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Care to Register Your Own TLD?
luap writes: "MSNBC is running this article about a Top Level Domain proposal by the Consumer Project for Technology to add the TLDs ".sucks," ".unions," ".consumers," ".complaints," ".ecology," ".isnotgreen," ".isnotfair," ".shareholder," ".taxpayer" and ".unite." Where are ".rules," ".isaloser," etc..?"
More TDLs are certainly overdue -- but ".isnotfair" and ".isnotgreen"? How about ".fam" for family? What new TDLs would make most sense? Would officializing ".sucks" do anything besides lead to companies buying additional domain names to sit on? These questions will do nothing but hover until ICANN acts on this or other TLD-loosening proposals, which so far it has been reluctant to do.
I hereby reserve the following domains:
- monicalewinsky.sucks
- webfilteringsoftware.sucks
- twopartypolitics.sucks
and, for the easy ransom booty as proved by history,
- georgewbush.sucks
- georgebush.sucks
- whinytexasgovernor.sucks
and of course, for my own peace of mind,
- theswindle.sucks
waiting to see the utterly absurd yet inevitable tidal wave of legal actions such a proposal, if implemented would cause, such as:
- microsoft.sucks
- celinedion.sucks
- kathieleegifford.sucks
You obviously haven't been around the net that long, otherwise you'd know the truth. Vax sucks.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
So what, technically, is there preventing me from putting a DNS server on the internet, and encouraging others to add it to their list of DNS servers (after their regular servers, that way I'm not taking over any domains). I could add any TLD I like, and I could probably convince quite a crowd to add my server. I understand this has been tried before, did it die out because of lack of use?
Your plan would work except for the after their regular servers bit. If a resolver receives a "domain doesn't exist" response, it will not query any additional nameservers. What you can do, though, is to completely take over the root zone, and simply delegate the existing TLD's to their appropriate authorative servers.
--
bgphints - internet routing news, hints and ti
The .cc TLD doesn't appear to be anything to do with Clear Channel, though (funnily enough) the clearchannel.cc domain exists...
With this and the MS story, I think the leap-year problem turned out to maee people think yesterday that it's the 1st of April, not March.
What really should be done is not expand the top level domains, but contract them. The existing .com, .org, .gov, .mil, .net, and .edu domains should be moved under the .us domain. Then the domain rules become a matter for each country to decide.
.gov and .mil under .us, as they are clearly United States domains.
Even if we are keeping generic TLDs, we should at least move
Can't wait for the chance to register a domain in the .longtopleveldomainnameswillcausecarpaltunnelandth eniwillsuethatassholenader TLD.
-Shoeboy
the best solution I heard about the DNS lookup was for the root servers to each handle one letter, the first letter of the TLD. Under such a system, all traffic for .com, .cool, .ca, and so on, would be directed to the "C" server for resolution.
.com) than your Z server. Even if there were freeform TLDs, the names would not be evenly distributed over the alphabet.
If a separate root server was used for each letter of the alphabet, then your Z server would be a lot busier (serving
cpeterso
... your C server would be a lot busier (serving .com) than your Z server.
cpeterso
- There standards issues with these proposed TLD's (all others are either 3 or 2 letters.)
- They are way overly specific.
We all know that the domain namespace is artifically scarse and that new TLD's are needed, but let's start with proposals that create a more robust TLD.Additionaly, there is the social issue of their incredible arrogance. It galls me. James Love, the director of the CPT tells Christopher Ambler who has been trying to get .web TLD'ized for four years:
Oh, I see...you've got Ralph Presidential Candidate Nader on your side so your proposal should move to the top of the list despite being patently stupid? Can Nader alone part the seas of Red Tape that is the ICANN process? Get in line.Love and Nader...you're newbies in the worst way.
Congratulations. You have successfully proposed moving "www" from the front of the namespace to the end of it. What does this accomplish?
.net .com .org are starting to merge is due to the fact that no one paid attention to the guidlines. Plain and simple.
