Slashdot Mirror
Master Of Your Domain
ICANN has been in the news quite a bit recently. Although new TLD's have been in the works for more than five years now, ICANN has given in to the lobbying of its patron mega-corps and stated that no new TLD's would be created unless trademark holders got first dibs on them. So much for a personal TLD exempt from trademark considerations... ICANN is currently pushing its At-Large Membership, which everyone should join, even though the system has been carefully rigged so that the public cannot make meaningful changes in the composition of ICANN's Board. All these and more will be discussed in their Cairo meeting, which will be Webcast starting 2 a.m. EST on March 8.
Does that make Verisign a greedy octopus-like corporation?
Here's the c|net story on the Verisign/NSI deal.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
We have the power and the technical expertise to free ourselves, so why not do it?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Absolutely! Have a look at Open Root Server Confederation for one example. I have had my local DNS daemon configured to point to ORSC's namespace for a good while, and I have found it to work quite well. Just to add to the fun, my DNS also has .localnet for anything behind my firewall.
I have looked all over the various RFCs and found that the current root DNS servers ARE the root servers only because Jon Postal said so. That was before all of the NetSol/ICANN debacle. As it stands, neither NetSol nor ICANN even own the root servers or the networks they reside on.
The trick to making an alternate root DNS become commonly available is customer demand. If there are 'cool' sites that can only be accessed by the alternate root (or IP address), people will want that tld to resolve. If a less cool but informative site on .org tells them that their ISP can easily make it resolvable, they will pester them to do so. It costs the ISP nothing but a few minutes to do it, so why not?
Perhaps if we had a TLD server for .geek to get things started? Perhaps a colo in the Caribbean
If desired, all .geek sites COULD be mapped by the root server to .geek.org for the 'uncool' people still using the lame ICANN TLDs. :-)
IANL, but couldn't such a server/service maintain that all trademark disputes are a matter between the two parties and that the service will do nothing about it unless/until compelled to do so by court order? Could someone who IS a lawyer comment?
I have also considered a scheme where the records get updated throughe a protocol based on the dining cryptographers problem so that the admin/owners can honestly say they have NO IDEA who registered the domain.
As the other poster who replied said, you're making assumptions: "The Net is nothing but the Web, and the Web is nothing but companies."
A proper URN system will do this properly. Maybe for US people typing in "McDonalds" alone will find the fast food chain, but maybe in the UK it will prompt so you can choose the family group (clan?) instead. A proper system will have to avoid simply creating another monopoly space where only big businesses show up.
By the way, the IETF URN Working Group might help explain some of the issues.
As a trademark (or other intellectual property) owner, you are required by US and International law to protect your TM/IP, or lose it. The law clearly and firmly places the burden of policing possible infringements on the TM owner.
If they would just start using the TLDs properly, they wouldn't have to do nearly the policing that they do now. If only commercial interests could use .com domains, then Microsoft.org could not possibly be related to the Microsoft Corporation, and would therefore not be infringing on Microsoft's trademark.
As for them passing the burden of guarding trademarks on to the registrars, I have to agree with you that it should be stopped. I think it would (and already does, really) make the current (flawed) registration system quite unfair to the little guys. But again, if they would start using the TLDs correctly, we wouldn't have this problem.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I mean, at least NSI was utterly inconsistant with their conflict resolution policy. They weren't totally in the pockets of greedy octopus-like corporations. NSI just screwed everyone ;)
Who would have ever thought that one day we'd be cursing the name 'Dyson'?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I just don't see what the complaint against that is. Afterall, we all were happy when Linus was given the Linux(TM) trademark, right? It's just a way for people and companies who are identified with a mark to keep their identification and for them to easily be found.
Addlepated - punk & metal
The terminology we're using is different, but your idea looks basically the same as mine.
.com, .org, or .sum. However, go up a level, and all news sites fit .log and only .log. So slashdot.org and cnnsi.com respectively become slashdot.log and cnnsi.log; they may have different backgrounds but they're both news sites on the second level.
And the problem is, sites will always overlap categories. The idea is to arrange domains in such a manner that at the highest level a site fits into at all, it only fits one of the TLD's. That one TLD becomes the one the site must use.
