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Afternic Sues ICANN, Claims Unfair Treatment
gfoyle writes: "The NY Times is reporting (free registratration required) that the cash strapped Icann is being sued by Afternic for being denied entrance into the domain registration market. This is believed to be the first suit challenging Icann's authority over domain registrations." The NYT article points out that both Network Solutions and Register.com now offer domain resale services -- services on which basis Afternic says ICANN rejcted their application to be a top-tier registrar.
In other words it's turning into a pile of useless, moronic shit just like the crap the said corporations churn out in their TV and print media. Oh, hooray, that is an improvement.
The irony is, of course, that today's "multimedia experience" is as dull as ditch-water and twice as predictable.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
If yoru serious about getting rid of "official" "regulated" corporately controlled domain names, etc you can. Slashdot has enough technically oriented individuals to make it happen, as least as far as the individuals are concerned.
No you can't fix your workplace's DNS and your MS using co-workers name resolution (unless your in charge anyway). But you can set your DNS servers up the way YOU want them to resolve. You can subscribe to whatever top-level DNS server you want, including your pal Taco's.
If you want whitehouse.com to resolve to whitehouse.com the pron site (as opposed to whitehouse.gov the pornographers site ;) you can. Ditto the inverse.
If your serious, willing to dedicate time, effort, server/badwidth use, let me know. One individual's DSL line isn't enough to do it all. HTTP mirrors will be needed.
Please though, only serious replies, not "Me too, brain dead AOLers" for the sake of my poor little yahoo mailbox (hint hint for people who dont know pig-latin).
email:addy good, domain bad. Use domain decryption "Pig-Latin" to resolve.
I just went to joker.com and registered a dot com for 12 euros/year. No bullshit, no $70 NSI ripoffs, no mandatory fucked up hosting fer MAXIBUXX crap, just CLICK CLICK CLICK it's mine for 10 dollah SUCKY SUCKY.
I plug again, joker.com.
PLUG PLUG PLUG
JOKER.COM
DontBlow.com is an absolute good.
Why the fsck do people on Slashdot seem to think that the net has gone from a government toy to a corporate tool? The one place I would not expect to see repeated
The Internet (IMHO) was created by government for the army and used by the only people who could figure out how to make it do something useful and then improved upon by them until eventually even stupid corporate managers could start to remember that they just had to open the right program and type in a domain name, then the net got spamdotted to hell. What is the corporate signal to noise ratio online (i.e. complete bag of poo sites to something with a modicom of sense) and is it any better than the signal to noise ratio of joe blogg's homepages? Lets face it the net is a pile of poo with a few plants thriving in the manure, it doesn't matter how any DNS system is organised, the cream will float and the dung will drop out of view. The only people who care about this rubbish are the fools who belive that the "magic" of having many people staggering over their site by accident is worth an IPO. Lets leave this behind here on Slashdot and start accepting that the net is not anyones and should never be anyones, it is a co-operative system where barriers of entry are minimal and we can all stick up our own signal or noise. Lets stop debating how we should help corporations structure the Internet to service their needs (like the current RIAA battle to corrupt the net to preserve their market).
The simple question is this, if the RIAA get a ban on the transferal of copyrighted material over a digital interface are you going to stop stripping your CDs onto your file-server so you can play them at any workstation in your house; and if Afternic get accredited as a reseller are you going to stop typing in domain names and start learning IP addresses? Let's get slashdot talking about how to create the next generation net based on distributed architectures NOT the last generation DNS system and how it is or isn't suiting corporate americas needs.
A finally to slightly justify and defend this rant:
- I have bought domain names for about $15 including DNS hosting (one email redirected to admin address and a url redirect) and I own the domain. Sounds like a good deal for consumers to me!
- The sites that try to do the are nearly without fail the worst sites online for s/n. The most brilliant multimedia sites are usually from the fans and hackers.
- If you don't want ICANN what do you want? Microsoft? IP? Gnutella based searching to find info? What? If you have a great idea, code it and see if the hackers are ready to split the net otherwise sit down and shut up.
