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New TLDs On The Way From ICANN
ChrisBennett writes: "ICANN has just suggested a policy for introducing new Top Level Domains. This policy will be considered at the ICANN meeting on July 15-16, 2000 in Yokohama, Japan. I guess we'll be seeing the .rob and .dot TLDs that CmdrTaco wanted after all."
Just a note:
Today in the NYTimes Circuits section, there was a whole page ad for "www.*.tv" domains
I just thought that was kewl
Woteva
-Sam
Local companies such as auto body shops should be encouraged to register domains under (state).us or (city).(state).us instead of the
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$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Yes, they COULD do that. Or maybe the lynx people (or maybe even you!) could change lynx to do that for you?
That'll never happen. It'll be impossible to
enforce, and many sites are quite general
purpose (e.g. geocities). How would someone
stick not-for-children content on geocities?
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Competition? See The Open Root Server Confederation as well as This Comment, Above. Exactly what you're looking for.
.mob -- So organized crime has it's own space for getting in on the Internet racket (not unlike the .com investors who got fleeced in the Big Securities Takedown yesterday),
.cat -- Because one of our felines had his own phone line, why not a domain?
.bum -- So Rush Limbaugh's research team can be quickly identified,
.firstpost -- umm, never mind..
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"O Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can,
the serenity to accept those I cannot, and a big pile of money."
".sig,
- Someday, I may decide to sell T-shirts or something, or go commercial in some other way. This seems a bit far-fetched to me now, but who knows what I'll be thinking 5 years from now...
- (This is the real reason.) Suppose my site becomes semi-popular. Obviously, someone is going to register geekissues.com. What's going to happen then? 10% of my traffic will go to that site, because a lot of people don't even know that something besides
.com exists.
So I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite...BTW, posted with a recent Mozilla nightlie. This is getting very usable, stable, and fast. Maybe someone will hack together an MDI version of it... like Opera. :)
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Or maybe prohibit any one entity (corporation or individual) from registering the same 2nd level domain in more than one TLD[1]. So if you register xyz.com then you cannot also register xyz.org, xyz.net etc. This would force people to choose wisely in which TLD to register.
[1] With the possible exception of ISPs who would be allowed to register in the .net TLD (for their own equipment) as well as an appropriate one for use by their customers.
I suppose that in a way it is similar to the situation wrt postage stamps. Stamps from every country, except the UK, carry the country name. Though the difference is that "non-country-marked" stamps do not claim to be global but are actually country specific.
http://dot.dot.dot?
"aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash dot dot dot dot dot dot"
*giggle*
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Peter
I'm still interested in getting a few interesting ones like....
www.OOOgacha.ca
or
www.b.org
or......
I better not go on or I'll be troll bait.
If at first you don't feel good.... suffer like the rest of us.
Instead of the current system of many DNS servers all listening only to Internic's, why not store the DNS database on every computer?
If all people customized and hooked up to a new Name System, the current foofa would fade.
No longer would ICANN have sole authority over TLDs. Any group could create their own mapping of of Names to Numbers, and the users would choose who to listen to.
For example, I could create a list with IMO the most deserving owners occupying the best names.
eToys.sell would sit besides Etoys.know or eBay.sell would crowd in with ebay.hate .
I can hear your objections.
No naming database would be complete!
Just like Gnutella, your personal NS would contact other sources to find an unknown address.
It's easily corruptable and/or insecure, and/or out of date!
If ICANN's NS is wrong, try Slashdot's NS. If they don't work, go to GNU's NS.
I imagine this distributed NS would break ICANN's strangehold and turn into a cross between the Open Directory and Everything2.
A moderated, controversial naming system. The group of people you most trust through common interests would also share their opinion on links and names.
How 'bout it?
So who gets to enforce the charter on .xxx? =)
This, and other parts of the Topic, suggest that ICANN is looking at actually enforcing the distinctions in any new TLDs. So if you go to mcdonalds.banc, you likely won't be getting an ad for Big Macs.
Another interesting tidbit is:
Which seems to imply that if a person named Ford registers ford under a TLD reserved for personal domain names, any claim by the auto maker would (in theory) be ignored.
The last piece I'm going to point out is the timeline. The official announcment of the addition of any new TLDs won't be happening until November 1. Contracts between ICANN and registrars have a deadline of December 1. There is no mention of when the TLDs become available, but one would assume it would be after the contracts are finalized. (Please note that the schedule is only suggested and not final)
But then again, I could be wrong.
What I'd really like to see is at least one TLD that commercial entities may not purchase. There's no point in creating a new TLD if all the names that already exist in .com are going to be snatched up by the same companies ten minutes later.
.fam TLD, for family sites. Something like this should be off-limits to corporations, so that, for example, someone name McDonald would be able to have mcdonald.fam. (Ideally, it would even require having that actually be your name, but that would get hairy. I might want to register a domain for my mother's family, which would use her maiden name, which is not my own last name. This would probably not be feasible...)
As an example, when this topic has come up before, one of the ones I really liked was the
I'm sure there are other possible TLDs that would be inappropriate for commercial entities. Let's restrict those so that there will actually be some domains left for the rest of us.
-Joe
I misspelled .org on my way here today, and .rog TLD, Rob could
I thought "If they had a
take care of idiots like me" .
And when the page finally loaded, what did I
see up the top but a story about new TLDs.
It's a sign from God I tell you.
Sorry, microsoft needs to maintain backward-compatability with some form of dos browser.
so it becomes www.micros~1 and www.micros~2
-Tannin Kal
What about this one?
:)
No new TLDs necessary, just convince the guy who owns index.pl.
-jfedor
Should a site which shows a lady's ankle be required to be in ".xxx"?
The solution is to adopt an unambiguous naming system. Maybe calling it a "location" system is a better name. Just like the post office requires an unambiguous address to process the mail, the user needs to provide enough information to single out the desired site. The post office will not deliver mail with just a name on it (even if it is famous).
There are of course a lot of details to be worked out, but my idea is that companies (or people) provide a classified list of names that refer to them, e.g., company name, physical location, products, trademarks, abbreviations, etc. The user fills out a form or uses a shorthand to describe the desired site. If not enough info is provided, the user can select from a list of matches. Once disambiguated, the browser can save the match.
The disadvantages are that no one will get a short name and there would be an enormous hue and cry to make such a change. The advantages are that no one will be left out and it would be a more rational system.
The way the DNS system works currently makes that not really an option (without compleatly re-working it).
.com's are.
.coms where microsoft.com's DNS is.
Currently, if you look for www.microsoft.com, a request is sent to your local DNS, and asks it if it knows the number for that name.