Let's take news sites. At the lowest level, a given news site might fit into
Call it earning a place at the table before you get to sit down. We would get rid of "Naked Petrified Grits" imbeciles and Stallmanist collectivists by ramping up access costs, and we would get rid of cheap fly-by-night web garbage by seriously increasing the cost of a domain name.
Sheer idiocy.
You are completely ignoring the egalitarian nature of the Internet, which is what made it as popular as it is in the first place.
If anything, the cost of entry is too high, as decent broadband is still expensive and limited in coverage.
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
What I'm about to say is heretical, so it'll surely be moderated into oblivion. Oh, well. People have a right to hear the truth anyway, even if they don't like how it sounds.
Yes, we all know the government created the Net. Fine, I'm glad. But so what? If the Internet had not been "exploited" and "taken over" by businesses, it would still be a useless boondoggle. I'm sorry, but there's no justification for spending tax dollars to provide scientific researchers and college undergraduates with alt.flame. As it turns out, the Net could grow into a lot more than that, and we have far-sighted civil servants like Larry Taylor at ARPA in the 1960's (and many others since that time) to thank for keeping it alive until it could pay for itself.
But now it can pay for itself. This boom we're in may have been planted by ARPA, but it was watered and cared for by businesses, and big ones at that. It's them we have to thank for the fact that the Internet is not a useless parasitic drain on public funds. They didn't create the Net, but without them we wouldn't want the Net.
So should they now get special consideration? Should we pause just for a moment and question our compulsion to bite the hand that feeds us? All those who work for a living, raise your hands. Thank you.
Trademark holders go first. You can register www.microsoft.goatse.cx afterwards.
Why should I have to know in which country an organization is based in order to guess their URL? Should we then go down to individual states and provinces? Then instead of the clear, unambiguous slashdot.org, you get the silly slashdot.org.somestate.us. And what if they move? I'm rambling now, but my point is that the internet has the potential to seperate us from awkward physical boundaries, and you are advocating adopting those same boundaries.
Much preferrable would be your first suggestion -- a name heirarchy based on purpose or industry of the registering entity.
--Chouser
--Chouser
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." -LL
Since you didn't clarify, I'll assume this is part of the alien joke.
[Me:] If people want to create and read Web pages, the system would adjust to accommodate them, distributing its load as needed.
[You:] That sounds like a free market to me. But who pays for it? The taxpayers, I suppose. If these services you so much enjoy were really worth having, wouldn't people have paid for them willingly? Of course they would. But they didn't. Government picked up the tab. Had they not, the Internet never would have been born because it offered nothing of value to anybody capable of paying his own way.
You're trying to predict a priori what the Internet was like from a set of theories, but your conclusions don't match the reality of what it was. Therefore, either your theories or your logical framework is flawed.
In this case, you're relying on a basic flaw of many free market arguments-- the notion that if a product is worth something, people will pay money for it. However, there are many counterexamples. Are you saying that food is worthless to a starving man if he can't pay for it? You allude to this with your phrase "to anybody capable of paying his own way". But the repugnant conclusion is the idea that only the well-being of moneyed people matters. Few people truly consciously believe this; do you?
Regarding the Internet then, it was worth a great deal to students, but how many students could have afforded to pay for the infrastructure? There's such a thing as investment in a society's future. Many of the "no tax" crowd don't seem to realize this. (They also don't seem to notice the benefits they themselves have reaped from various tax-funded projects, but that's a bigger topic.)
Another totally different counterexample: Loving physical intimacy (including sex) is worth a lot, but how can you pay money for it? Some things by their nature can't be bought and don't fit into the free market framework.
Another flaw in your argument is that people would have paid for all this, except the framework was already in place so they didn't have to. And in fact, they pay today with their ISP bill. And they were doing so for years before the Net was overrun with businesses.
Note that there was a huge active network of BBS's for years, complete with image-oriented pages, that had functions similar to the Internet. It was operated and funded entirely by the individuals involved.