This may be written as flamebait but I mean it.Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
So it's crazy. But *I* like the idea. That way there can be more seamus.org's than just the one (why, oh why was I so slow? :) Of course, eventually people would get pissy about having "convenient" IP addresses to type in... can you imagine network card and router sales/manufacturing in this future? Neat...
Well, there is a ".us". For example, there is the State of California site. Many US .gov-type sites arein the .us hiearchy. It is true that you don't see too many US .com's in ".us" though.
Next time, try quoting a line or two from the post to which you are responding. I never mentioned 'peer to peer' DNS. I don't even know what that is.
:)
By contrast in a peer to peer DNS network, in a world with many hundreds of thousands of DNS servers, to find an unknown, not commonly accessed
domain would require tens of thousands of lookups if it were possible at all.
This IS a world with many hundreds of thousands of DNS servers.
I was being flippant in my call to people to start their own DNS servers - but a well designed root server heirarchy could very well be made that would allow for arbitrary TLDs without killing the 'performance' of DNS. In fact, I specifically mentioned that you could simply extend the existing BIND mechanism. There is no change to the method, merely an addition of an infinite number of TLDs.
At a tenth of a second per lookup, it would take about two hours to resolve the average domain name.
What's that one-liner about statitics being made up on the spot? Are you implying that it would take 72,000 searches to find an arbitrary domain name/ip address pair? Are you planning on searching these domains with the famous 'Ransack Search' algorithm?
Good computing isn't about math 101 - linear and iterative algorithms are almost always the wrong way to do anything complex.
It's a technologically illiterate suggestion. Anyone who made it, go back and do maths101.
Don't be so negative!
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Absolutely! It would make life interesting... er, at least for about a week, then it would get old and annoying. But what a week!
One major difference I see between Afternic and the other registrars: the others are primarily pushing registration with the resale being almost an afterthought, while Afternic seems from thier home page to be mainly aiming for resale with registration primarily to support that resale. To me this makes a world of difference.
You must have no concept of how IP routing works across the Internet. I think that the parent post of your comment implies that the box would be moving from one IP subnet to another one. Well, assuming that the entire Autonomous System isn't moving and that Internet-advertised BGP routes aren't changing, the box would have to change IP addresses. That's his point.. DNS makes it possible to transparently move box from one location to another location, changing IP addresses in the process. That is inherently a feature of DNS. You may have other qualms with it, but it's not all bad.
Anybody who runs a DNS server, and wishes to, could configure their name server to view my server as the root.
Then, I could implement whatever policy *I* feel is appropriate for handing out domain names (People Eating Tasty Animals gets priority, BTW).
I know that most people wouldn't use these servers (businesses, for example), but I bet someone could get a good underground following going (imagine a .sucks TLD - http://peta.sucks/).
So, why hasn't anybody else done this? Why couldn't I do this?
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
.arpa is used for reverse DNS lookups based on an IP address. The IP address flipped backwards and converted into a
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
If everyone started breaking off IPs from subnets and moving them around on a daily basis the Internet would quickly come to a screeching halt.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
What if you want to send a clueless user to download package xyz from ftp://ftp.xyz.fsf/, and their DNS isn't configured to resolve the .fsf TLD? (Some people can't even fix their DNS settings because they don't have root...)
.fsf and B creates another .fsf, how do you decide which xyz.fsf someone wants? I don't like the idea of getting 2 completely different http://linux.fsf/s depending on what machine I'm using to access it.
Another problem is dealing with 2 people creating the same TLD - if A creates
Any (good and workable) suggestions on fixing these problems?
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Please see my earlier post on this topic. It's currently +5, and this whole discussion is so non-specific it's ridiculous. Yes, it would be neat if we could type "alt://" and have different addresses resolve by using a Gnutella-like system, therefore eliminating the need for ICANN. Is it feasible? Well, let's see, no one's even addressed that. How can you throw around ideas without even mentioning any technical aspect of them and get moderated to +4?
Hey, here's an idea: make it so that every file on the Internet can be downloaded at the same speed, regardless of how fast your connection is. Wow, that'd be neat!