Assuming it doesn't, then the DNS ask's one of the root servers where the central list of all
It then asks the central list of all
Then is asks microsoft.com's DNS for the number for www.microsoft.com
It's a hierachical structure.
So, no, it's not technologicaly straightfrowerd to remove TLD's a the moment.
If it makes them happy then let them do it. As for me I simply don't care.
/. is really 64.28.67.48?
Let them name their sites whatever. They still got to get peoples attention. I'd rather stick with numbers, afterall, who can forget that
It all gets changed into numbers in the end anyhow. Why get a middleman involved?
Come see my website.
http://come.to/streiff
Check out the case of Chase Business Solutions vs Chase Manhatten Bank, they're losing the domain basically because they don't have the huge sums of money to see it through court, even though there is no way they should be able to lose. . .
(A HREF="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/11338 .html">Register article)
~ppppppppö
Moderate this UP!
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I actually think the best suggestion for a new top level domain in the document is a TLD devoted to material of an 'adult' nature.
.xxx and/or .sex and also a .mp3 and a .exe
.org or .edu anyway.
I have to agree with you there. Now, mind you, I'm the webperson for a N.O.W. website and I just sold my old house to a feminist non-profit, but I really think that we need to face certain facts, like where half of the traffic is (before napster).
So, we could use a
Of course, some carriers will block these, but it makes it easier to deal with schools and libraries and repressive countries while allowing the Net to continue to be open for most people. Note that sex education would be either
Will in Seattle
Naming things .mp3 and .exe could quite possibly be a bad idea for people who use Internet Explorer (and let's face it, there are a lot of them).
But naming things so that IE breaks is a good thing!
Will in Seattle
I would think county TLDs are quite a good idea because there _are_ a lot of things specific to a single country (think of goverment. for example). A company that is only available in a certain country; cultural information etc.
Of course these "come.to" adresses are quite stupid but that's an other matter
Then yould disable javascript on all .porn or .xxx sites so you won't get 30000 pop-up windows. EASY!
gimme www.clownpenis.fart baby!
Thats all fine and good for the soft stuff, but what about some hard core .xxxx stuff ;)
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Yes ! Ever did try to get to the reiserfs page ?
.. please. whats the point of this ?
.. for those who want reiserfs, the url is http://devlinux.com/projects/reiserfs/)
I mean, did you try:
reiserfs.org - grabber
reiserfs.com - grabber
reiserfs.net - grabber
namesys.com - grabber
namesys.org - grabber
namesys.net - grabber
AARRRGGHH !!! stop it
(ok
Samba Information HQ
Dave Blau
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Sure, some stuff like .xxx etc may be useful as noted by other posts, but what about the others?
.com or .net or .org? Do you even bother to see who owns the .net or .org names? Who cares?
.net or the .org versions. The only time extra TLDs become useful is when we want to trick users from other sites - ie .org and .net versions have sites supporting opposite views on a topic. But that's not a 'useful' application of TLDs.
When you think of say, Microsoft, do you think whether it's a
How many people want to distinguish companies with the same name by their TLD? How many companies actually enjoy having to register under every single TLD (and sometimes under every country too) to protect against 'evil' ppl?
In the end, one name is taken by one company. When we want to see XYZ, we go to XYZ, we don't worry about whether we want the
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Just wondering how the new "public" ICANN at large group fits into this.
We obviously have a say, but will our voices be heard?
Will we have a vote? naw....
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Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
But not too long, if they are going to discuss this during the July 15-16th meeting.
I think that one important thing to consider is the phrase "consider adopting".
The ICANN Board of Directors is expected to consider adopting such a policy at its meeting on 15-16 July 2000 in Yokohama, Japan.
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Interested in the Colorado Lottery?
Interested in the Colorado Lottery or Powerball games?
check out http://colotto.com
imho, introducing a .sex TLD would set an unholy precedent. What about erotic art? Would that need to be .xxx as well? Or parody/jokes involving nekkid folks? When you have em all at their own .tld, of course this is censorship heaven ... people will start to demand blocking for (once again) the sake of children or something stoopid... this is just one more example of "help, protect my children because Im unable to raise and educate my kids in a proper manner, I just want to put them in front of the pc and let them entertain and educate themselves" ... or something like that. Whats next, a TLD for unpopular attitudes? Yeah, lets put up .geek, grreeat for agencies who look for unusual behaviour - all theyd have to do is a whois on *.geek :-/
nc
I will not buy this software, it is scratched
Name space is a different issue from having a network entry. Of course .invalid isn't there - nobody owns it, and it's not *supposed* to have a network attached to it. .uucp works the way sethg described it, and it's similarly not something that the internic would have a good way to register - for instance, there's no central DNS server that's authoritative and nobody in charge. But the names are still part of the DNS name space.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Basically, it's unworkable, but that doesn't mean that a few politicians won't encourage it as a way of telling their constituents that They're Doing Something.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That's assuming that any TLD is as good as any other.
Because it's entrenched in the minds of *billions* of people, .com will be the preferred domain for years. A few others like .web or .corp might become recognized, but that's probably it. All you do with new TLDs is make every company scramble for "mycompany.web" and "mycompany.corp", or whatever wins. (Or sue whoever got to them first.)
You think people will have the patience to try to find the right "descriptive" name? "ford cars" nope "ford automobiles" nope "ford motor co" nope "ford motor corporation" ahh that's it.
I think you've almost hit the nail on the head - there *is* no good solution to this problem. Let's stick with the broken system we've got, rather than the broken one we haven't figured out yet.
Whatever... just because you can't scale it to every atom in the universe doesn't mean it's broken.
.com address... lets see, ibm.comp, perhaps.. ibm.food, nah..
.com namespace.. the whole reason we got into this mess is because it hasn't been expanded. What were the options? Well we make money and we don't educate.. I guess that makes us a dotcom. And individuals.., what are their options? I don't make money directly, I don't educate and I'm not a non-profit, who cares then.. If everytime there was some confusion over a domain, we had to bifurcate, we wouldn't just end up with confidentialinsurance.ci.kalamazoo.longhorn.wa.us (I'm guessing of course, though all of those domain levels are in use).. How is anybetter than confidentialinsurance_kalamazoo.ins.. hell, you can't find anything on the web anyway without a search engine... If everybody had to use the long a$$ physical location scheme that would be the biggest boost to alternate forms of address lookups they could possibly hope for.