Ha! Who are you trying to kid? Corporations are the biggest welfare recipients in the country! They're always looking for a handout. Unfair taxation? What the hell are you talking about? We're all subject to arbitrary and irresponsible taxation. What makes them so special that they should be above it? They aren't hoping for a small return. They wouldn't be in the internet business if they were hoping for a small return. They want to achieve monopoly status and consumer lock-in. That's where the big bucks are. That's what corporations shoot for. They don't like competition. They don't make astronomical profits when competition exists. The system wasn't set up to give corporations full reign to do as they please in this country. It was set up to benefit the people as a whole. Where the interests of the general population conflict with that of corporations, the interests of the general population should prevail.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Maybe for US people typing in "McDonalds" alone will find the fast food chain, but maybe in the UK it will prompt so you can choose the family group (clan?) instead
I'm off topic, but you must be kidding: McDonalds the hamburger chain has thoroughly colonised the UK (where I live) as well as every other country that I've been to.
And ironically, as a Scot I'm sad to say that there is probably more interest in Scottish family history on your side of the pond (among the numerous descendants of the victims of the Highland Clearances, and homesick expat Scottish engineers in S.V. too) than there is on mine. If homebound Scots these days gave a toss about their cultural identity they'd have seceded from the UK years ago.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Ditch the country codes. All of them. The whole point of the Net is that physical location isn't supposed to matter.
.AU domains have different legal restrictions than do .DE and .US ones.
We can ditch country codes exactly when "countries" become obsolete--when the governments that define those countries stop trying to pass different laws governing how things work.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
> Pay as you go. Any other arrangement is theft.
More Randite nonsense. Sounds as thrilling and makes as little sense as the lyrics on a heavy metal album. I hope you never have any children, or if you do that you have thought these issues out a little bit more thoroughly by then. Because, see, your two-week-old infant can't "pay as he goes." He's, like, too young to get a job, get it?
By the way, if Americans had adopted your attitude in, say, 1941, then today you and I would both know all the lyrics to the "Horst Wessel Lied" by heart.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
If wealthy creators do the best work, we'd all benefit by filtering out the trash at the bottom of the heap.
Too bad the best work is often done by high school and college kids with no money who don't even know sombody who knows sombody who can name a single VC. Then there's the distinct possability that some worthy ideas are anathema to VC's by nature. For example who would fund a site warning about an unprofessional VC who ripped a person for all they were worth?
Consider this site! It did not exactly start out as a multi-million dollar investment. Part of the real power and usefulness is that anybody can have their say here for a very modest fee.
Lazy people will be too lazy to get their site set up and bring it to your attention. Useless people reveal their uselessness quickly enough to not be a problem.
Now, you're probably asking, "where did
It doesn't have to stop there, of course. Consider my original idea of
The idea is that
We'll compare the two: The Slim Corporation creates wealth and jobs. Mr. Slim wants to post pictures of his fat girlfriend.
By that logic, if K-mart wants the land your house is on, you should have 2 weeks to get out.
Unless the domain names allow for the type of detail necessary to distinguish between trademark uses -- is this domain for a company that sells detergent or operating systems? -- it will continue to completely undermine the very notion that trademarks are assigned for specific uses and don't automatically remove normal words from everyday language. Nevermind complications from considering multiple languages
What is to be done about various international trademark disputes? In some countries, "aspirin" is a trademark owned by Bayer Aspirin, but not in the US where it's considered the generic name for acetylsalicylic acid. Is it just that US policy will continue to dictate how the internet functions on a global basis?
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Or is that too obvious.
Working for the (other) man
I have no problem with this... at least it will slow down these name hogs who call themselves "brokers" and then try to scam everyone. Trademarks and Corporate names should be protected they are the ones who have gone to all the hard work to make the name not some "broker". Just my two cents...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Indeed, secondary-level domains can be fun as well. I approve of something like ".co, .ac/.edu, .gov, .net" or variants on a theme; only if there's a whole category of things that are missing should it be added under the country level. Incidentally, if you're in .ca, how come there's a www.worldvisions.ca ? .co.uk people who aren't companies.
