the Internet was truly gaining momentum. Most people concur that this is indeed only the beginning of the revolution.
I, for one, am glad that this speed bump occured. If anything, it reminds people that domains are no longer owned by a single company, and reminds them of the ridiculous errors said company made over the past few years.
I agree with you (since I remember when .com, .org, and .net meant something), but I think it's a lost cause at this point. Try registering blanketyblank.com with NSI and they'll always say "why not get blanketyblank.net and blanketyblank.org, too?" Curse their oily hides!
So, does anyone else get mildly irritated when they see URLs like anygivensunday.net advertised, or am I turning into a net old fogey? :)
-jon ("'Any Given Sunday' isn't a networking company! oh, there go my cataracts!)
It doesn't really matter whether they knowingly took advantage of the problem. Like the guy registering e-.com/net/org said - he hopes he can appeal the decision to ICANN because it's too inconvenient to think of something longer.
Consider this scenario:
I setup and incorporate i-.com, an internet commerce consulting company. During the setup, I register i-.com as my domain name and spend thousands of dollars on corporate letterhead, envelopes, business cards, advertising, etc. All of these items specifically use i-.com as a moniker and/or internet address.
NSI or ICANN discover that I was allowed to register the domain in error, and they revoke the domain name. I then hire a fancy, high-price, law firm to file suit for MILLIONS of dollars due to the inconvenience and costs associated with their error. An ignorant judge rules that ICANN has to return the disputed domain name to me because it is central to my corporate identity.
SCARED YET???
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Woops - you're right, I should read more closely before replying. Of course the X Consortium deserves the domain - they're the first thing that I think of. It's surprising that the domain didn't get grabbed for a porn site first, though!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I don't know about 2600.com or hp.com, but I've heard that one-letter domains were only allowed for a short time before they were disallowed. The x.com folks probably registered it during that short window.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It's actually 67 minus the dot and the TLD...
"Although we may build the technology that we define as tools, we must be vigilant that those tools do not define us."
My answer is that is up to a court of law, not ICANN nor NSI.
If ICANN is going to revoke trailing dash domains based just on the reason that they may cause confusion, then please revoke all domains that have dashes between each alphanumeric character or worse multiple dashes in a row.
That would really help us trademark owners out - thanks!!
See the problem of using the rationale of revoking domains just because they may cause confusion. There's many examples and if ICANN revokes trailing dash domains based on this reason alone, that may be a slippery slope to mass domain revocations in the future based on dubious reasons.
Id rather guess that this means that some ftp/telnet clients have to be upgraded. After all we are already short on domain names in some areas. Especially an the field of personal domains like johndoe.com there could be some relief if the "failure" would be made a standard.
>And of course there's the matter of people making
>huge files available only by HTTP so that they're
>almost impossible to get over anything except a
>T1 or greater, and sometimes not even then.
>(There's no resume capability that I'm aware of.)
Hmmm...
Have a look at RFC 2616, "HTTP/1.1" and it's sections 3.12 (Range Units), 14.16 (Content-Range) and 14.35 (Range)...
Also, try wget for resuming HTTP downloads, or GetRight or something similar if you're running windows... hell, even Netscape resumes downloading if the connection over which you were downloading a pr0n picture gets disconnected... *nudgenudgewinkwink*, *grin*
(Score: -1, On-Topic)
np: Autechre - Basscadubmx (Basscad EP)
As always under permanent deconstruction.
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
wow what a big problem names with dashes at the
end cause telnet and ftp to crash like it happens
so often that it would matter ?!
that article given as proof shows nothing and is
crap.
meaning in UNIX??? Never heard of that one.
Even a leading dash shouldn't be a problem...
telnet -- -e.com
The arbitrary limitation that we can only
register into
indefensible.
New TLDs are coming.
Name.Space
is running 500+ of them, and has been for 3 years.
There haven't been any technical problems with
the name service. It's just a political problem.
You can switch to these nameservers to resolve
everything from
Name.Space will take registrations in these
domains.
These domains are probably going to end up
in the root zone file eventually.
Until that time, you get an entry in the
.xs2.net domain, so it will be globally
accessible as yourdomain.newtld.xs2.net.
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
NSI took the registration from the registrar,
they are just as responsible, IMHO.
Why aren't they checking the data before they
add it to the
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
You seem to think that there is an implicit
.us at the end of every domain unless
you add another country code..
This isn't true.
.us is a top level domain,
.com is another one, and
and
The
like
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
You can create discussions too! Check out This discussion I just created!
Hey Rob, howabout that tarball!
Oops... Another 24 hours now...
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/01/07/184225 7
:-)
I simply added to the last #. I was looking for other unposted articles when I noticed that it gave me the ability to post comments! So I did!
Hey Rob, howabout that tarball!
Oops... Another 24 hours now...
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
I have this!
bash-2.03$ nslookup micorsoft-.com
Server: localhost
Address: 127.0.0.1
*** localhost can't find micorsoft-.com: Non-existent host/domain
bash-2.03$ nslookup
Default Server: localhost
Address: 127.0.0.1
> microsoft-.com
Server: localhost
Address: 127.0.0.1
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: microsoft-.com
Address: 209.207.246.170
> exit
bash-2.03$
How can one find the version of nslookup?
Greets
Sendy
GNU guru and mainframe hacker
3Com.com. Nobody pays any attention to the "digit may not be the first character of a label" requirement anymore, and it was found not to break any software.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
x.org has been around at least since '87, long before NSI took over the job of Internic.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
these new domains said the governing bodies could have a difficult
time proving the recent glitch was a mistake, as it took them three
months to discover the error.
Am I the only one that wishes this lawyer no good over this issue? 100 new registrations means only one thing: cybersquatting, and if the dumba$$ gets burned, I for one am not going to lose any sleep over it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Has anyone looked at AlterNIC lately.
how and where did you get the url from ? is there any way to see stories b4 theyre posted ?
hmm..that URL shows or seems to show the current story not yet posted as an active discussion...its not showing *all* of em..
> I whish this ``www.[any word].com'' nonsense would stop. My suggested solution would be to
> invent another, better adapted, distribute data base, to transform a word or phrase to a URL,
> call it, say, ``true names''; then add a truename:// URL scheme, which gets relocated
> using the ``true names'' database to the correct URL. Integrate that scheme in every popular
> browser, and make it the default URL scheme. Then DNS names can become again what they are
> supposed to be: computer names, not resource names. Admittedly, I am only suggesting
> displacing the problem, but maybe the other database I mention can be better attuned to
> the kind of problems we have with the DNS, and which the DNS was not designed to handle.
This is probably one of the first feasable and workable suggestions on this issue that I've ever heard. Bravo!
This idea would need a bit more fleshing out to become something substantial enough to distract all the big corporations from their domain name buying sprees, and it wouldn't even phase those people that buy domain names to use for email sites (*cough* mailbank.com has a few...)