The whole point of DNS is to make it EASIER to remember site locations. Your solution, although scalable, makes it harder. Why do you think nobody uses that solution? Because it sucks. I don't know where IBM is located and I don't care. In a wider field of TLD's it's not that hard to try to find it, even if they relinquish their
And what about people... people want nameservice too.. Again, the better points of DNS is that it doesn't matter where you are or what your ip is. If your ISP annoys you into going somewhere else, you take your domain with you and nobody notices (except for a couple days of course).. If you move across town, I don't want to have to change my domain just as much as I would want to change it with my isp. Gee, used to be eightball.belair.md.us, then was eightball.richmond.va.us... !!!why don't you freakin' stay in one place!!!! (ps - moved a couple times after this as well) On top of that, maybe I don't want to lead people to my doorstep..
And this misuse you speak of.. how are you supposed to keep it from happening in this system as well?? You're gonna have to prove it one way or another that you live there and it does nothing about name squatting.. At least you can prove that IBM has nothing to do with: food, sex, banking, personal name or art. Adding more TLDs would actually lower the value of each TLD, so it's not worth getting ibm.food because no one in their right mind would ever go there. If people want to spend money on that.. fine, they are helping to support the infrastructure, but doesn't necessarily cause any confusion..
Actually, now that I think about it, your solution may be less scalable than adding new TLD's and is perhaps dangerous to DNS itself.. The whole point of new TLD's is to relieve the pressure on the
Reading that aticle made me feel like a ninja -- now I know the hidden domain! My friend here points out that ten years ago, there was ARPAnet, and on the web it became .arpa. Then ARPAnet disappears for a while. All the sudden, there's .arpa ("address and routing parameters area") again! When we teach History of the Internet in the high schools of 2020, this is going to confuse the hell out of the students.
"History of the internet?" I ask. "How's it going to end?"
"Probably when you can't tell whether something is on the internet anymore. This hammer... is it on the internet? Hmmm."
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
SOS in morse code! :-)
Charles
Hmmm... www.microsoft.crap...
Then you could sell off "is.crap"... www.microsoft.is.crap... The possibilities are endless...
Oh bang paths, how I miss them. Once Upon A Time, there was a BBS running on a 286/10, and we had a menu item "INTERNET E-mail!" that was a text file explaining how, by bouncing your mail four BBSs down the line then through a gateway, it was possible to send mail to any internet e-mail address; and how to figure out YOUR VERY OWN INTERNET E-MAIL ADDRESS (how exciting and unreadable!). What we didn't mention was that it averaged 2-3 days between us and the internet :)
One day the Internet will grow out of its .net, org, com, etc... roots.
Big Bis will want more.
So too will the rest of us.
I for one *would* want a home page of eubergeek.hack
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If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
there's no particular reason why icann is in charge of this whole dns thing... i don't think it would hurt to compete with them.
there was recently a discusion at kuro5hin.org about this. and folks were saying that all it would take would be some hardware and to change the defaults setting that you download bind with.
sure it would take a while before all or even most people would update to include the new dns servers. but that's ok. not everyone has AOL keywords either...
icann is good enough... it manages pretty decent considerring how fast the net is changing. but it could be better with a little competition...
Domain names need to map (at least somewhat loosely) onto international trademark law so that McDonalds.food and McDonalds.bank don't conflict in any way.
A noble idea, but the only way to achieve it is to completely get rid of the existing structure as you introduce strict regulations. Probably not going to happen.
maybe im wrong and well have new tdls soon
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! What an idiot! You spelled "TLDs" wrong! Ha! You must feel like a moron!
It's still too much to pay, though. The cost of adding a line to a DNS file is not $12/year. While you and I are happy to pay $12, the real cost of domain registration is much lower, and if the market were truly competitive, prices would drop near $0.
There should be as many top-level domains as there are usenet ones (alt., comp. etc).
Sound valid to you ppl?
-
Wrong. If what you claim were true, I should be able to find at least one reference to slashdot.com on the main page (in the HTML, that is), but they are all links to pages on slashdot.org. Also, by your logic, the very existence of slapdash.org proves that it is the true site, and the others exist only for compatibility reasons.
I'm going to live forever or die trying.
"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember
The only problem with designating an entire TLD to porn sites is that they just won't stick to it.
What you'll find happening, I imagine, is that the owners of these sites will register the .xxx domains - however this won't stop them using the .com domains at all. Imagine - a porn site owner's worst nightmare would be the abiliy for people to exclude their sites from search engines. In the interest of maximising hits, they will want to appear on the search engines as often as possible - and so they won't confine themselves in a way that allows them to be ignored.
It'd be good to be able to exclude the seedier side of the net, and it may also have political benefits. Politicians would no longer be able to push through anti-privacy laws in the interests of "protecting the Children" or other lame excuses that are commonly used to undermine our privacy.
Unfortunately, I just can't see it working.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
New TLDs will make possible to port some classic Usenet groups to the Web:
http://www.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork/
http://www.wesley.crusher.die.die.die/
LaoK
It sounds like a good idea, but it won't work. Here's why:
.xxx or .sex launched, I can almost guarantee that those four companies will lock up every remotely desirable name (and quite likely be the registrars, too, depending on how that's decided).
.xxx or .sex really a single brand, not a new TLD. What's the point?
.xxx without incredible luck (or lots of money). In fact, it will probably open up tons of litigation as people snap up the names of existing adult sites (persiankitty, etc).
The adult internet industry is made up primarily of four companies: IEG, CEN, Cyberotica, and iGallery. Those four often work in concert, and cross promote each others' sites. Not coincidentally, they also have the most money.
If there is a
Which makes
And migration will never happen, because people won't be able to get the same domain names under
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
What will stop the companies from grabbing up all of the myname.new_tld addresses, and suing for the ones they don't get to before someone else does? :( I've grown weary of the corps that register all 4 (now 5 with .cc?) for themselves because of supposed "IP" rights.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
The new TLDs could be set up so that NSI doesn't run them and thus doesn't bungle them up and doesn't get any money from them.
I think a TLD for personal sites might be nice, but other than that I can't think of any interesting TLDs.
Who's going to pay a whole room full of people to do nothing but check new domain registrations to see if they're "worthy"? And you thought domains were expensive already!
P.S. Timmies and Timothies need not apply.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Well, you sure as hell don't get to fly to Yokohama in business. :)
As a side note, it either amuses or bewilders me (the feelings are not exactly clear yet) that a lot of corporate retreats such as this one take place in uselessly remote and exotic sites. And this at a time when the chosen few try bilking their employees or organization's members out of every last fucking dollar.
(I just posted this on the ICANN forum too, so the arguments are a bit company oriented, but I hope you can read through that.)
.COM and .ORG domains are US domains, while the rest of the world believes the word "generic" means just that. .COM name, and the judge feels qualified to rule over an European, Asian or whatever legal entity. And the US-company can choose from over 50 states to try this trick!