Maybe a ".home.uk" would be fun, though, if only to clear out all the
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
The thing that worries me most about this is an email I received this morning from my lawyers, which I'll quote:
.Com .COM, .EDU, and .ORG top level domains registered. Although the Decision
------------------- begin quote -----------------
US SEIZES JURISDICTION OVER DOT.COM COMPANIES
Mere registration of top level domain sufficient
US companies able to seize worldwide registrations
US trademark owners able to have domain names of others expropriated
Over the last few years we have commented on Internet cases from around the world which
we believe would be of interest to UK businesses and others. For some readers these
cases may have been more relevant than others. Today however we report on a decision of
the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia which has perhaps the furthest
reaching implications for worldwide internet governance.
In its Decision of Friday 5th March 2000, Caesars World, Inc -v- Caesars-Palace
and others (Civil Action No 99-550-A), Judge Albert Bryan effectively decreed that his
court would be the arbiter of the property rights in respect of all the approx.
7,000,000
dealt solely with the motions of two of the defendants to dismiss an action for lack of
jurisdiction, the effect of the Decision is to open the floodgate to litigation by
holders of US trademarks against domain name proprietors based outwith the US (or at
least outwith Virginia.
-------------------- end quote ------------------
Now, it may have escaped your attention in America, but the Internet is international; it has been international since Arpanet was linked to Janet in the early eighties. When we set up ICANN (I say 'we' - I was convenor of one of the Geneva sessions of the working party which led to the setting up of ICANN) it was precisely to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
The only possible consequence of this sort of nonsense is that the domain name service will collapse; courts and politicians in Europe (and, I imagine, in Japan) are not going to like being told that American trade-mark owners have first claim on an international resource. Either the Virginia court is persuaded to see sense, or we'd better get on with developing a replacement for the Domain Name System.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
where there are multiple trademarks on a word or phrase, such as in different industries. (For example, who gets 'linux': Linus or the European laundry soap co.?)
-mark
-mark
If your computer says LINUX, run...computers can't talk! [unless you have text-speech software]
The globalization of the economy vai the net is going to create a huge trademark furball. Until recently, someone in Italy and someone in Ventura, California didn't have to worry if their product names were similar. Those two product markets were so distinct that it didn't matter. As we break down the barriers between markets through the net, conflicts that didn't used to exist are going to crop up. For example, let's say there is a small company in Vermont selling a product locally under a given name. There is a company in Texas selling something else under the same or a similar name. Both companies have been using the name for 30 years. Both start selling over the net, creating confusion. Now what happens? Obviously, the same can happen with two large companies from different countries. Trademark law was not really designed to handle these situations in an elegant manner.
We get all riled up when someone squats on, say, openssh, but we feel its our right and privilidge to be able to grab www.microsoft.sucks.
The whole point of trademarks is that companies can have some control over how their name is used. Am I the only one who notices a double standard?
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Got Rhinos?
One thing I've noticed a lot lately on Slashdot is the use of acronyms that, unless you're involved in the issues at hand, are a complete mystery. Can someone please elaborate on what a TLD is?
The Icann voting process would allow any user who was/is over the age of 16,(Yeah like that can be proved on-line) international election of the special council, then they appoint their on chioces on 9 more members to the board. The other nine will be representing commercial interests only. Follow the money to get to the root of the policy, the whole thing is geared toward big business who can afford to lobby their representetive to the council to push their agenda. The meeting in Cairo will be more of the same. ICANN has members.icann.org (too lazy to link) which is set up for non commercial interests to voice their opinions. I don't beleive this weill get any attention at all, more a pr move than anything else.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
giving trademark holders first dibs is fine. the better answer is making the domains arbitrary. let's say microsoft get dibs on microsoft.xxx and microsoft.pub and microsoft.sucks...big deal. for the internet's end users (which is ~all~ of us) it's no big deal to get what either the big companies missed (for the squatter in you). keeping 'domains' together still works (support.microsoft.xxx and youthink.microsoft.sucks).