The fact that
We've had the .com landgrab. Now watch out for the TLD landgrab. Everybody will want to own their own TLD, especially if they can charge every megacorp $50 to prevent someone else setting up www.megacorp.sucks, .evil, .blows, .lousy, .stupid, .hateit, .dumb, .cretin, .broken, .costalot, .tacky, ... Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Keep in mind that Russian is adopting English words at a furious pace in matters of business and technology, so having a bald English word wouldn't pose too much of a problem as people would just accept it and deal with it. And don't forget the incredible influence French had on the language before this century.
.COM maps well onto "kommercheskii", .ORG maps onto "organizatsia", and .MIL maps onto "militsia" (technically police, but it's close enough).
.GOV, since the root "gov" refers to speaking, not to anything related to government.
.ru domains, you'll see them use "www" and "sex" and and all the usual sorts of naming conventions.
With that in mind, some of the current tlds wouldn't pose much of a problem unmodified.
.NET is a problem, since "nyet" of course means "no". The word for network is "sjet'".
.EDU is hopeless. As is
But again, these problems are nonissues. If you check out some
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
I don't think that '.sucks' is a good idea. Using 'sucks' as the highest/lowest insult is juvenile, childish, vulgar and all the rest. I'm certainly guilty of using it myself, but as the old saying goes, "Profanity is the linguistic crutch of the inarticulate."
:)
.xxx, it would be easier to block for those who want to block it, and easier to find for those who *don't* want to block it.
:)
And ".isnotgreen" has its fullest impact only on those with particular political mindset. I'm sure someone would register Kermit the Frog under that
But there surely is a good reason for some new TLDs. For instance, the proposals (now aging in casks in France) to have a domain ".xxx" makes a lot of sense -- if sexually explicit content were categorized under
".fam" looks like a good idea to me, too -- and I bet it would to the (millions?) of families who use e-mail to keep in contact and the Web to send photos to the distant relatives. I'm in line for "lord.fam"
Just thoughts,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Sounds like you'd need to come up with a whole new name resolution paradigm - no easy task.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Is it necessary? I don't know. I'm certainly sympathetic to the general idea, but I think restriciting domain squatting, multiple TLD registration, and trademark abuse would be the better solution.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
.us already exists. Try www.tac.nyc.ny.us for example. I believe that it's always xx.us where xx is the two-letter state abbreviation.
.gb to be in conformance with ISO 3166.
Also, the UK should really use
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
"GB" is the abbreviation for "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" according to ISO3166. That sounds like an oversight on their part to me, especially since "UK" is unassigned. But that's what the standard says.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
So what, technically, is there preventing me from putting a DNS server on the internet, and encouraging others to add it to their list of DNS servers (after their regular servers, that way I'm not taking over any domains). I could add any TLD I like, and I could probably convince quite a crowd to add my server. I understand this has been tried before, did it die out because of lack of use?
-Adam
Every vision has a provision for revision
I dont think language really should be a problem. only 1 change: give each country 3 TLDs. 1 commercial, 1 for non-profit orgs, 1 general (or maybe another division could be better. I wouldn't know about that) You want to cater for the whole world, thenb you either have an english page, or have your page in several languages. If you want to keep working on a national basis, get your own country's commercial TLD. I however don't think the purpose should necessarily be clear from the URL. It's just an address, there to make it easier to remember. If you need an URL, you look it up somewhere, usually a searchengine. It's exactly the same as a normal address. If you need to find a baker, do you blindly walk over to bakerstreet in hopes of finding one, or do you look in the phonebook/yellow pages/whatever? Finally.. yes, there is a reason for TLDs only being 3 characters: people are lazy. .sucks is still decently fast to type, .isnotfair is quite a bit longer. The shorter your name, the cooler.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
The article seems to indicate that the creation of such TLDs would "facilitate free speech and criticism and enable consumers, workers and others to organize." First of all I'm not taking this very seriously, secondly even if it were to be done I'd have some concerns.
They don't seem to be planning to enforce that legitimate orgs are the ones buying domains with these TLDs, nor do I feel that they should. However I'm reminded of a news story I read a few years ago about how some large industrial companies had created funded small non profit organizations with names like "The Green Planet Alliance." Now this organization was actually chartered to work to reduce pollution and such noble ideas, however, since they were controlled by these other companies they mostly did lobbying for laws that favored the companies that had created them. These laws in most people's views either did not assist in reducing pollution or in fact left massive loopholes for the companies to pollute more. Sadly a few consumers got burned by this when the non profit organization actually started fund raising and they thought they were giving money to a legitimate organization.