It could potentially put an end to the web redirectors though, which are as far as I'm concerned one of the worst things on the net. Especially the porn ones (whitehouse.com for example) If we had a nice truename system to replace the current www..com addresses, that would accomplish a whole lot. It'd take a lot of the load off of the DNS system if this 'truename' system sent you not only the IP of the system, but also the DNS name so the browser can cache it appropriately. I would assume that http:// style hyperlinks will remain the standard even if a truename:// URL format worked.
But I wouldn't expect any need for a URL. Instead what we need is some standardization on how browsers treat these "keywords". You should be able to specify your own 'truename database server' instead of "Netscape's parner" or "Microsoft's partner". ISPs should start running 'truename database servers' that operate similarly to the DNS servers.
Anyone who's used Netscape 4.7 or MSIE 5.0 knows that we're already on the road to replacing DNS with truenames as the default web-lookup-service. One day, domain names will be as antiquated and ugly-looking to most users as IP numbers are today. Us techies will be quite happy with our DNS though. Regardless, we've still got a ways to go. What we do need to do is to start pressuring the internet community, ISPs, and in particular, the browser companies, to put this into effect and get some standards designed. Netscape and Microsoft will have to get along, just for this once.
Random and weird software I've written.
For the anally retentive, like myself, who can't help checking these things out, the document you need is RFC 1035 paragraph 2.3.1.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
RFC 1035 paragraph 2.3:
RFC 1035, paragraph 2.3.1:
<domain> ::= <subdomain> | " "
<subdomain> ::= <label> | <subdomain> "." <label>
<label> ::= <letter> [ [ <ldh-str> ] <let-dig> ]
<ldh-str> ::= <let-dig-hyp> | <let-dig-hyp> <ldh-str>
<let-dig-hyp> ::= <let-dig> | "-"
So, in summary:
--
Simon, muttering fierce things about 'he who knows not...'
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Hey all,
Well, I may have only enough DNS experience to set up my own domain and mail stuff, but would it really be too hard to have infinite Top Level Domains ?
That way, at least companies could only try to obtain every commonly-known TLD... although it would make trademark infringement easier too... but then again, the company could just use a different TLD to the one already taken.
Now, why not ?
Who cares? As far as I can tell, this isn't hurting anyone. Perhaps you can't ftp or telnet to these sites with certain clients, but that's their problem. I'm sure if they want to get refunds on their domains because of this, they can.
There is *no* improper use of .org anymore. You're incorrect about its use being reserved for non-profit organizations. While I would have personally preferred .org remain reserved for non-profits, the policy of the registry makes clear, that .net and .org are *exactly* the same as .com, which is *not* reserved exclusively for commercial enterprises.
All of which leads me to wonder what the point of new TLDs would be. All of the proposals I see create new domains that are supposed to categorize these domains. This clearly goes against the trend, which is that all TLDs have become generic.
It's only nuts if you don't realize what's driving this sort of nonsense. Money. Companies like 800-FLOWERS will end up owning eight toll-free numbers. Good for the people selling phone numbers.
This is the unfortunate future we face on the Internet with the TLDs. What's even worse, is the WIPO and other trademark interests are determined to meddle in things as well, protecting themselves, and making a mess of things for the rest of us.
Some of us geeks rose to become suits. The problem isn't that the suits have taken over, it's that there aren't enough of us "geek suits".
It's the lawyers and the WIPO that want to ruin the Internet with their self-serving agendas.
Geeks are going to have to reconsider their attitude about this. It's really easy for outsiders to move in when geeks refuse to step up into those suits.
It comes from Microsoft, which as an owner of the dominant web browsing software Internet Explorer has total control over directing the bulk of Internet users to web destinations.
Microsoft could, at any given moment, completely bypass the domain name system and start selling ActiveAddresses for IE(tm), completely independent of ICANN or NSI. Microsoft could even make this registry "open" in the sense that it would use Internet standards (such as DNS), encouraging third parties to implement the scheme in their products. The penetration level of Internet Explorer alone would make such addresses highly desirable on the marketplace.
Indeed Netscape is already hard at work on this, utilising this keyword approach with their Smart Browsing feature set. The only reason Netscape is unable to profit from this is their browser's diminishing market share. Microsoft doesn't have such a problem.
ICANN has the power to stop this from happening. It has to:
- keep the domain name system as flexible as possible
- work to diminish the dominance of the
.com gTLD
- demonstrate that keyword-style addresses like business.com are not major success factors in e-commerce
- by these actions lower the value of a single
.com property
and of courseMarko Karppinen
Sounds to me like your client picked the name for thier world wide, Internet enabled, company rather poorly.
Having seen this done before (For some strange reason, the existing, registered company name wasn't good enough, the new CEO decided we should have the exact same name as a nationly known cable provider), even if you DO have the domain name registered, that is no gurantee you get to keep it.
If the old NIC and all these new fellows would simply demand payment 'up front', the vast majority of this damn 'squating' tactics would go away. Anyone who plans to put a domain name to a legit use won't mind paying the bucks, anyone who is squating has probably registered hundreds (if not thousands) of domains, and makeing them pay up front would free all of those domains up.
hhaahaha
is there more than one corect answer?
well considering i posted that comment at about 5am local time ill pick B
erm...I dont know allot, but I can guarantee thers gonna be many angry and smartass linux guru's responses to your post explaining exactly why you know jack :)
:)
Hhehehe...sorry to break the truth to you
Jesus youre right! Whats up with that? Freaky stuff! Maybe he just submits through a delayed cron job to see if fools like us will notice and pick on it :)
"How about http://www.thesmithinstitute?"
Taken.
"http://www.smithinst.com?" Taken.
"http://www.tsi.com?" Taken.
"http://tsiinc.com?"
No...
"http://tsiinc.org?"
Getting warmer...
"http://www.tsiinc.net?" ...NET ...not COM ...NET."
Yes! Now they can tell people: "We're on the web...it's http... colon... forward slash, forward slash... w... w... w... dot... t... s... i... i again... n... c
Over the years there has seemed to be more and more bending of the rules on how domains should work. If I remember right, first it was the issue of .org, .net, and .com not being registered to the right kind of businesses or groups, then it was domains starting with a digit (2600.com), and now names ending with a "-"?
Standards are around for a reason folks, why don't poeple follow them when it comes to domains? It makes me wonder what other problems are down the road for domain names.
I can imagine the guy who registered "e-.com" fight to allow "-" at the end of domain names, and win. Who is going to be the one to fix telnet for this?
I just don't see how adding more TLDs would solve the problem of companies grabbbing them all. Eliminating TLDs would force people to think globally when they create a business name or identity. I don't think that would be a problem either. I've never heard of there being a IBM or Microsoft or Sony in other countries besides those that have those companies. I imagine those companies register their names in all countries.
:)
I think this would even give power to the little guy, since he only has to spend the money to register one domain.