.com's are rerouted without incident. maybe i'm rambling; maybe i'm tired; maybe i'm on the wrong page, but that really seems immediately feasible.
without violating these rules, NSI could still profit from arbitrary names without domain limitations like bill.gates.my.hero, which does ~not~ include license or rights to cmdr.taco.my.hero. NSI makes money; people can choose names better than 1eye41eye.org; trademark holders are happy and i can get the name idiot.freak if i want. name servers need almost no reconfigs or upgrades for this to happen, pop mail services would have to be set up for the exact name, but most
neopets.com
1. If the Internet had not been "exploited" and "taken over" by businesses, it would still be a useless boondoggle.
Really? And all the scientific dialog, the ability for university research programs to communicate quickly and effectively - do I even need to go on? - a "useless boondoggle?" Hm. I expect the creation of alt.flame was probably one of the points at which people realized the 'Net had a lot more potential than simply exchanging research data.
2. They didn't create the Net, but without them we wouldn't want the Net.
You are so wrong. We could still be using it to develop open source software, host useless web pages, and pour nice hot bowls of grits down your pants. Come on, now.
3. Here's an interesting question: if I decide that I want to name the street I'm developing something like "Apple Street," should Apple be able to stop me? No. Because while Apple(TM) may be a trademark, apple (or even Apple) is not. Isn't that roughly analagous to this situation? Think about the implications of businesses with plain-language names getting involved here. There are many. There are also many businesses names that are common last names. What if mister Slim buys Slim.ert before the diet company does? is there a problem with that?
nope.
[|]
If you get rid of the country codes, how are you going to distinguish between the governments of all the countries, since they`ll all come under .gov? At the moment I can go to .gov.uk and get the UK government; I assume that under your proposals I`d go to .uk.gov. What`s the difference? (And why, for that matter, don`t I go to .gov.us to get the US government? Surely .gov, being international, should belong to something like the United Nations?)
Of course, one asks how do internation rules come into play. For that, we need to force the use of country codes, then have each country decide the usage of the TLD within that country code. If you are looking for megacorp.com, the browser should be smart enough to start at www.megacorp.com.us if you are in the States, or www.megacorp.co.uk if in britian or so on. Thus, the *true* TLDs are the country codes, then each country can set it's own restrictions, so that the definition of a US non-profit organization does not play into how the UK might decide who gets org.uk domains.
But it all falls down to teaching the public and businesses that those TLDs *are* important in distiquishing between commercial and non-commercial interests. Commercial companies should have absolutely no reason to grab an .org name, and should be prevented from doing so. Thus, trademark dilution due to domain names in a unappropriate TLD become null and void; the TLD indicates that the word is not associated with the commercial business. (Mind you, if the content on the page is libel, that's something different).
Alas, the days when URLs were meant to be invisible to the non-proficent user are long gone.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
I go to namespace.ORG, and right in the center of the page is an advertisement, from "Name.Space" for domain registration for $69.95.
Just because they charge money doesn`t mean they`re necessarily for-profit. For all you know, they`re charging the minimum necessary to cover their costs. And since they`re fighting a legal battle at the moment against Network Solutions, they probably need all the money they can get.
Here`s another point. At the moment, most people looking for a business either know the URL from advertisements or use search engines. Why should this change when we have new TLDs? So why should more choices be a problem?
I own a couple of
This is about US$35.00 each or US$105.00 per year for a domain name.
Now I'm going to have to buy more TLD's to avoid cybersquatters?
Where are the TLD police?
Can't they troll the internet for misused TLD's?
my
-- Andy
* "Uncle this droid is malfunctioning" -- Luke Skywalker
The problem was more in how the switch from being ARPA to comercial was handled. A lot of loose ends were left up in the air and the real power went to NSI. Everytime ICAN rattled the saber they were slapped around by certain congress members. 21 Bil for NSI goes a long way.
At any account the two large issues were trademark and the incredible chunks of change a row in a database cost.
As for trademarks I echo what others have said. Although there are rules in place they arn't applied across the board. For instance, by NSI's rules etoy should have never been pulled. But the deeper issues are corporate interests VS. "the little guy".