I worry that such TLDs make it more likely that people wishing to participate in such organizations may simply go to techworker.union join up and pay their dues. Then only later that the company they work for is actually running that organization.
A couple weeks ago a friend of mine who works for a subsidiary of Clear Channel communications told me that they were getting their own TLD, ".cc" I was pretty skeptical. He said he didn't really know anything about it other than that was information passed on to him from someone else at the company.
.cc TLD for real, or just wishful thinking at this point?
I spoke to him earlier this morning, before seeing this article, and he said that he was told again that they intend to unveil their TLD. Clear Channel owns several tv stations, radio stations, and billboards. So is the
numb
The only thing I can think of using .sucks for is to provide satirists an easy way to be caught and busted to the full extent of the law for every copyrighted image and trademarked phrase/logo they use.
.sucks version of the URL every time you went to a place, you'd probably never buy anything at all...
With more and more top-level domains, companies will have to invest several grand just to be able to have a domain name that isn't the launching point for a million "these people suck" sites. Now, I think critical sites should still exist, but EVERY retailer on the net has something bad that can be said about them, if you started checking the
Which would lead to a torrent of libel and defamation lawsuits... oh this smells all bad
Esperandi
I think that whole issue is really stupid. I understand the need to protect trademarks, but come on! There are only so many words/phrases that make any sense without going over 25 characters - the point at which it starts getting too long to remember easily. I think there should be some enforcement about which domains you can take. Let Ford Motor Co. take ford.com, sure, but leave ford.net available for someone else that has a legitimate claim to the name, like Joe Ford who owns a networking company in Sandusky, OH.
I think buying up your 2LD across every available TLD namespace is just lame. Unless your organization spans the reasons for those namespaces, you should be restricted from using them.
Sorry, just had to rant a bit. It burns me when a good name is wasted by a squatter or someone that isn't using it.
Of course, then you have the headache of adjudicating fair use...
Constitutionally Correct
All domains in .com would be replicated in .www at no charge. Domains in .net and .org would be replicated in .www if not already taken. New registrations in .net, .com, and .org would no longer be accepted. In a few years, .net, .com, and .org would be phased out. Browsers would default to .www.
The effect would be to eliminate TLDs as a naming issue for most web sites. A web site name would be one word, with no dots. This would tend to reduce consumer confusion.
Of course, then there'd be confusion between these names, the RealNames mess, and AOL keywords. Maybe keeping .com is a good thing.
Nader and Co. may be facilitating this because of theeir beliefs etc, but the real driving force are the behind the scenes folks who will profit. Hmmm, don't know who, but I want to get on the Networksolutions.sucks bandwagon.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
... when amateurs and 'normal' people get hold of what was previously 'geek' technology. What a waste - imagine what this could do to most of the DNS servers - maybe we'll end up needing to implement IP-V6 just to cope with the extra demand.
Oh sure, Just because amazon.com can't own Amazon.sucks doesn't mean they won't find a way to lock it down. Either by having an employee, or a family member of an employee, or a stockholder, or a random guy on the street they paid 100 dollars to, etc. No matter how many rules you make about how this person or that person is not eligible to own the domain, the company or person that wants not to be criticized just goes one step further. .sucks equivalent of everything that's already registered in .com. They'll put up a page that says domain.com sucks on each one, so that they can even say they are using it for the intended purpose.
This doesn't even cover the inevitable attempts to squat the domain names. The day the registers open, you'll have a bunch of guys running scripts that basically buy up the
Maybe it would be possible to limit the # of domains a person could register in a day, but even that is highly impracticle, since any company could still get each employee to register their allottment each day and then transfer ownership, start dummy companies, pay temps to register more in their names, etc. Maybe you could do it as a lottery system, where someone tries to register a domain, but they don't get it for a specified period of time, while other people can try to register it. At the end, its randomly assigned to one of the people who tried to get it. I imagine you wouldn't tell people a name has been put into the system, or else, whenever any domain was locked in, every squatter on earth would put themselves in too, in hopes of selling it to the one guy who wants it. Just keep it a secret, and after a week, say "Registerer #598 gets it."