Comon folks, at least think about the actual content of some of these comments before you moderate them up. Whoever thinks that the super-smart crowd that is Slashdot is collectively coming up with ground-breaking Internet concepts should go write an article for ZDNet about it... I'm sure they'd take it.
Different rules apply if you have a monopoly, which the ICANN Does with respect to allowing companies to register domain names in the .com, .net, and .org heiarchies.
If what they are accused of is indeed what happened, they broke the law and should be punished accordingly.
Of course, I think a better solution would be to simply stop paying attention to the ICANN and develop our own method for mapping names to ip addresses.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
So if my mom's an attorney, then when did she find out about it?
Yes, it would be neat if we could type "alt://" and have different addresses resolve by using a Gnutella-like system, therefore eliminating the need for ICANN. Is it feasible? Well, let's see, no one's even addressed that.
So, according to you, in order to even be permitted to express an idea in this or any forum, one must have already worked out all of the technical specifics, else said ideas should be ignored and derided?
Please.
Hacking a browser to call an alternative domain resolution service in response to an URL beginning with alt:// would be fairly simple. There are already modules to deal with ftp:// (FTP), mailto:, etc. Most of the code needed for the alt:// appraoch is already present, one needs to simply rip out the DNS resolution code and replace it with whatever the alternative approach would be.
As for a gnutella type system, if you'd even bothered to read my original post, you would have seen my suggestion to use the existing DNS software, perhaps running on a different port, with different root servers. Not that a more distributed and less top-down approach, a la FreeNet, wouldn't necessarilly be as good. Some technical robustness against hoards of lawyers might actually be worth a performance tradeoff, particularly in today's climate.
Comon folks, at least think about the actual content of some of these comments before you moderate them up.
Some of us do think. Perhaps you should do likewise before going off half-cocked. (HINT: Actually reading the post you're replying to helps).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Actually, your analogy is an accurate description of free enterprise capitalism, which can be ugly and may seem unfair, but is nonetheless the system that big business lobbyists claim to support. It wouldn't be illegal to purchase an 800 number for the purposes of selling it later--in fact, part of the reason for the advent of 888/877 numbers was the existence of an aftermarket whose sales did not benefit telcos. There is a burgeoning aftermarket for domain names (which offers a far broader frontier than 800 numbers) and a host of marketplaces, but registrars, until recently, couldn't get in on the action. It's more lucrative and like any smart businessfolk, registrars want to get in the game, take it over, and run it themselves. Thanks to their close ties with the former government-sanctioned monopoly, they have a shot. While it is technically an illegal shot, their roots stem from the very organization (US Gov) that polices these matters. If you think you can't get good domain names now, wait until the company that used to sell them for $35 (way back when you didn't think to get a good name) now sells them to the highest bidder. Register and NSI are doing it right now. You won't be able to get your name from them any cheaper than you can get it from any other aftermarket nexuses. But the more of these marketplaces that exist, the better your chances for a fair, open market. Monopolies always hurt consumers. True competition always helps consumers. Nuff sed.
Another poster to this thread suggested that we get rid of the big 3 current TLDs and force companies and people to register domains in the appropriate country TLD. This would certainly limit confusion (Is that .com I'm looking at in the States, UK, Belgium? Where?)
I think active management by a set of domain registrars who have purchased name space off a TLD is the way to go. Don't just let any dipshit register any domain. It might make the process more expensive and increase waits, but ultimately that's the only way any semblance of order is to be had.
LDAP would probably be better suited for this sort of thing, too. Anyone feel like rewriting gethostbyname?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think that is why a number of US registrars got out of the US hierarchy "business". I know of two organizations that were handling .us hierarchys for two states that handed the role off to other entities.
.us registration being free. Sometimes you get what you pay for.
The admins that were in charge of maintaining these hierarchies simply did not have the time to do it.
And if you have ever dealt with the folks at ISI.EDU before, than you can tell they don't really have the time either (if they still do it, I have not done dns in a while).
Then there is the problem with
http://www.icann.org/mbx/
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
No you don't know what you're talking about so just shut up and go RTFM.
Come back and talk when you DO know what you are talking about.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Domain name mil, edu and gov have always been supposedly restricted for the exclusive use of USAn organization. Cf this.