An example is nissan.com. This domain is owned by Mr. Nissan, (who's family has held the name for almost 3000 years). Nissan Computer Corp has had a trademark since 1991 on the name. Nissan Motor corp wants the name. Although NSI rules have kept Nissan Motors from taking the name outright they can still litigate Mr. Nissan into the poor house.
No matter how you cut it money and power pervail over rightful ownership.
Thanks for all the info, but just out of curiousity is this story a record for the most number of links in a non-quickie post?
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
There is nothing magical about the existing DNS tree, except that everyone uses it. Why not establish another group of root servers in some country that doesn't give a rat's ass about US trademarks (say...China?) and create whatever TLDs we want. If we all chip in our registration fees that would otherwise go to Network Solutions, I'm sure our new "Open" DNS organization could buy the hardware / bandwith needed. OK, for interoperability, it would have to be set up to forward queries not resolved in the "new" namespace to servers linked to the "old" namespace, but that shouldn't be difficult. Load up a new root cache file and tell ICANN where they can stick their board.
This might be a stupid couple questions (moderate accordingly:-)):
Lets say that any TLDs would have to protect trademarks as proposed. So is there a great big Trademark database out there to be consulted (and can I find it on the web)?
I'm reminded of an old article in an MS TechNet CD (not sure if it's still on there) that actually had a list of all the computer related Trademarks and who owned them. It was always fun to browse through and see what people trademarked.
If there is then is it just a national dB or does it cover international Trademarks?
What if some international Trademarks conflict?
Would the rules protecting Trademarks protect "current" Trademarks, or could domains with those new TLDs get kicked out by someone claiming the domain after Trademarking something?
Every time a DNS/ICANN related story comes up, myself and several others post relevant information about how you can get involved, how you can participate, and what you should be doing if you don't like or don't agree with the way these policies are being developed.
Now, here's another story, stating the truth of what I and others have been saying for $DEITY knows how long now.
I'll make this very simple:
IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS, GET INVOLVED AND CHANGE IT!
And that doesn't mean joining the ICANN At-Large membership. It means getting involved with the Domain name Service Organization, specifically Working Groups B and C, and working to get rid of business-centric, short-sighted policies before they're enacted. In the end, it all comes down to numbers: Right now, the corporate lawyers and the businesspeople have a stronger lobby within ICANN than the individuals and the end-users do.
Don't be fooled, you will NOT have any impact on policy from the At-Large Membership. The proper venue for activism is within the DNSO working groups.
See this page for the mailing list archives of the working groups, and instructions on how to join. It's as easy as subscribing to a mailing list.
Unless and until you actually get off your ass and do something to change things, you're just going to be pissing in the wind. Slashdot is a wonderful forum, but all of you should be voicing your concerns where they matter, in the Working Groups, instead of here.
.@.
This will be incredibly difficult to manage and simple to defeat but will put a quick and easy end to cybersquatting of Top Level Domains. You can bet that there won't be 3 million weird sounding domains.
Mark
Totally, it's much easier said than done IMOH. I can't imagine how you'd change things that would be better. In the end someone is going to be typing in some text to go someplace and more than someone is going to want to be the destination. Heck we've already seen lawsuits over search engine results (granted most of them have been stupid). When someone types in Car people are going to want to be the destination for that rather than SuperDuperCar, and yet someone else might have Car Trademarked (well they won't have exactly "car" trademarked but it's hypothetical).
I hear ya on IPv6. I've actually spoken with a few places using it in production environments, but even they're treated somewhat experimental, but that's OT.
Or are there supposed to be restrictions on who can register these new ones (like country codes)?
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Well, this certainly poses an interesting problem. Suppose a new TLD, .foo, is formed. On one hand, in a perfect world, companies would not have to worry about cybersquatters and/or other companies with similiar names. Each company would have a robust, intuitive domain name that would allow interested parties to find them with litle problem. On the other hand, in the real world, competition for domain names is fierce, and will remain such regardless of however many TLDs are created. It is certainly justifiable, under these circumstances, for companies to want some sort of assurances that they will not have to deal with squatters whom have no real legitimate claim to a domain name.