This wouldn't elimate the legal battles for domains for companies that have the same initial, but either would new TLDs. Adding more TLDs would just slow down the process, as the registrars check your creditials, to see if you really belong to that category.
And what happens if your '.org' grows up and suddenly is part of a public company? Are you automatically changed to '.com'?
Why 12:58pm? It's like a conspiracy to make the post only look real-time, and emmett spilled the beans by scheduling his posts for uncommonly neat times.
I replied to the article just to see if anybody notices.
r
SpamMan
there seem to be, on all levels, problems when business has to run or administer, and governments control, some part of technology. thre doesn't seem to be enough research, consulting, or any form of knowledge input into the process.
look at how ICANN has handled this - a mess. look at how domain registration has performed as a whole since it was "opened up" - the lack of sensible regulation resulted in people buying up masses of domains, poaching domains from artists, companies and the like, the "goldrush" mentality... to say nothing of the way something like etoy v eToys was handled. regulation to avert such a nonsensical case should have been in place before day 1.
then there's the whole issue of technology patents - the government again doing something it obviously knows nothing about. i'm sure we don't want to go through another amazon-style "i patented right-clicking" ridiculosity.
some business and technology analysis could have helped prevent this. it still could, given half a chance.
the fact is, any business that acted in these manners would be ripped apart. the government should be taught if it wants to play in business, it has to play by the same rules.
Slackware 6 box here, microsoft-.com works fine.
And I somehwat disagree with what you say at the end in a way.
I'm a prorgammer too...lemme give you this scenario.
If you wrote your own DNS server, and some DNS clients. Now, I would actually have the DNS clients _very_ simple, and since I _KNOW_ that I wrote the DNS server, and know if should deny invalid names, then I would write the client to send bad names, that way if anything changes (eg. DNS becomes more lenient) I would only have to change the server, the server would be the one that determines whether it's correct or not.
There's too many cases where programmers hard wrire there software (which is especially bad in these client-server situations).
The rule? The server should be able to handle any bad requests from a client.
What you're saying reminds me of netscape when they made an excuse about a bug in their web server - the excuse was, IE is bad, it sends unexpected characters...bad bad bad.
The only down side of having the server do verification is the speed...but then that's where you add extra options to the clients.
If Microsoft doesn't properly validate input in the browser, then how can we be sure that Microsoft is properly validating input anywhere else? Maybe that is the reason why Windows has the many problems that it does.
If it's something like DNS, I wouldn't be worried at all (for the above reasons).
Uh ok, Linux must be a BROKEN OS too.
Seeing as it resolves microsoft-.com and 3com.com.
Being able to pass on invalid domains in windows 2000 does not make it broken, it makes it lenient (imagine all those people complaining after not being able to get to 3com.com)
--
--
E2 IN2 IE?
I've had to deal with that already! Every now and then I get e-mail from someone I know saying "Hey check out my new website at http://jimbo" or something. They set up Microsoft Personal Web Server or whatever it's called, and have no idea what host names, domain names, and IP addresses are. They just name their computer something cool in Network Neighborhood, thinking that will work. Oh well.
Take care,
Steve
Can you explain how this is supposed to work, though? If you create a bunch of additional top-level domains (let's say *.arts, *.firm, *.biz, *.dot, *.sucks) someone like Disney is going to want to register their trademarks in all those domains. Whether or not they're legally required to do so to protect their trademark, that's what they're going to want, just to make it easy for people to find them.
.per reserved for personal web sites. Then if the Disney corporation registers disney.per, an individual with the last name of Disney should be able to take them to court and sue them for wrongfully and maliciously registering a domain name that they're not entitled to.
Let's say there is a new TLD
I was so pleased when I registered 100yards-.com for my website about arcane imperial sprinting races, but recently learned that the registration had been cancelled. I don't see how 100yards- is going to infringe on anyone's trademark? J.
I don't see why the APPLICATION should be responsible for checking to see if a domain name is valid. That is really irresponsible programming because the standard can change at any time, and you will have to change it on an application-by-application basis. Look at the first digit of a domain being a number - it used to be that this is illegal but now it is fine, but many poorly written applications reject addresses of this type. This should be left to a library call (e.g. gethostbyname). IMHO, any program which actually checks to see if a domain is valid is broken three times over. Of course, I do agree that the domains which do end in a dash should be taken away since they are not allowed in the current standard, but not because some applications do not work with them. (As an aside: why the heck would anybody want such a domain? e-.com?? WTF???)
to any semi human people out there, do you think that all of this domain name stuff is getting out of control? Is it me or does it just seem that there is too much $$$ involved with anything from .com to etoy vs etoys, and ofcourse hitting the purchase button and it's in the mail is now a forbidin to use. I dream of the days of gopher and usenet.
http://www.freebsd.org
- 2600.com
- x.org
- hp.com
I'd say that the people operating 2600.com deserve the domain name they have, but if I'm trying to check availability of 26002600.com, the NSI web pages go berserk (just try to check for *any* other domain after that), and it's a violation of the applicable RFCs.
And, at least here in Germany, you wouldn't be able to register a one-letter or two-letter domain, like x.org or hp.com. That's why Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard go by the name of hewlett-packard.de in the old world...
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
I am trying to figure out why an application is considered broken if it works with a domain name.
And don't be waving standards in our face if you think that the blatant standard-breaking efforts by the Gnu C Compiler team is okay(they thumb their nose at the Ansi C Committee with glee).
Look out! You're going to get all the "the Internet should never, ever, respect any geographical boundaries" people all up in a tizzy.
I like the idea, but let's take it to the extreme for a second. If we do naming conventions like that, we'll have usenet style domain names within a few years.
imagine the horror:
slashdot.geeks.linux.avengers.cmdr-taco-rules.org
Fear?
:wq
"At least one of the names registered, microsoft-.com, involved a registered trademark, causing officials to speculate that allowing the dash mark could encourage cybersquatting.
Besides that possibility, Brian O'Shaughnessy, spokesperson for NSI, says having a dash at the end of the name "breaks" such Internet applications as ftp and telnet.
But Anthony La Forge, who registered e-.com, e-.org, and e-.net for his Iowa-based business, calls O'Shaughnessy's claims "a convenient excuse" and says he hopes ICANN's decision can be appealed.
"Finding another name will be extremely inconvenient," said La Forge. "Domains that are that short are extremely expensive and hard to come by."
So this guy registered e-.net and e-.com, and now calls a violation of the RFCs a 'convenient excuse.' He also is determined to somehow find other VERY short names which speak not of his business type or company name, but of generic "e-commerce."
My gut feeling (from two or three sentences) is that this guy is out to make a quick buck however he can, doesn't understand bugger all about the internet, and is probably a shady businessman.
I know that I'll be careful not to deal with any company owned by Anthony La Forge, of Iowa.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
..for TradeMark. Of course there's probably already a .tm country code. Maybe .trademark or something.. but the point is that registration in some TLD somewhere should REQUIRE a registered trademark. The trademark registration system has worked for years, apparently, and it's the same type of thing required in domain names.