You can notice that the three counter-example you give me are canadian. An ICANN guy may have estimed that Canada was sortof part of the USA.
I dare you to find any south-american, african, european, asian, oceanian or antartican (?) counter example.
sigmentation fault
I apparently read it wrong, and have been amused by the total lack of ettiquite/elegance with which you have all responded.
Please allow me to try to clarify how I read that line.
"In a statement..." In one sentance, in summary, etc. "... Icann denied treating Afternic unfairly" the part I was picking at.
Now, if none of you can see it being read that way, I suggest you go back to school to gain better knowledge of the English language. The English language is NOT the best language in the world, it's probably one of the worst/ugliest, and I'm pretty sure it's one of the hardest to learn.
I don't see a clear reason why my machine has to use a particular method of resolving a text address to an IP address. Why can't we add our own top level domains by making our machines use a different DNS server to resolve, say, *.fsf or *.slashdot or even *.natalie ?
.fsf names, and make some simple java plugin that will cause the browser to resolve those correctly, then people will use it and these recurring domain name stories will become pointless noise.
If someone with a machine that can be a DNS server just appoints themselves head resolver honcho, then everyone who chooses to use the service can. Of course, perhaps Bruce and Eric might both start resolving *.communityloudmouth, but people will choose whose service to use individually, and I think that's the way it should be.
What would be needed is to set up the whole plan carefully, so that it was easy for users to assign different DNS servers to different blocks of domain names. This continuous annoyance would be fixed as people simply voted for the DNS servers they trusted. I for one would be delighted to point my DNS requests at a server that pledged to resolve etoy and etoys correctly, and ignored whatever judicial injuctions that the "official" top level DNS's choose to respect.
What has to be set up carefully is the tool which allows users to do this. If we make it easy for people to do what they want instead of what an incompetent committee rules, then the right things will happen. If you put useful information on machines with
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
If portability is the only real issue for finding a solution to get us out of this mess, then how about two IP's a static and virtual one. The virtual one is portable. I'm not sure someone should have exclusive rights to Love.com anyhow. How is anyone supposed to compete in a mainstream intenet if entire companies are devoted to sucking up the best domains and extorting people who have valid uses. Ditch the name issue entirely. Then again, I'm pretty sure a better solution will come along someday. I just hope that too much money doesn't get tied up in current domains to kill the evolution.
Do we really still need to keep the Internet robust vs. large-scale nuclear war?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You want to see something pathetic? Go to Pizza Hut's Web site. Two "front pages", one of which is Shockwave. I don't even see why they have a Web site; it's not like they let you order pizza online or anything.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
I would imagine a peer-to-peer system would introduce much longer delays in synchronization and also exponentially increase conflicts/duplicate registrations between DNSs without the most up-to-date data. The complexity and confusion would be astounding. There must be one or a few master controllers.
What about using Sealand as the site to host this new, international, .tld registrar? This would rip 'ol bill's decision to shreds, throw the ICAAN on it's end, and start us fresh.. Maybe by 'borrowing' the existing records, this could be accomplished seamlessly, then determine some rules, similar to the manifesto posted on this article (it's here somewhere, before my post) Then some volunteers/employees could wade through the mess, and eliminate the current providers.
.com.us is as likely to be seen as is .com.tw
.ca, but no .us?
Or, go for the gold-rush mentality, and just start fresh, under a new domain hierarchy... Restructured so that
-Ever notice that there's a
-------------------- Hmmm... what does this button d
get the article here
circa75.com
Somebody would do it. You know they would.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I am amazed at the degree of ignorance that Slashdot readers show on this subject. Do the math! Suppose I want to visit a website I've never visited before, in a GTLD domain. My client makes a call to my DNS server. If it hasn't got the name in it's cache, it queries my ISPs DNS server; if it hasn't got the name in it's cache, it queries a root name server. The root name server issues it the NS record for the domain, and my ISP's DNS server then queries the authoritative name server for the domain. That's a maximum of four lookups. A CCTLD domain adds one, and each level of delegated subdomain adds another. But you're looking at a very small numbers of lookups.