That would help at least control the initial rush for buissness.sucks, drugs.sucks, otherbigmoneydomain.sucks. Still, I imagine the vast majority of the attempted registers would be squatters.
Augh. Capitalism has destroyed the internet.
-Tony
---
"What is that sound its making?"
---
"What is that sound its making?"
"It thinks it has a virus, but its actually just linux."
Open the floodgates. Allow *anything* to be used as a TLD, HOWEVER.... and this is what's important: All domain registrations *must* still consist of two parts, domain+TLD. The TLD itself can be registered to no one nor belongs to anyone, thus insuring its availability to all.
This will accomplish the following:
(1) Campanies simply *cannot* "buy up" all the domains anymore as there will, for all practical purposes, be an infinite number of combinations for trademarkname.* as * can be now anything.
(2) Companies with similar or identical names, but doing different things now have plenty of elbow room to coexist (unlike now). Apple computers has apple.com. What is Apple Records to do? Why, apple.records, of course. A farmer could have apple.farms, the temp agency could have apple.employment, etc. since, emphasizing again, that the TLD itself (.apple) can't be registered to anyone, thus future companies and individuals can forever enjoy use and availibility of the .apple TLD. Even Mr. Joe Apple (joe.apple).
It'd be an end to squatting; an end to hoarding; an end to buying out of spite; an end to domain brokering. And how difficult would it be for servers to implement on a technical level? I see it as no worse than the .com subdomain is already being successfully handled (for now, inagine as *.com with the .com simply dropped).
Not too long ago, Jon Katz posted an article on cyber-nations. This is the level at which TLDs should be determined. Surely there are 'classes' of sites out there, and the surfer would benefit from having a better sense of the domains.
.com domain is over used. No surprise there. As I see the usage of .com, it breaks down into shopping sites, business presence sites, business 'hit-and-run' announcement and advert sites, and service providing sites - selling no tangible product (yahoo or slashdot). The boundaries get blurry sometimes, but for the most part, I think this is accurate.
.buy or .shop. Same for .corp or .inc or .biz; .ad/.advert; .priv or .fam, .serv (for places like here or pricewatch)
.xxx domain, they'd be both easier to find and to filter.
Mainly, the
Should we stick to the three-letter scheme? Is there an obligation to do so. Regardless, the purpose of the site should be shown in it's URL.
So, there should be a
Then again, there is the international consideration, where the domains OUGHT to be sensitive to the fact that no everyone speaks English. Any polyglots out there care to give this some thought?
And of course, if we can corral all the porn sites to the
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
It really won't matter much if these TLD are available soon, or even now. Looking into my crystal ball, I see that it won't be too long before all servers physically located inside the USA borders are forced to adhere to strict laws regarding naming. It will soon be required to move from .edu, .com, .gov, .net and so over to .edu.us, .com.us, .gov.us, .net.us and so. After that, all domains with a .us name must adhere to rating laws. That way, you can have a government enforcable way to filter the internet.
.CA.US on all servers hosted in the sate, that can be done as well.
"but what about all non-us sites?" - They get filtered out by default on public terminals usable by minors.
"can that filtering be turned off for adults" - Of course it can, but will it? I dunno.
"Isn't that against freedom of speech" - No, it'll get shoehorned under federal regulation over international / interstate commerce.
"can the states require even more location specific names?" - Yep. If the state of california requires
"What about browsers, are they next?" - You betcha! After the feds shoehorn the TLD regulation under the guise of interstate / international commerce, and the states require state level domain naming, it's a brief interlude before browsers will be forced to identify what location it is in. That way, collecting taxes from internet purchases become easy to track and collect.
-Joe
All this does is increase the number names companies will HAVE to buy, to protect their trademarks.
TLDs.with.more.than.three.letters.sucks
...for TLDs, like .bus, .home. etc.
What we don't need are special-interest groups turning the TLDs from a value-neutral categorizing system into a lobby effort with crap like .isnotgreen.
Why, you ask? Well, it sets a really silly precedent. What about when someone lobbies for .isgay? Someone's gonne be up in arms about that.
If this 'Consumer' org gets their wish, I'll be pushing for .isatreehuggingbullshitorganization
Steve
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Got Rhinos?