But what other ways can this be resolved? Well, there is the current Anti Cybersquatting legislation. I am not familiar enough with it for an in-depth dissection, but from what I've seen it is a rather clumsy, heavy-handed approach
that may harm legitimate, private users.
Until we have an easy, universal set of criteria to aid in determining whether a domain claim is legitimate, we are going to see this problem, and variations thereof.
Perhaps what we need is a "Meta" TLD that would allow multiple companies/individuals with legitimate claims on a domain to register it. Example: I, proprieter of ford computers, wish to register ford.com, a domain to which I have an arguable claim to. However, it's already been claimed by Ford, a popular auto maker. So, with the meta TLD, any queries to www.ford.com would pull up a page that would present choices to the user: (i.e., "Are you looking for Ford auto? Click here." "Are you looking for Ford computers? Click here."). I imagine it would ultimately end up similiar to some of the redirect pages (openssh.org) we see posted voluntarily.
Not a perfect solution, granted, but I think it may go a long ways towards solving some of the current issues.
-- if(game-theory) moderate++;
Here's the deal:
.com, .net, or .org), and have ramrodded through what is now being accepted as a legitimate proposal that would eliminate the possibility of new TLDs without this shift of cost and burden from the TM holder to the domain name registrar.
As a trademark (or other intellectual property) owner, you are required by US and International law to protect your TM/IP, or lose it. The law clearly and firmly places the burden of policing possible infringements on the TM owner.
This includes the time, effort, and cost involved.
There are existing services that charge a nominal fee to do domain name/trademark infringement searches. Some registrars have this as part of their business model (e.g., look at the links off of http://www.whois.net).
Now, ICANN, via Working Group B (which is stacked full of TM/IP lawyers), wants to shift that burden to the registrars themselves, eliminating that business model, and superceeding US and International trademark/intellectual property law!
The folks from Working Group B have even invaded Working Group C, the WG for the addition of new Top-Level Domains (such as a
In short, the TM holders don't like US and International law placing the burden and cost of protecting their marks on their shoulders, and have found a political venue in which they can get away with shifting this burden onto someone else.
And every single one of you who isn't in there fighting to prevent this is tacitly allowing this to happen.
If this becomes reality, ICANN will have effectively superceded worldwide laws and treaties.
And since the DNSO leading body, the "Names Council", and the ICANN Board of Directors is full of trademark/intellectual property owners and biased business owners, this stands a very good chance of happening. The only way to prevent this is for each and every one of you to GET INVOLVED.
.@.
Besides this, country codes only rarely give any indication of the site's purpose, which a domain name should be restricted to doing. Take, for example, my old high school's URL; I think it ran http://flinthill.ind.k12.va.us or something like that. This is a classic example of too much information in a name (Flint Hill, Independent school, K-12, Virginia, US), leading to something a lot longer than a domain name should be. A simple http://www.flinthill.edu would have been better (and isn't taken either).
This also gets around trademark issues, because it makes it quite clear when a name is being used for commercial purposes.
How does this sound to people? The problem is that the current system is too fluid; flexibility has its place but this goes too far. Obviously, more TLD's than these are needed; feel free to contribute more. Just remember that any you add should be thought out such that an entity can obviously fit into only one of these TLD's, or obviously fits into one catecory far better than the rest.
Almost all network providers are also commercial organizations. In their view, they have a perfect right to both a .com and a .net address. I find it hard to disagree with them.
IMHO half right:) this should not change the fact that each name space has it's own uses.
The {ISP}.COM name space should encapulate the commercial side of the organisation, ie, advertising, press releases, investor relations, etc.
The {ISP}.NET name space should encapsulate the network services, say DNS, email, ftp/web spaces, etc.
non-profit organizations are
Except, of course, for the commercial
-----------------------------------------------
Really there are two problems, and nobody admits they have to be addressed seperatly.
First there is commercial tradmarks and the area the trademark covers. For instance:
McDonalds.com - the fast food restaruant we all know
McDonalds.com - the orginal restaruant that Ray Kroc bought the idea from (Are they still around, in any case the rights of that deal should handle this)
McDonalds.com - a local electrical company in some small city run by some brothers McDonald.