By contrast in a peer to peer DNS network, in a world with many hundreds of thousands of DNS servers, to find an unknown, not commonly accessed domain would require tens of thousands of lookups if it were possible at all. At a tenth of a second per lookup, it would take about two hours to resolve the average domain name. In the mean time, because the load on DNS servers would have increased by three orders of magnitude, either far mor powerful servers would have to be used, or the DNS system would grind to a halt.
It's a technologically illiterate suggestion. Anyone who made it, go back and do maths 101.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Deny: Verb - opposite of admit.
:)
NYT: Did you treat Afternic unfairly?
ICANN: No.
Therefore, they denied treating Afternic unfairly. "In a statement, ICANN treated Afternic fairly" does not mean the same thing. In fact, they did not do anything towards Afternic in the statement. They merely denied the allegations that they treated Afternic unfairly. Do the extra words make it clearer for you?
Grammer troll.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
This sort of shows their support for squatters, which, while it seemed like a good idea a few years ago, is kind of a slimy way to make a quick buck.
Eh...
Even granting the premise that ICANN violated their bylaws in not approving Afternic's application, so what? Since when it is the job of the federal courts to hear cases about corporate bylaws brought by outside parties, not by employees, officers or stockholders?
Oh, since about the time people started bandying the word "justice" about.
It is called illegal restraint of trade, and it will get your ass fined and a substantial portion of your assets handed over to the offended party in this country if you are found guilty. If the ICANN did indeed do what they are accused of, there is a very good chance they are guilty and will have to make financial ammends for their behavior.
As much as we gripe about the justice system here in the US, it often appears to be the only functioning branch of government left, where there is at least some semblance of justice, occasionally, at times. The Legislative and Executive branches are, to all appearances, already a lost cause. The leading question is, of course, how long can a government stand on only one good leg (or branch).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Almost any USAn educational instituation could get an .edu
The University of Waterloo, in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, used to be "waterloo.edu". They later changed to "uwaterloo.ca". So it wasn't limited to "USAn" educational institutions, at one point in time.
I'm a little lost on this "whoring for karma" business. If I post something that's useful to readers, should it matter what my internal personal reasons are for posting it?
I'd hate for someone to avoid posting something useful because they didn't want to look like they were seeking out karma.
[not to mention, if I was desperate for karma, I would've bypassed the +1 bonus. The comment would have still been moderated to 3 and I would have received an additional karma point.]
-----
You mean this idiot posts at +2. Oh shit, I figured he posted at 1 and got modded up. Most of his posts are modded at 1. Does this mean he gets modded down a lot.
If you are dissatisfied with a particular DNS entry or set of DNS entries, you can change them for yourself (at least, you can change it on the computers you have root/administrator access on). Every TCP/IP implementation that supports DNS that I have ever heard of has a hosts file (under Linux, /etc/hosts, surprise, surprise). Before your TCP/IP stack goes and asks the local DNS server what the IP address for a particular name is, it checks in the hosts file. Usually, hosts files are used in networks that don't have DNS servers, but, you can make any entries you want in your own hosts file. As a matter of fact, this can provide big performance benefits if your local DNS server is overloaded (not a single network packet needs to be sent to resolve a hostname in the hosts file), so "shadowing" real DNS entries could be useful as well (at the cost of automatic updates if the site moves). Thus, if you REALLY want www.microsoft.com to point to 206.132.41.231 (one of RedHat's webservers), you can make the entry in your hosts file and your system will be fooled. -Iota (Thomas Wenisch)
Including that default option was explictly one of the points I made in my original post. I agree, most users wouldn't bother to type alt:// if http:// were the default.
Even those who do not change their default to alt:// could be led there, via URL links of the form "A HREF="alt://myantimicrosoftsite.microsoft.com".
The notion is that the most common application of DNS today is with respect to the web. This solution does not address issues with respect to shell accounts, telnet, ssh, ftp, etc., although a more comprehensive, alternative name resolution system is probably called for.