.tm would be .computers or etc. (Obviously you wouldn't sell the next-to-TL domains either).
Trademarks have a different namespaces for different types of business, so there can be an apple detective agency and an apple computers both with trademarks... So the next level below the
I don't really know much about the trademark system, but at least it's got maturity, and I believe trademarks are respected internationally to some degree.
It should be noted that Microsoft Internet Explorer is perfectly able to load web pages from sites like www.e-.com. Anybody who needs to use telnet should wake up, install Windows 2000, and enter the future. Why use telnet when you can have dynamic and exciting content automatically loaded onto your own Active desktop?
What would anyone use telnet or ftp for anyway? Files can be transferred with Outlook just by clicking on them, and if I want to send someone a message, I can just use the Microsoft messaging client.
I'm sure most slashdotters will agree (at least the 60% who read slashdot from within Windows) that it's high time that something like this happened. Out with the old, in with the new!
.
the above was all in jest... I just thought it would be fun to express a counterpoint.
Amazing magic tricks
*.arts, *.firm, *.biz, *.dot, *.sucks Don't forget *.gnu :-)
GNU World Order!!!
It's unfortunate for the owner of e-.com to lose his new domain. ICANN would have made his life worse though, if instead of acting now, they hummed and hahed for 3 years, then pulled it after he sunk a few hundred thousand in media buys and brand awareness.
---
"And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold."
-----
Cast a Cold Eye
On Life, on Death
Horseman, pass by
--W.B. Yeats' gravestone
heres a thought, lets say to hell with all these domain "NAMES" and work strictly on IP addressess.. course then we'd have people saying, "no no no, you cant have http://6.6.6.0 thats the site formerly known as Microsoft. Unrealistic, maybe, however the internet is, in some form or another, almost entirely public domain. so lets just hand out everything on a first come first serve basis. (also not likely to happen) but regulation can be done...no more than one name per person or company or whatever. that would help eliminate cybersquatting now wouldn't it?
if this is true, then first-posting is gonna get alot more interesting.
look out trolls, people are gonna be firstposting three days before you even read the article
unless im wrong
:)
i think ill go register 1-.com
Hopefully this won't hurt the movement to open up the domain name registration process. I'm still waiting to see some real competition for NS.
signature smigmature
- James
My understanding was that comments.pl only returns stories with active discussions. Since someone previously mentioned the Acme Klein Bottles story, and someone had posted their as a result of the aforesaid mention, that story, while not yet posted, is considered an 'active' discussion.
signature smigmature
- James
This is definitely off-topic, and I fully expect it to be moderated down:> But does anyone else find it odd that Emmett's posts tend to be exactly on the hour? Checkout the frontpage - posts at 4pm, 8pm, 11am 12pm and 1pm(HST). Strange:)
signature smigmature
- James
I was wondering this myself - so I tried to telnet to www.microsoft-.com (Which was one of the domains improperly registered. I had no problem at all. I was greeted by a login promt and then politely dropped. Where's the problem?
signature smigmature
- James
Hrmm, works under Win2k:) telnet> open www.microsoft-.com Account Name: guest Password: This copy of the Ataman Telnetd Server is registered as licensed to: Computer_Services_Group,_Inc Login failed: unknown user name, password or privilege incorrect. Connection to host lost.
signature smigmature
- James
So WTF should 3Com Corporation have used for its domain name? Its corporate name begins with a digit.
Did you know that there is a whole new world of top level domains that you've never seen? I argue for caesar cipher (rot13) support; it would open up three new TLDs:
Will I retire or break 10K?
I know a guy who runs Webmaster-resources.com. He recently discovered that tons of people bought almost every other concievable form of that name and copied his website design and most of the content. Is that fair? He should be able to sue, but the stuff is enough different that it isn't plagiarism or copyright violation. Etoys.com is not a toy-selling page, so that issue is stupid. But knock-off pages should be illegal.
I personally wouldn't want to have to type any dinosaurs that have dashes at the end of a word between dots, if only because the '-' makes me feel more letters are needed.
BTW, why does this item merit inclusion in today's /. anyway?
Perhaps it's time to create a /. backpage for such trivia, eh?
"Please Consider" - Mitsubishi advert
PS the quote in the subject comes from Weinberg's excellent (if dated) book "Secrets of Consulting" which I recommend to all (if you can find one; has it ever been reprinted?)
slash.dot-.com
It only means more domains for the squatters. Not to mention an extra cost to everyone who wants to keep squatters off thier lawn.
Australian? Join EFA
Sure this can be inconvenient at times but, not as inconvenient as getting your 7th or 8th domain choice
Australian? Join EFA
Finally, and what I think is really important right now is to actively use the country code in domains. Browsers can easily be configured or patched to automatically end .com and the other TLD's in the appropriate country code (.us, etc) Yes, this means that by default, a person in the UK would have to go "www.apple.com.us", but this is necessary to remove the American-ization of the Internet, and would limit domain name disputes to within countries only (no etoys vs etoy problems).
Great, I'm sure people from Armenia to Zambia will be very pleased only to be able to surf inside their own country.
Not to talk about all the dictorial regimes that won't have to worry about outside support for dissidents anymore.
As for the etoy(s) problem: Do you really consider this a domain registration problem?? Looks to me more like corporate arrogance and greed, and an incompetent judicial system.
I disagree that educating the general public is important. They just want to know what to type into their browser window; they don't care about the hierarchy or ICANN. It's not because they're stupid or lazy. It's because they have better things to do with their time than figure out how computers work.
I don't care how the phone works. I just want to know which buttons to push to talk to my friends and family. Computers should be the same way.
I happened across an old (circa 1990) introduction to the internet, that described it as a "network of networks", and was amused, because at the time, this was an oft-heard description, and I probably haven't heard or seen it in print in the last three to five years. As amusingly antiquated as it sounds, it is exactly right. So I'll repeat it.
The internet is a network of networks. And those networks are heterogeneous, whether they are LANs running TCP/IP over Ethernet, or IPX over token ring and so on. And all these networks have different conventions for how individual hosts are recognized. The architects of the internet made it so that, rather transparently, any two hosts could exchange data, regardless of their network environs.
This required standards, and adherence to these standards by a large number of programmers, network engineers, and so on. A host connected to the internet must provide a set of standard services, and conform to standards regarding naming and addressing. Services defined by a standard must operate according to that standard for the whole cooperative house to stand. If I ping a host, I should not expect a ten-million packet response. If I ftp to a host, I should not be required to issue "MYNAME blah" instead of "USER blah" for authentication. At the most basic level, if I attempt to access a host, I should be sure that, assuming my software was written according to agreed-upon standards, that I can actually connect to it.
The internet became one of the largest, best and earliest examples of the kind of cooperation that has made linux (and other open source projects) happen and work. If these standards were built by the same people who are attempting to break these rules, such as Mr. e-, the internet still wouldn't exist, because every decision would require a judge, at least seven lawyers, and twelve appeals.