.CO.UK. This is in my opinion an elegant solution, and I'm sorry that other countries haven't adopted it. .US after the generic domains, and giving all registered organisations the option to switch to their own .COM.XX? .US, which is a nice illustration of the way US- and generic domains are mixed. .US suffix would be that it confronts US citizens and companies with the international nature of the internet, which they are often sadly ignorant of.
I notice a confusion between generic TLD's and US TLD's.
I fear that allowing more generic TLD's will enhance the trouble we have with copyrights en lawcases in an international internet. The problem is the implicit assumption in the USA that especially
Already we see that an US company can go to a judge in a chosen US state and claim a
If gTLD's were really generic, this should be out of the jurisdiction of, say, a Florida judge or even a national judge.
Great Britain has solved this problem by defining the 'country code generic' domain,
I guess it's too late to add
In fact, I don't even know whether the country code for the USA really is
An additional benefit of really using the
I don't want to start a flame war on who invented what, but the present day reality is that the internet is globally used, and this is benefiting everyone - also those US companies, who should realize it enables them to suddenly reach a much bigger market.
I myself am from a country which has ages of experience with earning money, assembling knowledge, and getting all kinds of other benefits from an open attitude for other nationalities, (.NL), I can attest that this works.
Inez{R}
woohoo!!! now I can go for .sux, .r00lz, .blows, .goats [there could be a LOT .lives.
of fun with that one], and
Seriously, though, this could get out of hand quickly despite that we're
supposedly "running out of domain names" under the conventional system.
.fan - This would be great: natalieportman.fan, natalieportman2.fan, or even notanatalieportman.fan or IdLikeToKillANSync.fan .flm - For movies. No more www.MI2themovie.com
.mov or
.sho - For TV Shows, www.2guysandagirls.sho
.bnd - For bands/musicians, www.steelydan.bnd
MacSlash: News for Mac Geeks
You weren't first to post your moron.
You're nothing; like me.
I was getting tired of the .com .net and .org.
You're nothing; like me.
The beauty of .xxx (as opposed to .sex) is that people will WANT to put their porn sites there. For instance, there is no such thing as a double or triple X rating for a movie, yet many movies claim to be rated triple X -- It's all marketing. If you can convince the porn sites that they want to have .xxx domains, then they'll go there, and that will solve that problem.
On an amusing side note: This opens up www.microsoft.xxx for a pornsite for the flaccid. Microsoft then can either sue and take the name for themselves (Imagine going to a .xxx domain to get to microsoft) or just letting it go...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, slashdot is a .com. Check out slashdot.com. The slashdot.org still remains for backwards compatability, so don't criticize.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
slash slash slash dot dot slash dot slash slash ? That's M N A W in morse code! :)
My suspicion is that if TLDs are added, the companies will just start blanket registering in the new spaces and nothing useful will be accomplished. I know /. folks hate to hear this, but I think domains need to be handled by a heavy handed single entity (while allowing countries to manage stuff inside their own country TLDs).
And .oz would be cool :-) Even .oz.au wouldn't suck too much.
--
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no sig for you. come back one year.
Why not .show or .band? Many of the gTLDs that ICANN is suggesting like .store are more than three characters plus a dot long.
.xxx or .sex domains get started soon. This would make it easier for parents to shield little Johnnie from wank matter without having to resort to complex censorware which 9 times out of 10 has definite political agendas.
.fan gTLD might also be helpful...no confusion anymore about whether a site is an official one or a fansite. No more pretenses for Fuji TV and Fox sending their landsharks out against fansites. It's ironchef.fan, not ironchef.com, no more confusion, call off yer goddamn lawyers.
I know I'll get flamed for this, but I'm really hoping that the
The
This is long overdue. ICANN may yet redeem themselves.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
TLDs are a crapshoot from this point forward, and its obvious that ICANN has finally come around to this.
My favorite part was re-reading Jon Postel's comments about intended uses for the existing TLDs:
.net domains, which are widely available, for commercial purposes since .com is getting crowded"? Yeah, this is an RFC and not a cast-in-stone law, but it still makes me wonder if anyone there even remembers this.
NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the administrative computers, and the network node computers. The customers of the network provider would have domain names of their own (not in the NET TLD).
Did anyone else see Network Solutions' propoganda push recently to "encourage people to start using
I even find the idea of TLDs for countries unnecessary, and am tired of seeing silly-ass things registered in Christmas Island and countries like Tonga that seem to exist just so people can have "come.to" addresses.
Piss.on.that
64.28.67.48
This silly-ass naming system is not going to go away until users become less lazy or someone can find a solution easy enough for the sheep. In orderwords, it'll be a long, long time. Your post's title is indeed apt.
Why not a limit on the number of diomain names that can be registered to any individual, company or organization. Phuck anybody who needs more than one or two TLD names.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
"My brother-in-law will happily rent the goriest action videos for his kids, with profanity, gore, mayhem, etc, but it better not show much in the way of nudity"
I heard a nice expression once that sums up this attitude, something like "it's OK to bare arms but not to bare breasts".
It's quite ridiculous actually, the idea that its OK to let your child watch hundreds of people get shot up and blown to bits in graphically violent movies, but God forbid that the poor child be morally corrupted by being allowed to see a Woman's nipple.
Could you please enlighten us why Penthouse/Playboy are 'legit' pornography businesses while hottits.com, bigboobs.com (whatever) are not 'legit'? What are you talking about?
I'm not going to write a longish rant about hierarchal systems, I could, but I would just like to point out that the problem of hierarchal systems was one of the reasons why TimBL invented the web as you can see from his original proposal. In his book, he also says that the DNS is one of the weakest parts of the Internet. Now, I'm not saying that hierarchal systems are flawed in general, but they're not good for this purpose.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
this idea that the rest of the world is less obsessed with nudity than we in the US are is highly overrated. B-grade foreign films and TV are not at all distinguishable from American content and they have all the same nudge-nudge wink-wink attitudes toward titillation. What is weird is the extent to which you accept a stereotype under the guise of being open-minded.
so, at the beach women take their tops off around strangers. but just try to get an acquaintance to flash her boobs for you: she'll just be so open minded about it that it won't happen.