As for techies forgetting about Internet NEwbies and AOL dorks, well, why not? They can educate themselves, just like the rest of us.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
If, however, I was representing something with a valid Maxwell trademark (and I can't help but think of Maxwell House Coffee, even though I can't stand the stuff), then yes, it would be first-come, first-serve.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I'm with you. Let's just dump the whole DNS concept and use IP addresses for everything.
Yeah, that will work great with IPv6...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
According to the court filing, ICANN just doens't want to give reseller privledges to Afternic because of past violations of domain registration policies. While Register.com and Network Solutions are themselves not very customer friendly, Afternic went as far as massregistering domain names under made up names of people and companies, squatted on them, and then resold them. ICANN is is worried that if they let Afternic become a reseller, they'll take thier list of 5000 or so choice domains (and their equivants when the new TLDs become available) that ICANN obtained from afternic internal documents and set them aside in a higher priced area. It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out in court
my guess is that you'd have to file a case in court against her to find out the truth.
<IMHO>
Like the subject says, its the whole system that sucks! I say we need an international entity responsible for domain name assignment and dispute resolution, and that each country that wishes to participate in the Internet must acknowledge the entity's authority. Maybe a UN-sponsored organization? Is this too unreasonable in the long run?
</IMHO>
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
With the whole issue of the trampled namespaces, plus the many legal issues, I wonder if this may push people away from registering a bazillion more domains. Hmm... Nope. "It doesn't end in .com? That ain't a real Web site!"
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Even simpler. 'Zero Level' to the domain system. Think of it like this...
.microsoft server, and so forth.
.microsoft heiarchy, but once they registered a name (e.g www.microsoft) no one could take it away from them short of a court order presented to the owner of the name, who has sole power (in a technical sense) to remove it.
You keep the existing DNS, but fill in around it.
That's an interesting approach, although it does have the disadvantage of allowing the ICANN to retain its domain of authority.
Prehaps competing sets of root servers would be better, each addressable by either a different URL prefix, or a different "one-off" domain (microsoft.com.ican, microsoft.com.alt, etc...).
This assumes we stick with DNS, which might be more practical short term, but not necessarilly what we'd want in the long term.
An ideal situation would be an approach where no central authority exists to say "yeah" or "nay" to a domain name, where anyone can simply register a name, such as "jean-michel.smith" and, if no one else already has it, you get it. Any legal action is betwen you and whoever, as only you can change it (with your secret key, presumably -- this already assumes a slightly more sophisticated appraoch than the current DNS heiarchy.)
This doesn't necessarilly mean no heiarchy. One idea might be to have a hybrid system, in which each heiarchical level is peer to peer (with automated conflict resolution via timestamp or some other reasonably fair methodology), such that anyone can set up a root server in cooperation with other root servers, anyone can set up a
This would mean that Micrsoft wouldn't control all names within the
There are other issues which would need to be fleshed out, such as what to do if someone forgets or loses their private key (or claims they did) and so forth, but you get the idea.
As another put it, power and responsibility both reside with the individual registrant, to whom other parties and the legal system could turn if legal remedies were called for.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Lawyers are running us now... People are greedy - Money!!! Credit - Fame.... Is that all its about! Sick of lawyers and f'ing lawsuits...
It's annoying to have to make this comment all the time on DNS-related stories, but I feel it's worth it to keep this fresh in peoples' minds:
What authority does ICANN actually have? Sure, they run the defacto standard DNS network. But nothing significant is stopping anyone from creating an alternate DNS network (and thus, an alternate namespace, at least under the TLD level). Heck... AlterNic is the prime example of this. I feel that a DNS network that uses all of the existing TLDs, but with the addition of a .o domain (a previous post of mine for more info on my .o idea) or a (usenet-esque) .alt domain is definitely in order.
Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about.
It seems to me that instead of having all this ICANN accreditation nonsense, any authoratitive DNS server should be world-writable, with some form of digital signature required to update an existing domain, but unregistered domains go to anyone who requests them. Billing could be done post-facto, or not at all.
Further, why not scrap the whole DNS heirarchy? Every ISP has at least two DNS servers, and they all talk to the upstream DNS servers until you get to the root servers. DNS should be made peer-to-peer, not top down, and the need for ICANN and it's 5M$/year budget goes out of the window.