That the domain naming system is too weak to handle the crush of online business is manifestly clear. There are plenty of possible workable solutions. It seems a very poor idea, however, to break something that works in the name of a handful of people making money.
Is it good that we have competition? Naturally. Should we expect that things like this will happen? I would think so.
The internet, and all of its process, is still a baby. Given this, would you want your first rotten attempt at a home page pulled because it had HTML problems?
Things will go wrong when we are trying something new. But that latin phrase, Caveat Emptor (buyer beware), should always be in the back of our mind.
There have been problems with other domain name registries. Why would we expect this one to be any different?
We all need to roll with these punches and learn from them. It all part of the maturing of this technology.
I don't see the problem. I really don't. If they screwed up, and some fast people managed to catch it before they did, then why take the domains away? Aside from the fact that it messes up Telnet and FTP. Most users of the sites probably wouldn't use that anyway (well, maybe FTP), IMO.
-BEGIN BORING SIG- Fear my l33t skillz... or not.
I just wish I could find a good domain name at all, even if people can't telnet or ftp to my site. Who cares if you're putting up a website? I have all kinds of ideas for cool sites, but finding a name that doesn't suck and that is also isn't something like thisnameisntreallylong.com is impossible these days. I'm eagerly awaiting the new top level domains. If they're registering thousands of new domains daily, its hard to believe that there are any combos of english words left.
Not the webserver, but the people and their behaviors. I'm posting this early Tuesday but the article is from Saturday. I'm guessing nobody will read this, much less moderate it. Why would anyone read a stale thread like this one when you can rant about the Caldera Settlement or those wacky Uruguyans instead? Maybe you just want to listen to the mad raving of a demented individual such as myself. If you are a moderator and have read this much of my post already, why not moderate me? Up or down, it doesn't matter. Just acknowledge me, damn it! Omigod, I left my telephone in the oven. Gotta go.
- The enigmatic smurfle.
Yes, it seems to be a standard problem wherever something tangible is allocated w/o rigid rules in places. The fee involved must be low enough so that the average individual/small company can afford it, but a fee that is that low is virtually free to a mega-company. It would be stupid for them NOT to buy all the duplicates
And yes, I do consider etoy.com and etoys.com to be a domain name problem. We should have had more TLD years ago before e-commerce got here, and thus, etoy.com would most likely be etoy.arts (or more appropriately, etoy.arts.ch). However, because 'we' waited, etoy.com had to stay. Mind you, I think etoyS.com is wrong in this case, but the distasterous state of the DNS system is partically at fault as well.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
This naming scheme makes a lot of sense to me, but it would be a real bitch to remember domain names like this, not to mention the fact that once you have 40 different trademark areas, and god knows how many countries, instead of having to know only [com|net|edu|org] and so on, you have to know all of those suffixes and trademark areas just to know if the domain name is valid. Like, I think most geeks would recognize that
fooburger.food.mx
is a site in mexico, but not everybody does.
My main concern is that the more distinctions you have moving AWAY from [com|org|net|edu] the more your are taking a domain name and making it into something that can have as many combos as a dotted quad. And if a domain names can be as complicated to remember as dotted quads with ever increasing numbers of trademark domains and country codes, then what's the point of having domain names?
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
[Puts on his best imitation old-man voice]
Back in the day, when the X consortium hadn't sold out to misleadingly named Open Software Foundation and were able to register the one-letter x.org domain, then the Internet was a much kinder, gentler, and above all, smarter place:
USENET was a usable, indeed friendly and invaluable, discussion forum
SPAM was unheard of and flamed mercilessly (and for quite some time successfully) out of existence
The internic existed for the good of the net, not its own sleazy pocketbook.
porn was limited to the appropriate USENET groups. In the early days of the web porn sights didn't hijack your browser and fill your screen with a borderless window showing two men sucking cock (or some other equally offensive thing you had absolutely no interest in seeing) with the sole means of getting out of it to exit the browser altogether (if you're lucky and don't have to exit the windowing system altogether). I don't know who to flame more for the current state of affairs, the porn fucks who do this or netscape's asinine extentions to html (javascript and the like) that gave them the means[1]. Both suck much like the image I described earlier, but I digress.
The average IQ of the netizen was a three digit numeral, rather than the one to two digits we see today.
Standards were defined in a technically reasoned and well thought out means via the IETF, rather than having them imposed by large companies (Netscape, M$) or sleazy OSI committees who have sold themselves like cheap whores to various corporate special interests.
...
[1]For the record, disabling javascript does not prevent this behavior. Don't type in whitehouse.com by mistake
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You must have a different "Linux" then I do. First of all, the RFC doesn't prevent URL's from starting with a number, just a "-". Second, I tried from my Linux box, and 3com.com worked, as it should. However, microsoft-.com failed, just like it should. On the other hand, from Windows 98, microsoft-.com resolves. Which it shouldn't.
I happen to be a programmer. I know in this case it shouldn't matter that Microsoft doesn't handle invalid URL's because there should never be any. But yet a well written program should *always* check for impossible results. You may be able to say, "well, my program will never get bad data", but it *always* happens, and you should always be prepared to deal with it.
If Microsoft doesn't properly validate input in the browser, then how can we be sure that Microsoft is properly validating input anywhere else? Maybe that is the reason why Windows has the many problems that it does.
-BrentI think that states should REQUIRE people to obtain a computer operators license before they're allowed to purchase any computer.
Simple stuff so that people understand that it's NOT ok to say "Yeah, I have a computer with 32 RAMs of memory, and I want to add more megabytes because I have enough RAMs, but this program says it needs 64 megabytes to run."
All I want is for people to have at least a LIMITED understanding of the technology.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
It doesn't surprise me that this is what happens when more outsiders join the club. We're letting the suits take over something that was designed by, and until 5 years ago exclusively populated by geeks.
Next we'll be hearing about "Why isn't there a way to just 'get a domain name' by changing your machine's name under windows?"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
responded to me to wit:
Can you explain how this is supposed to work, though? If you create a bunch of additional top-level domains (let's say *.arts, *.firm, *.biz, *.dot, *.sucks) someone like Disney is going to want to register their trademarks in all those domains.
True, but I'm not so concerned with these pre-existing trademark issues. Of course somebody registering mickeymouse.biz is going to run into legal problems.
What I'm more worried about are the situations where Smith Webventures Inc. registers smith.com, and then proceeds to lawyer-letter smith.net and smith.org into submission, somewhat along the lines of the ongoing Leonardo case, or the eToys.com/Etoy.com situation. It's the johnny-come-latelies who probably will NOT become lasting, global trademarks, but whose VC money allows them to afford flashy lawyers, who are going to do the majority of this kind of domain blood-fighting.