Yeah. It's about time that they thought about that. ICANN should grant more domains like: .corp, .inc, .inst, .plc, .ltd, .comp, .ngo, .isp, .ind, .pub, .free, .nic, .wan, .asia, .euro, .global, .gbl, .america, , .africa, .pacific, .i, .tel, .data, .ent, .sports, .news, .mail, .web, .ftp, .chat, .per, .home, .world, .adult (.xxx or .sex are fine for me), .shop, .me, .search, .money, .sci, .pol, .law, .health, .travel, .media, .dot etc...? At least there will be more available domains than .com, .net, .org. If people believe that domains are not commodities, then using those TLD will not be a hassle since it will be better for localized comanies that cater to a specific market. The TLD will be used as they are intended for. Hey it is nice to see linux.news, tennis.sports, home.isp, bbc.news, cnbc.asia. They are better (for me) than linux.com, tennis.com, home.net, news.bbc.co.uk, cnbcasia.com. The Internet is an unlimited virtual space. Why register all the companies in the world under the .com? Johnlaw
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
I seem to remember hearing about a different schema for web addresses that went something like this: instead of say www.slashdot.org, you would have www.slash.dot, so www.networksolutions.com would become www.networksoluti.ons... As I remember it, this schema promised an almost infinite number of names, while still making the names easy to remember.
Arthropoid, the Right Clam for the Job
ICANN know that only name.class.REG.country will solve the problems of trademark conflict and cybersquatting.
Reserved only for trademark holders, it also serves as a certificate of authentication. Full explaination at www.WIPO.org.uk - It has no connection with, and wishes to be totally disassociated from, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.ORG).
Disclaimer for litigation mad Attorneys - some are very happy with the current situation. It is a Intellectual Property legal fee goldmine.
How about .robins for your family?
ICANN are holding things up for questionable motives.
Anti WIPO and ICANN site - www.WIPO.org.uk
You see there's one big problem with having a .god TLD - it's really only of use to Christians, and isn't really fair on the multitude of faiths out there. So if ICANN decide that we can have the .god TLD, then my suggestion is that we also require the following TLDs to complete the set and make sure nobody feels left out:
I'm sure there are many more fine examples, but having .god does tend to imply that all of these are also required. It would be far easier to have none at all...
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
US is the country code here, we just truncate it for convenience since we in the US run the show. Here you go, read all about it. You may also wish to browse rfc1480 but I'm sure they will point this out to you at the ICANN forum .
.us onto a regular US site is supposed to work? I wouldn't imagine any dns servers bother with it. And it don't work from here...
while we are on the topic, does anyone know if appending
:)Fudboy
:)Fudboy
I guess I'm only a Fudboy, looking for that real Transmeta
A .qb TLD would be nice.
10 LIST : REM MER : TSIL 01
I won't stand for some bold usin' ALL CAPS smarty pants killing this thread.
here are my submissions:
.web
.isp
.bbs
.kid
.mud
.art
.top
.int
.ugo
anyone has a problem with that, they can bite me. Anyone else inspired enough by being exposed to a new idea, who subsequently decide to lobby for the adoption of one of these tld's, my pleasure.
-=(\/) I (\| I - (\/) 3 (\/) 3
here are my submissions: .web .isp .bbs .kid .mud .art .top .int .ugo anyone has a problem with that, they can bite me. Anyone else inspired enough by being exposed to a new idea, who subsequently decide to lobby for the adoption of one of these tld's, my pleasure.
-=(\/) I (\| I - (\/) 3 (\/) 3
What I heard was there could be .xxx and a .adu for adult. The .adu for stuff like sexual preference and breast cancer.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
- foosucks.com/net/org
- ihatefoo.com/net/org
- foosux.com/net/org
- And so on...
This is a major problem, that I don't know how to solve. Basically, during the first 6 months, all the usable domains will be snatched up by people like this, or squatters, and we will be back to our starting point. Perhaps Slashdotters have any input on this? Any possible solutions?Oh yeah, one more thing. The .cc domains are now available, and you can register them here, and someone named Colin Burns Games has already snatched up slashdot.cc...
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Topless beaches are more common in Europe than America. I have been to other countries where movie posters on the street showed as much nudity as the movie itself.
What is weird is the extent to which you say things of which you know not.
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Infuriate left and right
There is a solution, and it's even in use.
.com one isn't a business and is dysfunctional; the .net one has nothing to do with networks of any sort and is dysfunctional; the .org one is not a non-commercial organization: it's a Dutch magazine. Only the Canadian one is properly assigned and functional.
Start using country and state/province designations.
For instance, the domain "writersblock" is a complete cockup. www.writersblock.com/.net/.org/.ca are all taken.
The
This is typical: the TLDs are being misused, all the "good" words are taken and there are more domain name campers than there are fully functioning domains!
Time to cut this shit out. If you're a home-town boy running a freebie web service out of the goodness of your heart, you get a www.goatlovers.springfield.il.us. If your running a registered business within your locale, then you'd get www.goatlovers.il.us. If you are large enough to be in several states, you get to be considered national, and get www.goatlovers.us. Only if you're truly an international business can you score the www.goatlovers.com URL.
This also resolves a lot of the problems with corporations stomping all over people. You could actually have www.cocacola.springfield.il.us! Sure as heck no one is ever going to confuse your URL with www.cocacola.com.
There are flaws with this system, to be sure.
But it's a damned site (ha, ha) less flawed than the TLD cockups we have now and seem to be intent on maintaining.
--
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Steven E. Ehrbar
on the other hand, maybe icann is in bed with nsi or core. there are bound to be a _lot_ more domain registrations with more TLDs to overrun and pollute.
come on. it's pretty obvious that the current system isn't working too well. how about designing a new domain structure and scrapping the current one. make people registering new domains prove that they have a real need for it, and have a group of people monitoring of the registrars to prevent approval of domain name squatting and namespace pollution. offer anyone with a currently active domain free re-registration in the new system, maybe with a free year or something.
i'm sure that everyone will shoot that idea down, but you have to do the same thing to get a block of ip addresses; theory being that if everyone and their brother go out and get a full
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just because the TLDs are there does not mean that people will use them. and tricks like mis-spellings and foo.net (where foo.com is the `real' site) get those types of sites _far_ more exposure than they would get if they all existed in
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Trademark law is built around the concept of protecting intellectual property, not around avoiding consumer confusion. This avoidance is a by-product and a test of potential infringement, but not the core driver.
As far as the mapping problem goes, this isn't a problem that DNS can solve and one that is addressed quite well by existing trademark law, thank you very much. By using DNS to solve this mapping problem, we are likely to afford IP holders extra-legal protection at the expense of individuals - not something that I particularly look forward to.
"Although we may build the technology that we define as tools, we must be vigilant that those tools do not define us."
Learn, modify, then repeat until failure.
Yours in science,
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
WTF is .cc supposed to represent ?
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Of course .invalid isn't there - nobody owns it, and it's not *supposed* to have a network attached to it. .uucp works the way sethg described it, and it's similarly not something that the internic would have a good way to register...
.IN-ADDR.ARPA. is registered in the DNS, even though nobody in particular "owns" it. . (the DNS root) is registered, too. But invalid. doesn't exist.