McDonalds.com Same as the last one, but diffierenty city. Maybe these guys are plumbers, whaterver.
McDonalds.com Again a small local buisness. Maybe a hairstylists that takes appointments on the web
You get the idea, a major recignised worldwide name, but it cannot do anything about the small reginal companies that are not compittion. Somehow the needs of all these comercial interests need to be met. (And I think we all agree that McDonalds restaruant and McDonalds heating can be in the same town without problem, but you can't have a second McDonalds restaruant in the world unless it has been McDonalds for 100 years)
On the other side we have personal sites. I want to be McDonalds.per because my family name is McDonald (okay, my last name is not McDonalds, but I know some McDonalds and it makes the point best) which when combined with the rest of my family allows email to bluGill@McDonalds.per and Jounior@McDonalds.per to get through easially. Since .per specificly dissallows anyone with a trademark from getting a domain we are free from the previous problems. Somehow however we need to solve the next one though: There are many families McDonald in the world, and most of them are not blood relatives. (you could up to Adam and Eve or the evoltion equevelent)
The business world has a severely bloated sense of its own importance, and how much everyone needs them; they make big rationalizations to support this claim. In their ego, they like to take credit for everything. Your post is a classic example of all of this.
The idea that the Internet needs businesses is bullshit, totally unfounded. Businesses need the Internet, the Internet doesn't need businesses. The Internet exploded of its own accord, but the US economy is only exploding because of the Internet (thank you very much).
The Internet was just fine before businesses got involved. It was already exploding. The business world took years to figure out how to take advantage of it, or even whether "this Internet thing is here to stay"! Most had no clue. We have little if anything to "thank" them for. The Internet, and maybe everything else, would do just fine without them.
Your comments show you have no idea what was going on with the Internet before e-commerce. Well, lots of things were. For one, the very technology for the current Internet was developed on the Internet itself, back when it was what you call "a useless boondoggle". For another, it offered great academic and research benefit (but maybe you consider those useless, too). A lot of cross-cultural communication, more than ever before in history. The Internet was transforming the world long before the first banner ad appeared.
OK, so you say "we wouldn't all those high-speed lines and powerful servers if it weren't for banner ads." But this is wrong too. If people want to create and read Web pages, the system would adjust to accommodate them, distributing its load as needed. Instead of having one Yahoo, there would be a directory site, a news site, an email site, a map site.... If you know anything about Web technology, you know it would be very easy to do. The simple fact is, we don't need businesses, and that makes them very uncomfortable. They're used to pushing everyone around, and any situation where they can't is threatening to them.
I could go on. Perhaps you should question your own compulsion to kneel unquestioningly at the altar of business. Where did you get the impression they're doing everyone such favors? From reading and watching the news, maybe? Who controls the news media, hmm?
I do like how the truth sounds, but your post is nothing close to the truth. It's definitely not "common sense". It's revisionist history and pro-corporate propaganda.
And I'll say it again...
DNS names were never meant to be seen by the general public. They were never really meant to be seen by anyone, but the process of creating a URL system over a URL system took too long and so people advertise domain names.
What we need to do is simple:
Currently the "location" field in a web browser is only vaguely useful. It's a good place to type in the web site URL when you know it, and it's a quick way to verify what domain/file you're on. But what about when it's what it is in mine right now:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00%2F03%2F07%I, a trained geek who likes to know these obscure things don't need to see that, and the average joe definitely doesn't need to see it. What if that were replaced by a set of fields that gave me my location in some kind of logical hierarchy? "Language: English, Site Type: Online Forum, Site Name: Slashdot, Site Section: Article Comment Posting"
That (from what I understand) is that they're trying to allow with URNs.
That would also mean that when you're trying to reach McDonalds Clothing you fill in McDonalds in one box, Clothing in another, and then you're done. No accidental exposure to grease-filled nutrition free "sandwiches".
If that were done it wouldn't matter who owns mcdonalds.com or ford.com. It wouldn't matter that slashdot has a .org domain and that openssh.org isn't the main OpenSSH web site.
Am I dreaming? I don't think so... All we need is a push to get rid of browsers displaying URLs and we're halfway there.