I'm not saying create three or six new domains; probably the only way to solve this is to allow hundreds or thousands of new TLDs, which would not only make it impossible for any but the most ardent trademark borderline-pissers to go everywhere, but would eliminate the now (and increasingly) common complaint that there is "consumer confusion" -- the basis of most trademark rulings. Right now, everyone has been lulled into believing that finding the six letters "d i s n e y" somewhere automatically means that Disney Corp. owns or should own that internet property. That's fine for Walt and his progeny, but what about Joe Disney, local printer, down the street? Isn't he deserving of the use of his name somehow? That's what I want to protect.
The many-many TLD idea would also make it possible for the guy who has a business (or even non-business) idea tomorrow to own a domain name that communicates it without having to go to 200 characters or a $2 million investment before opening his doors.
I'm not saying I have the answers, but the current inaction isn't helping things any.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I said it wasn't ICANN's fault.
I didn't say it wasn't NSI's fault. It was the fault of NSI and the domain registrars jointly. And they weren't checking (probably just a case of somebody writing a simple perl filter, but without checking the appropriate RFC), and now they are.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I know, I could go look at the source code, but for the benefit of /. readers, could someone explain why a dash at the end of a domain name segment would break telnet and ftp? I understand that a dash at the beginning might be interpreted as a command-line parameter.
It's not looking too good for people with trailing dash domains, but I feel if ICANN follows through on requiring the mass revocation of those domains, they should fix the "races.com" domain registration while they're at it.
..."
Quote from ICANN webpage regarding the trailing hyphans:
http://www.icann.org/nsi/trailing-hyp hens.htm
"... They also provide that those registering domain names must agree to cancellation of the registration in the event of a registry or registrar mistake, and in the case of every one of the trailing-hyphen names the registering party did in fact have such an agreement."
So why hasn't "races.com" been revoked yet and the registration corrected either back to the original owner or the the correct owner John McLanahan???
In the case of "races.com", there was certainly a registrar mistake and the various parties (NSI Registry, NSI Registrar, Register.com) agree this to be true so when will it be corrected???
Or am I misreading the sentence from ICANN's website that states:
"They [the agreements] also provide that those registering domain names [Registrars] must agree to cancellation of the registration in the event of a registry or registrar mistake,
Note the important word REGISTRAR!!!! So while some like NSI have claimed John McLanahan is SOL, it appears that ICANN is either not aware of the "races.com" situation or doesn't follow it's own rules of correcting such mistakes.
For a backgrounder on how "races.com" was lost, see this link:
http://www.wired.com/news/prin t/0,1294,32974,00.html
I can only hope ICANN, NSI, and/or Register.com do the right thing and restore the "races.com" domain back to the proper owner; and restore people's confidence in the domain name system. Imagine if "business.com" had been lost during a domain transfer...that's exactly what happened with "races.com"!!
The registrars are != to the DNS system itself. Yes, they play a very important and necessary (at this point in time, anyway) role in it's functioning. They are the insertion point.
Now, DNS servers (nameservers) at this point, anyway, follow a rather common concept of (more or less quoted from the Bat book (sendmail)
"Be conservative in what you do and liberal in what you expect from others."
It applies to sendmail, but also applies to other concepts. Many nameservers will relay erroneous information, but that doesn't mean it should be there in the first place.
The standards say *NO* trailing - on a domain.
So.. the registrars shouldn't be registering them.
Someone pointed out in another post under this article that technically a domain can contain a trailing -, but cannot be the target of an A, MX, or several other record types.
Though this is quite possibly true, it is also true that the global DNS system at large is not used for all the things it was designed for.
(ie: all IN records.... of course, because it's in the internet domain, but what else would it be for nowadays?)
First, as I explain in another post in this disucssion, e-.com or microsoft-.com are not illegal domain names. Just read RFC1035: the title of section 2.3.1 is ``Preferred name syntax'': this is a SHOULD, not a MUST.
If someone decides to register this domain, it's their problem. If it breaks programs like TELNET, it's also their problem (``their'' refers to the people who registered, not to the programs): they took the risk to register that domain, knowing that they might have problems, and if their customers get angry because they can't access the domain, it't their problem.
The programs SHOULD, according to the RFC, do the best to be ``liberal in what they accept'', and accept all the names they can to pass them to the resolver library. The resolver library SHOULD accept any kind of characters, binary characters included, and pass them verbatim to the name servers (they shouldn't even change the letter case, only the nameservers are permitted to make the final decision on this subject).
Within their own domain, people are permitted to do whatever they want, including using binary characters in (sub)domain names, not being case-insensitive, or any other stupid thing on the same line. It will break everything, but, again, it's their problem.
I agree with the ICANN's decision to register this. Nowhere in the RFC's does it say they may not (at least, as far as I know). All this, as far as they're (to be) concerned, is ``somebody else's problem''. Just like it is if the IP address you give them as primary nameserver is invalid or does not work.
The other point is RFC1591, which (meta-)specifies the way the three-letter TLD's are organized. Note in particular that nowhere in it is it stated that the .org domain is for non-profit organizations, contrary to what is frequently claimed. But the ICANN is to be blamed for not respecting this RFC on several counts (notably for the .net domain; also, something like un.org should be un.int).
I whish this ``www.[any word].com'' nonsense would stop. My suggested solution would be to invent another, better adapted, distributed data base, to transform a word or phrase to a URL, call it, say, ``true names''; then add a truename:// URL scheme, which gets relocated using the ``true names'' database to the correct URL. Integrate that scheme in every popular browser, and make it the default URL scheme. Then DNS names can become again what they are supposed to be: computer names, not resource names. Admittedly, I am only suggesting displacing the problem, but maybe the other database I mention can be better attuned to the kind of problems we have with the DNS, and which the DNS was not designed to handle.
Depending on the social and political climate (especially near ICANN et al), scat.com and scat.arts could be reversed from the order you suggest. After all, what is art?
Yes, this scares me. But only a little.
--The basis of all love is respect
Frankly, I don't care for ICANN's crappy, archaic rules that probably don't matter anymore. It's good to have standards, as long as you stick to them, but they don't do it very well. They've already broken a few of them by allowing numerals as the first character in a domain name (the @ host, e.g. "2600.com" is technically invalid, DNS-wise), as well as single character domain names.
Try again. Leading numerals in domain name components have been valid since October 1989, per RFC 1123:
2.1 Host Names and Numbers
The syntax of a legal Internet host name was specified in RFC-952 [DNS:4]. One aspect of host name syntax is hereby changed: the restriction on the first character is relaxed to allow either a letter or a digit. Host software MUST support this more liberal syntax.
I can find nowhere that requires that domain names are required to have at least two characters - can you cite an RFC for that one?
A lawyer for one unhappy consumer who registered more than 100 of these new domains said the governing bodies could have a difficult time proving the recent glitch was a mistake, as it took them three months to discover the error.
I have no sympathy for this person. This is an obvious case of squatting. Excuse my ignorance, but doesn't Internic have a policy against that sort of behaviour anyway?