I'm not saying there are no entries in the domains in question. I'm saying the domains themselves do not exist in the Internet DNS namespace.
For comparison,
But the names are still part of the DNS name space.
Um, no, they're not. For a domain name to be part of the Internet Domain Name System, they must be registered with the root name servers. Simply no two ways about it. If A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET (which is the same as NS.INTERNIC.NET) doesn't know about the domain, it doesn't exist. Period.
Now, maybe someone has a convention of using invalid. as a domain for invalid domains (like many use localdomain. as domain for the localhost entry) but it isn't part of the DNS.
Make sense?
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Now, I'm not saying that hierarchal systems are flawed in general, but they're not good for this purpose.
Unfortunately, the Domain Name System protocol and structure is a hierarchy. It was designed that way on purpose for scalability, delegation, and organizational purposes. This may lead to complex systems, as TBL observed, but there isn't much you can do about it.
Indeed, computers more or less need a hierarchy to be efficient at sorting and lookup, which is exactly what DNS servers do. I'm not so sure we can get around that practical requirement.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Whatever... just because you can't scale it to every atom in the universe doesn't mean it's broken.
/etc/hosts file (or local equivalent). That didn't scale (hey -- there's that word again!) so DNS was invented as a hierarchal way to organize the process.
:)
.com namespace. the whole reason we got into this mess is because it hasn't been expanded.
Right. But if it can't scale to every entity that wants an entry, it is broken. You think it's bad now? What happens when all six billion people on the planet have email, and all the businesses that go with them do too?
The DNS has to scale to this level, or it will collapse.
The whole point of DNS is to make it EASIER to remember site locations.
DNS was invented to automate the process of distributing information about network hosts. It used to be that everyone was listed in everyone else's
It most explicitly was not created to make it easier for someone to guess a company's address by typing random words into the "Location" bar of your browser. The DNS exists to name things. It does not exist to find them. Naming and Finding are two distinctly different things.
And what about people... people want nameservice too.
People generally have physical locations, too.
Again, the better points of DNS is that it doesn't matter where you are or what your ip is.
This is, of course, an issue, and one I don't have an immediate solution for. Businesses, at least, have a place of incorporation, but even that can move if you want. And people move more often then businesses do.
But how do you expect a ".indiv" (or whatever) domain to scale to six billion people? Or more?
And this misuse you speak of.. how are you supposed to keep it from happening in this system as well?
People have legal residences. Businesses have a place of incorporation. These are tried and true methods which are already in place and have been proven to work.
At least you can prove that IBM has nothing to do with: food, sex, banking, personal name or art.
IBM does offer financial services (leasing of equipment and such), so they could certainly justify that. What about their cafeteria food services? And IBM makes large donations to the humanities, so you could argue art as well.
Point being: How do you administer this tangled mess of TLDs you propose we create?
Adding more TLDs would actually lower the value of each TLD, so it's not worth getting ibm.food because no one in their right mind would ever go there.
Wrong. Nobody in their right mind goes to www.yahoo.org, either, but guess who owns it? For any company serious about their Internet presence (which should, eventually, be equal to any company), the cost to register additional domains is small compared to the potential trouble not registering them costs.
The whole point of new TLD's is to relieve the pressure on the
Again I point out that the us. domain structure was created in response to this very problem.
If everybody had to use the long a$$ physical location scheme that would be the biggest boost to alternate forms of address lookups they could possibly hope for.
Great! Then maybe people will stop using the DNS as a phone book and start using it the way it was intended!
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Why not a limit on the number of diomain names that can be registered to any individual, company or organization.
Gee, it would really suck to be a network application service provider, if you could only have a maximum of two customers.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
.invalid and .uucp ... There are two current TLDs that the ICANN web page doesn't mention.
ns.internic.net doesn't think they exist.
I have to assume it knows what it is talking about.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I understand why this would be nice - it's easy to filter and recognize adult sites.
But it won't (and can't) prevent people from putting adult material on any other TLD. So what's the point? All the adults sites that exist now will (most likely) stay where they are.
LL
"If you are falling, dive." -Joseph Campbell
No, no - the cheesy scams go under dotcon.
.cum instead :-)
And to make things interesting for the pr0n industry, let's give them
-John
There are two current TLDs that the ICANN web page doesn't mention. They're both special. .invalid is something that Brad Templeton got approved, which is a reserved name for syntactically correct use in books, local networks, and other things that aren't supposed to propagate to the real world. And .uucp is a wierd domain-like thing for hanging uucp names off of.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
.porn, .sex, .xxx tlds would be handy, but they would only filter 'legit' adult content. (sites like playboy / penthouse that everyone knows)
.com/org/net domains to get hits.
In their scramble for exposure, you'd still get sites squatting on
ICANN should create .rog, .ogr, .cmo, and similar TLDs, and alias them to the obvious. It would save so much time.
... especially when I type slashdot.rog into lynx and it looks up slashdot.rog.edu, slashdot.rog.com, and slashdot.rog.net as well.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I absolutely disagree here.
The core tennants of trademark law have nothing to do with intellectual property. Trademarks are not intellectual property in any way (there is no content to them). Trademarks are words and symbols associated with a company and its products. You may be confusing Trademark law with Patent or Copyright law.
So here's the issue (and maybe I didn't make my point clearly enough): if you have a restaurant called McDonald's and I have a software company called McDonald's, we know that consumers will not be confused between the two (you sell greasy burgers and I sell buggy software--no comparison, right?).
Now comes the web. McDonalds.com is just a commercial domain. It does not distinguish what kind of business it is. It's just commercial. You and I both plausibly have a right to the domain and both of us arguably confuse each others customers by using it.
Does that make sense?
We've been hearing about new TLDs for almost two years now. I think we desperately need them. Domain names need to map (at least somewhat loosely) onto international trademark law so that McDonalds.food and McDonalds.bank don't conflict in any way. Trademark law is built around the concept of avoiding consumer confusion.
But I remain sceptical. ICANN has a difficult job, no doubt about it. But so far, they haven't managed to make much progess.
This is what I think will happen. TLDs are still being used as some kind of pigeonholing mechanism. The fact is that life is more complicated than a series of categories.
ICANN's paper makes a great point: the stability of the DNS system is paramount. So while I strongly believe in burning all TLDs, I do think that we'll need some new TLDs as a test before this is possible.
Long term, though, remains the same: we don't need TLDs. They are from a time when the Internet was a regulated government system, and are now obsolete. Nowadays, everyone registers their name under all available TLDs anyway as legal protection. So adding more only will make the same small number of good TLDs more expensive for people like us.
Remove all TLDs, though, and people can establish their own heirarchies. Someone in another thread said this was like AOL keywords. Well, yes and no. It is more extensible, but ultimately, keywords are a better UI than long complex addresses.
In glancing through the document, I notice that they do mention trademark law, and the need for enforcement, but not excessive enforcement. The groups couldn't come to an agreement on how the trademark issue should be dealt with, which is a good sign, I think.
BUT, it will only matter if there is enforcement. .com, .net and .org would have been much better had they been enforced. Granted, we would have "run out" of "useable" domain names long before now, but the users would be much more informed as to their purpose.
So, I'm all for the new gTLDs, as long as the rules for application in .BLAH is public, and strickly enforced. Like someone else meant, they should split them up based on trademark law (hopefully as generic as possible, not US based), so that (to use the other example) McDonalds.food and McDonalds.car_repair aren't both the Micro$o~1 of the eating world.
This is my
This is my
--An Oldie, but a Goodie!
Serve Slashdot via a special "Slash" protocol. This, with the above, gives us:
slash://slashdot.dot/.slash/
"slash colon slash slash slash dot dot dot slash dot slash slash"
Man, now "Slash" doesn't even sound like a real word... it's like when you say "dolphin" over and over again 'til you start wondering who in their right mind would build a doll with fins.
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Reduce the artificial scarcities, and it won't be profitable to snatch up domains anymore, solving the problem quite nicely. Of course, the business of selling them would be hurt, which means I doubt if we'll see it happen anytime soon. Why make it so they only have to buy one domain instead of the three or more they have to get now?
A TLD called .porn
Create a cyber red light district so you can:
1: Know where to go when you want to get dirty.
2: Be able to leave them out of your web search results when are searching for ANYTHING else.
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
slashdot.org would just be "slashdot", and "www.microsoft.com" would just be "www.microsoft" (or "www.microsoft1" and "www.microsoft2" by late next year).
If you really wanted to put something in your url to identify your organization type, you could always just put it at the beginning, like "edu.lcs.mit".
Does anybody see a problem with this?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I'm just wondering if anybody knows what happened to Generic Top Level Domain Memorandum of Understanding?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I think this means I just blew my life savings. Last week I went out and bought $250,000 worth of the "Fuck you and your dot-com" tee shirts.
Oh Sweet Mother of God.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
On the front page of Network Solutions...
Be sure to also register
.net
.org
.dot
.rob
.movie
.travel
.xxx
.sex
.biz
.shop
.art
........
It seems to me that we don't really need anything .banc? Any bank is much more likely to .com than a .banc, especially b/c they .banc without people misspelling it
more than what we have.... for example, why would
we need
get a
couldn't say
in their browser window..
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
First off, I hate to break the bad news to everyone, but that Great New *TLD that just popped into your head? It's been thought of before. By lots of people.
New *TLDs are nothing new, and indeed have been being debated, tossed around, fought over, proposed, implemented, and torn down for the better part of the last decade or so.
CmdrTaco didn't think of .god, .dot, and probably not even .rob. Neither did you, most likely. :)
For a listing of proposed *TLDs and their status, see http://www.earth-net.net/GTLD/database. html (gzipped text file)
Pay particular attention to Field 2, Root Server Providers. Check out the Open Root Server Confederation.
While we're on this subject, a quick redux to the .god TLD... zone files and current status of .god registry.
ANYONE interested in domain policy (and the politics are Quite Interesting in this realm... surf the domain-policy mailing list archives (hosted by InterNIC).
If the companies that give out registered DNS names on the Internet (Network Solutions, Register.com, and so on) can agree to a standard on how to give out names using the new TLD's, then we can save ourselves a lot of hassles on how to "block" unauthorized sites from children.
.AOS (AOS means Adult-Only Site). Web browsers from the start can set the default so they can't log onto .AOS sites without first sending an encrypted password. For example, Playboy's web site can be divided into two parts, one the original playboy.com for their general-interest material and the new playboy.aos for their adult-oriented material. It also means sites such as whitehouse.com will have to switch to whitehouse.aos to avoid confusion with the whitehouse.gov domain.
I myself would propose this TLD for adult sites:
If I were the ITU-TSS I would strongly suggest they hold a conference in conjunction with ICANN to finalize the new TLD names as soon as possible.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
(Links to the Jargon File provided for you kids who don't remember what it was like in the old days, when we had to carve email messages on clay tablets and haul them to the server room, two miles away in the snow, uphill both ways....)
--
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
A new organization - MINC - is being setup to make domain names multilingual. If you speak a language other than English, please check it out.
Wouldn't .mp3 just piss off the RIAA! -if common-sense was common wouldn't everyone have it?
if common sense was common, wouldn't everyone have it?
Country TLDs are useful. So are .com, .net, and .org -- each has a meaning.
.god? I mean, really, it is just a waste. Sure, getting i-am.god or *.is.god would be nice, but churches can use .org. There is no need to add to the confusion many newbies suffer when going online.
.net?"
However, what really is the purpose of
"Hey, my favorite website doesn't work!"
"Did you make sure to type in
"Oh. It works."
The panel itself may be a good idea, if only to restrict frivolous TLDs.
|/usr/games/fortune
The original TLD's were probably a pretty good idea once upon a time, but now, everyone knows that things on the Internet starts in www and ends in .com. (barely better than the people who ask if you have a "screen name" rather than an e-mail address). Everything except .edu and .gov are so polluted as to be meaningless. Look where we right now...slashdot.ORG? Why? Or perhaps my college, which has registered not only mit.edu, but also mit.com, mit.net and mit.org
If it weren't for the incredible mess it would create, I would suggest that we abandon TLDs altogether. I always spell .com wrong anyway...
I'm going to live forever or die trying.
DNS needs a ".alt" top level domain.
When the Big 7 newsgroups were being drafted on USENET just prior to the great flag day, this simple need was recognized practically from day one and .alt was born (and is today bigger than all the Big 7 groups combined).
Flame all you want, but without a dumping ground where anything goes without restrictions, the trash will not go away. It will seep into all areas of the "approved TLDs".
If an .alt TLD is set up, it will make rule violations in the remaining TLDs much easier to enforce because there will always be an alternative. "You didn't have to create [domain] here".
Trap the rats with no way to register their profane, controversial, questionable, or whatever-offends-whoever domains and they'll start clawing at the walls of whatever other heirarchy they can get at.
Remember, in the Big 7 newsgroups, there was no room for sex or drugs, so these because the very first two alt groups.
Even the cleanest, most orderly city still has a garbage dump.
Jesus wept. Just when I think they can't get any dumber!
They are going to turn DNS into WINS. From a heirarchical naming system into a flat naming system. They must be stopped!