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
This would not de-Americanize the internet, but instead de-internationalize the internet, leaving it as only a shadow of what it is now. Three situations:
What if someone such as myself in Canada wanted to buy something off of an American site such as ebay. Unfortuatally i end up getting another site from Canada, perhapes the hbc online store. I want an ebay, not a department store. What if i wanted a site in France, but i didn't know it was in that country, what do i do now.
What if i am a company based in Canada, however i ship product anywhere. I now must register my name in every country, dealing with language bariers, stupid name server systems (your suggestion), and corrupt people wishing to charge me $20000 because my name is known in other counties. Now i am an international free software project, i hope i get a grant soon.
I am a well known Canadian company selling to the US and UK. Unfortuatally an enterprising person has registered my name in those country and has but up a porn site. When someone in that country tries to go to my site they are instead taken to a porn site. This looks bad.
The internet is international. It is also dominated by the US, but there are reasons for this, and if you don't like it, start your own network and only let those who are america-phobic on it. An international network is useful, but will be dominated by the countries with the largest population/use, this is true of everything.
Perhaps you should look into how to get a domain in Canada, and then look at the situation with the generic tlds, it really changes your outlook.
maciek@jabba:~$ host microsoft-.com
microsoft-.com A 209.207.246.170
maciek@jabba:~$ ping microsoft-.com
ping: unknown host microsoft-.com
maciek@jabba:~$ nslookup microsoft-.com
Server: localhost
Address: 127.0.0.1
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: microsoft-.com
Address: 209.207.246.170
maciek@jabba:~$
In other words, not following RFCs results in non-deterministic behavior.
The requested URL could not be retrieved
While trying to retrieve the URL: http://microsoft-.com/
The following error was encountered:
Unable to determine IP address from host name for microsoft-.com
The dnsserver returned:
DNS Domain 'microsoft-.com' is invalid: Non recoverable errors.
This means that:
The cache was not able to resolve the hostname presented in the URL.
Check if the address is correct.
Generated Sun, 09 Jan 2000 06:47:28 GMT by xxxxx.com (Squid/2.2.STABLE5)
Non-RFC compliant names like this do not resolve on ISC BIND v8.5.5pl5, nor many others (I suspect). Not to mention the fact that most proxies will also kill this name (or otherwise malfunction). That's why I find it funny that one fellow complained that this was an excuse. That's like saying the health risks of lead paint are just an excuse to stop honest business men from selling it to schools, etc.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
IMO, things like this are not newsworthy. The real screwing to be had is by the trademark contingency. That'll keep us plenty busy this year ... and next, probably, as we begin to see some egregous abuses inder the ICANN UDRP and WIPO.
Need Mercedes parts ?
With one of them registering microsoft-.com and another commenting that short domain names being hard to come by, I have to wonder if at least some of them fully realized that they were exploiting a mistake when they registered those names. The guy who registered e-.com may not have known, and probably intended no harm, but registering a domain name using someone else's trademark is highly questionable squatting. Even if I were inclined to do it, I don't think I would do it to anyone who could afford the legal muscle to bankrupt me.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Ok so they messed up. But this is relaivly minor compared to having one company the sole source for domain names.
The important part is that they are fixing it. Hopefully this will be the worst problem that shows up and competition will continue.
This has nothing to do with what the applications will accept. This is a unix issue, ftp and telnet under linux are most commonly used in their command line form, the starting or trailing dash have special meanings on the unix command line that would force the string to be interprited differently, this is not a simple matter of the software not handling it correctly.
The problem with www.macdonalds.food.us is not that it is hard for geeks to remember, but it is hard for people to remember. There have been comments posted on slashdot in the past about "chunking," the process by which our brain keeps information together. www.company.com is "chunked" and the www and .com are ingrained in people's minds. Getting Joe Blow or my parents to remember .comp.us or .food.us would destroy their chunking, and would destroy the burgeoning growth of the internet because it is (a) innocuous and (b) trendy. www.macdonalds.food.us doesn't have the ring that www.mcwebsite.com has.
It looks like there's a site still up, and it has a whole bunch of links to sites, which all have something that doesn't really look good for the domainname system/icann/etc.
Just thought some people would like to know.
That having been said, there are two larger issues here.
1) We have a massive congestion problem. There's a problem with "cybersquatting," and there's a problem with conflicting companies, people, organizations, etc. of the same name.
2) The majority of the people who are using the Internet, as well as the majority of the people administering and opening sites these days don't have the first clue how anything works. That's bad, but what's worse is that they don't care, and they don't want to learn.
I don't know how to fix this, really. One way would be to junk the DNS system completely and go to something which is vaguely similar to a Yellow Pages, but that has its own massive problems, most of which are blatently obvious so I won't go into them here.
The entire problem has been complicated by people registering domains which have nothing to do with their company names, and not knowing about or not caring about the TLD which they've put their domain in. If people can't figure out the difference between the various TLDs now, what makes us think that they'll figure them out or care about them if we got a system which was actually somewhat complicated?
Things have gotten bad enough that I'm tempted to suggest that a lot of the things which we use need to be either redesigned or sanity enforced in their use. This includes things like HTML, which has all sorts of browser-specific, platform-specific, OS-specific trash added to it now. This includes the mail system, which could really benefit from some kind of reputation capital system or something being added to cut down on spam, junk email, and to improve mailing list quality. Web browsers in general could use some help. And of course there's the matter of people making huge files available only by HTTP so that they're almost impossible to get over anything except a T1 or greater, and sometimes not even then. (There's no resume capability that I'm aware of.)
Face it. The Internet is a great thing, but it's gone straight to hell and it needs serious help.
Just remember always the Wizard's First Rule:
I'm sorry to say that clues must be eventually enforced, one of these days. If we don't do it, sooner or later it will be done by force of law with anti-spam legislation, domain name legislation, copyright and trademark suits, and other things, and the situation will actually be worse.
Such domain names, violate (to my knowledge) rfc standarts. If the "industry" is allowed to change such standarts, we will have a non-functioning Internet within a while.
See HTML how this language has been bent with browsertags which only work in a _single_ browser.
These standarts have been written so things are kept functioning.
It does not matter wheter telnet or ftp are the only two services which are affected by this.
Changing a variable in an equation will yield an unpredictable ammount results.
-NetPace
--
If life is a game... Who is leading the highscore?
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- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Actually it was NetSol's incompetence that it let domain names be registered without making sure those names complied to specifications. I read this story on news.com 2 days ago regarding this..
Network Solutions' (NSI) registry accepted about 800 domain names containing a hyphen at the end or the beginning of an address. But such names have long been prohibited and therefore should be recaptured, said Michael Roberts, president of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
"It was a mistake," Roberts said today. "The software was not rejecting the names, but that was fixed earlier this week."
The first such name was registered Nov. 4, leaving some consumers wondering why it took so long to discover the problem.
Roberts explained that the system is automated and does not involve people who would have been able to detect the problem sooner.