The ICANN / Registrar DNS diatribe
Deleted
We've been hearing about new TLDs for, oh, at least an eternity. Maybe even two.
.net, .org, .ca ,.xxx, .god and whatever other .tlds are available?
And let's face it: all so-called corporate names will be immediately obtained and/or sued-for by their so-called owners; and all remaining sensible names will be immediately obtained and camped-on by the domain name resellers.
You and I, who may have need for a website six months from now, are *ALWAYS* going to be screwed: the name we'd have used is gone.
And even if you do manage to get the DNS you wanted -- www.borsht.??? -- who the hell's ever going to find it? www.borsht.com is gone (to a domain name camping asshole, of course), and who's ever going to have patience to try
The ONLY solution is to bag this silly-ass naming system and come up with something that allows people to type in a more unique, descriptive name that isn't duplicated umpteen times over with the most minor of variations...
Rant, roar.
www.borsht.com for sale. My god.
--
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Wonderful. More TLDs. That's a lousy answer to a problem that isn't the real problem. Two strikes at once. Great job.
/ (the root, C:\ for Windows folks), you shouldn't try and put every entity in the universe under .COM.
.COM domains. Make people use the system put in place to solve this problem over ten years ago.
Here is why it is the wrong answer: It won't work. Right now, companies (and squatters) register foo.com, foo.net, and foo.org, "just to make sure" they have all the bases covered. All this is going to do is make Network Solutions and the other registrars more money.
The real problem is that everybody is trying to map a virtually infinite number of items (i.e., the known universe, as far as the Internet is concerned) into a limited namespace (English words and phrases less then 64 characters long). Anyone with half a brain can tell you that is a solution that is inherently unscalable.
The only way to make a system like this scalable is to switch to a hierarchical system. Just like you don't put every file (or directory) on a system under
There are two hierarchies I can think of: By category, and by location.
By category would mean that instead of microsoft.com, we would get microsoft.software.computers.com or something. Basically, use a Yahoo!(TM)-style structure to structure the Domain Name System.
There are three problems with this approach that make it unworkable. First, who gets to decide the categories, and what category a given site falls under? Is this slashdot.talk.org or slashdot.computers.com or slashdot.geeks.culture.rec.com or what?
Second, the administrative overhead of all this sorting would be prohibitively high. Registering a domain should not require a six-month background check.
Third, and most importantly, you can still have name collisions in a particular field, so long as they are geographically seperated. There must be an "Atlas Auto Body" in every county in New Hampshire. So who gets atlas.bodyshops.auto.com?
No, the only method that will scale with reality is to model the DNS after reality: Physical location. There are already existing mechanisms to make sure there aren't two Atlas Auto Body shops in Concord, NH. So make the domain atlasautobody.concord.nh.us, and the problem is solved.
Yes, it does mean Microsoft would be microsoft.redmond.wa.us. But such is life. People already remember names, addresses, phone numbers, and other things with much less sense then this.
Not coincidentally, the mechanism to do this is already in place. Just nobody uses it.
My solution? Don't add new TLDs. In fact, don't add new 2LD (Second Level Domains) either. No more new
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
While I think that the inclusion of new TLDs is a good idea, I am against anything that is too finely done.
.protest domain. You are one of the vendors of filtering and blocking software. Anything against the norm? Why not just block .protest. Same goes for companies and/or oppressive governments with nasty firewalls.
Imagine, a
The move toward more TLDs is a good thing. We just need to be sure that we don't make it too easy to filter out "undesirable" speech.
-Chris
I would've thought it would have been Microsoft who'd be asking for a .rob TLD. You know, right up there with .rape, .pillage, .extend, and .extinguish.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Some years ago here in Brazil the only ones that could register a domain name were companies (and they had to prove they were companies). Regular people also wanted to register domains, as Internet was gaining popularity and personal websites becoming common. So they started complaining, and the powers that be decided to create new Brazilian TLDs just for regular people.
They were so wise that they had a brilliant idea. To create various TLD's, each one for an occupation. So far so good. In a demonstration of their wisdom, they keenly chose 23 occupations as deserving a TLD. Some of them:
Obviously people just ignored these ridiculous TLDs and continued registering
Amazing, isn't it ?
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Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Lots of 'mericans would say any partial nudity belongs n the .xxx domain; lots of people elsewhere in the world laugh at that. Lots of 'mericans would say violence *doesn't* belong in .xxx; lots of others would disagree. My brother-in-law will happily rent the goriest action videos for his kids, with profanity, gore, mayhem, etc, but it better not show much in the way of nudity.
It wouldn't work. It would just create more and more arguments.
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Infuriate left and right
Well, we keep hearing the same refrain of "slow and controlled manner" that we have for the past decade. If this gets any more slow and controlled we could all be dead before the next TLD is born.
But seriously, why the emphasis on keeping domaind artificially scarce? The argument they keep discussing is one of needing to protect valuable marks, but that is only necessary when a limited number of domains are available. If you can register any 3-letter combination as a TLD (minus a few restricted ones?), you have just made it financally prohibitive for anyone with even a huge bankroll to do any domain squatting.
It is only by making domains scarce that they become individually valuable or threatening -- make them plentiful and it's up to the company to bring the value to the name (rather than vice-versa: the "roulette wheel" theory of domain registration - pick the right one and you're rich!)
At least they sort of tangentially talk about this when asking about differentiation. Why the hell should ICANN be concerned about differentiation? When companies are paying 50 grand to come up with names like Agilent and Agilant within 12 months of each other, why should ICANN be looking out for corporate identity differentiation? Bury us in 999 TLDs and maybe Agilent and Agilant can differentiate themselves with the extra three letters...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
http://slash.dot/.slash/
"aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot slash dot slash slash".
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I actually think the best suggestion for a new top level domain in the document is a TLD devoted to material of an 'adult' nature. Such a domain is one of the few I think would gain rapid support among it's target community. We all hope the Internet will remain relatively free of control, but the nay-sayers continue to point out that the net is full of pornography etc. A new TLD for new sites and hopefully a reasonable degree of migration of existing adult material will serve to provide a degree of separation. The average adult (male at least) probably knows where the local adult store is in town and can make the choice for themselves. With a designated TLD the same will hopefully become true of the internet, this I feel will weaken the argument of the censors without reducing freedom. And besides, if your that way inclined you'll know where all the good stuff is.
"Last night I loaded up one of those trashy .com sites. You know, just for the articles." *snicker*
"I think freedom of speech is fine, so long as my children don't get exposed to any of those .com sites."
Other useful ones might be .info (public information servers), .ent (entertainment, also easily corruptible), and .dotcom (cheesy internet scams)
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