In an agreement with ICANN, NSI, which operates the single registry system, and about 23 other approved registrars that feed into that system prohibit the trailing hyphens. The agreement also gives power to the companies to revoke domains that have been mistakenly sold, Roberts said.
Only a few of the approved registrars failed to put a filtering device in their systems, which allowed the unauthorized domains to sneak through, said Don Telage, NSI's registry policy spokesman.
San Francisco-based Internet Domain Registrars was one of the companies that failed to implement the filter, and as a result, it unknowingly registered about 400 bad addresses, said Paul Lum, the company's general manager.
Lum said he was relying on NSI's security system to catch any characters not allowed in a domain, such as an exclamation point, dollar sign and a trailing or leading hyphen.
Early Monday, he learned it was Internet Domain's responsibility to program its own filter. Now the company is left with the unpleasant task of reimbursing a total of $25,000 to those who registered the new domains.
The fiasco will not likely cause a customer-relations problem for Internet Domain, Lum said. Instead he views the situation as evidence that clever Net addresses are highly sought after.
"There is too much pent-up demand for good domain names," he said. "Even though the hyphen isn't very attractive, short names are still preferred."
A lawyer for one unhappy consumer who registered more than 100 of these new domains said the governing bodies could have a difficult time proving the recent glitch was a mistake, as it took them three months to discover the error.
The rest of this story could be read here. Please don't jump to conclusion without getting the full story.
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This seems like a classic case of techies missing the point: "Oh, running out of domains? Let's add more." But it isn't domainspace that's crowded, it's the trademark namespace...
On the other hand, some new TLDs would:
Because it violates the RFC defining what a domain name should look like, and many pieces of software are written intelligently enough that they know "hey, that's not valid!" and reject it -- exactly as they should. D
Darn, no SlashDotDash.
When creating a standard or a specification, it's important to make rules and stick to them -- the perils of changing them later are many. However, it's just as important to make rules that don't suck in the first place, because they will get broken.
The mail servers for the ISP I used to work for have dozens of functioning "illegal" usernames that are either longer than eight characters or begin with a numeral. There are even a few with the ampersand character (&) that also work, though they do behave strangely in finger queries. Despite the fact they knew it was technically invalid, being a fledgling company eager to please (times sure have changed there), they let it happen. Future upgrades of Slackware prevented any more invalid accounts from being created, however. I'm of the opinion that it was USERADD acting as the enforcer -- if the kernel does it, wouldn't that mean that it plays with a different set of rules internally than it does externally?
In the case of Linux, no matter what you do, it's a Bad Thing©. You can continue to use the same standard and allow "fudging" without acknowledging that it seems to work "out of spec", which IMO is the Worst Thing©, you can break compatibility for the sake of a standard, or you can drop the archaic, unpopular rules that don't seem to make a bit of difference -- or do they?
Frankly, I don't care for ICANN's crappy, archaic rules that probably don't matter anymore. It's good to have standards, as long as you stick to them, but they don't do it very well. They've already broken a few of them by allowing numerals as the first character in a domain name (the @ host, e.g. "2600.com" is technically invalid, DNS-wise), as well as single character domain names.
Steadily, all of the rules will erode as the greed of registrars pressures the ICANN for more domains to sell. The "unroutable" Class A netblocks at the upper and lower ends will probably fall sometime soon too, but at least it will be out of necessity. Just like everything else drawn up decades ago, the "impossible" becomes well within reach...
If you've actually read all the way through this, I'm sorry you put up with my rambling for so long...
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E2 IN2 IE?
For example, if you read this article, one guy grabbed "e-.com", "e-.org", and "e-.net" for his e-commerce site. Hello, there's something wrong here: .org sites are supposed to be for non-profit organizations, not a commerce site.
We need to education both IT managers and the general public that there is a significant difference between a .com and a .net address. If that understand was in place across the planet, then there should be no confusion between sites such as "whitehouse.gov" and "whitehouse.com", or "apple.com" and "apple.org". But, because we *know* people are stupid, they feel they have to do this.
IF people were intelligent enough to recongize this, then the next step would be to prevent any person or group to own the same name in any more than one TLD, unless sufficient cause is show (and that cause does NOT include trademark infrindgement). With the above in place, anyone would recognize that "apple.org" is not Apple Corp, but some organization that might deal with apples or Apples. Therefore, Apple would not have to grab all the domains in every TLD.
Then, using internationally determined standards, the next step would be to limit the registration of certain TLDs to appropriate people. .com and .biz to registered profit businesses, .net with the network infrastructure, etc.
Finally, and what I think is really important right now is to actively use the country code in domains. Browsers can easily be configured or patched to automatically end .com and the other TLD's in the appropriate country code (.us, etc) Yes, this means that by default, a person in the UK would have to go "www.apple.com.us", but this is necessary to remove the American-ization of the Internet, and would limit domain name disputes to within countries only (no etoys vs etoy problems).
But public education is the most important thing. I watch game shows which will generally have a higher cut of people than the rest, and it amazing me how dense they come to computer terms. They don't try to learn how it understands, they just want it to work. We need to actively promote education; I know that I will be trying to teach my mom the fundamentals of using her new computer rather than running through a simple list of steps just to type a letter. I'll try to apply the same to the internet stuff. But everyone needs to learn this. While we as the john doe internet surfer is still ignorant of how domain names work, IT managers are going to suck up all those domains for no real go reason.
Of course, the other option would be to increase the cost of registering domains, but this would hurt more than help.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
It's egregious to attribute this to ICANN and say that the cynics were right. Of course there will be small problems with any distributed system. The fault here, though, lays with the registrars who improperly registered names that shouldn't have existed. It's ironic that NetSol ends up being the good guy here (from one standpoint only, of course, not the domain owners' by a long shot!).
Hopefully this incident will give ICANN a kick in the pants as far as moving on to the next phase. There need to be more TLDs, and there need to be rules that allow those TLDs to expand the domain name universe, not just give trademark-grabbers more TLDs to register theirs in. The situation right now is getting ridiculous.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
What's even more nuts is what is happening in the toll free number area. Large companies with 800 numbers (like 800-FLOWERS) just *had* to duplicate their numbers in 888, then 877 and you can bet when 866, 855, 844, 833, and 822 toll free "area codes" are eventually open, those will be duplicated too.
Quite a lot of discussion on this topic has been going on in comp.dcom.telecom for a few years now.
The only way that makes sense for trademark issues is to create a TLD for each tradmark field, there are about 40 of them. Then add a country code since envery country does not have the same system of tradmard classification. So, for example ,
www.macdonalds.food.us would sell Big Macs,
www.macdonalds.farm.us would do the EIEIO thing..
and etoys.merchant.us would leave etoy.art.uk alone.
There would be room for apple.comp.us and apple.music.uk and apple.food.* and apple.electronic.uk could be Apple Computer's UK site depending on how the UK/EU does it's Trademark classifications.
Starman97@Gmail.com (bring it on spammers)