At the time of writing, this was a first post.
--
E_NOSIG
heiarchical, but peer to peer at each level.
.linux), it is resolved by one of the peers at that level.
queries get passed up and down to the appropriate level as now for resolution. Peers would only have to cache databases for their level, not the entire internet.
Once reaching the appropriate level (e.g.
Anyone can add a peer, and manage a name within that level as they wish, with conflict resolution using timestamps or some other, reasonably fair appraoch.
Thus, no one has authority over any domain, top level or otherwise, yet everyone can remain certain that, once they have registered a name it is theres.
Possible problems: hijacking of lower level names.
E.g. you have a network my.firm, and you want to name all kinds of names like mars.my.firm, venus.my.firm, jupiter.my.firm, but some other jerk has gone around and registered millions of names, eating up most of the usable hostnames.
Possible solution? (This is probably heresy) Introduce a small modification to the standard domain name nomenclature, in which a hostname is seperated from the domain name by a different character than "." Within each domain name each person has complete authority as they do now with standard dns, but without, none.
So, in our example above, some jackass could go on
to register mars.my.firm, venus.my,firm, etc., but these point to domains and not specific hosts, which would be resolved as mars:my.firm, venus:my.firm, etc. (a colon probably isn't the best example here, but dashes are out and nothing else springs directly to mind. Maybe commas?)
I don't know if this is at all workable, but it seems to be a better solution than the centralized system we have now with all of its abuses and centers of authority, while still preserving much of the performance gain in a heiarchical system.
What do you think?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
What you have to remember is that the net is no longer the Government's little toy, designed and maintained for the sole benefit of ivory tower academics and covered by an "appropriate use" policy. It is now the domain of the corporations that have turned the web from a text-based, dull place into the multimedia experiance that people want to see today.
ICANN is a remnant of the Government's long-gone days in which the controlled the net, and I don't think anyone really wants them to control anything. Instead we need to allow market forces to be brought into play in the domain name market, so that consumers can get the best deal possible - something which ICANN seem to be determined to stop.
No, hopefully Afternic will win this case and ICANN will be consigned to the attic like it should have been. The time for government control over the net has gone, and that can only be a good thing for all of us.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
If Afternic is suing for "lost business," their damage claims would probably be hight. If ICANN is already strapped for cash and they lose this case, what happens then? If they go bankrupt, what next?
Which you can access through this convenient link.
Of course, this side-steps the issue of whether it's ethical to take someone's content for free that they are requesting you to register for.
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who SHOULD regulate domain names?
.tld's are recognized by the commonly used root servers.
:P
There's no reason at all for them to be so stodgily defined. BIND doesn't give a damn what domain name you use. It's a sort of artificially created monopoly, in the sense that only a small number of
I say we all just start our own root servers, and allow any tld to be posted to it.
Come on, donate some broadband to the Free The World From ICANN's Domaination! project.
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blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
...but rusty has a nice policy of zapping all spammers' comments. You might not like it there :) -JD
Even granting the premise that ICANN violated their bylaws in not approving Afternic's application, so what? Since when it is the job of the federal courts to hear cases about corporate bylaws brought by outside parties, not by employees, officers or stockholders?
I wish I still had some of the auto-responders from the InterNIC when I used to be the DNS Admin for an ISP. They went like this..
.net TLD (that was the hottest TLD to get, not .com!). .orgs were limited to provable non-profit organizations. Almost any educational institution could get an .edu now they are limited to four-year or graduate schools only. I remember getting .edu TLD's for a stenography school, a technical school, a grade school and a for profit scholarship company.
:)
"Thank you for your submission. Currently, InterNIC processes over 600 domain submissions a week. Please be advised, that your registration will take up to three weeks to process. Also, there is a one domain per organization limit. Multiple registrations will be rejected"
Back then, all registrations were done by hand, (I remember Robert used to handle all of ours). Only ISP's or similar networking organizations could have a
It was very different back then.
Oh well, I used to also walk 8 miles uphill both ways in the snow in July when I was a boy...
That is a good idea! If one were to implement a Gnutella like system where there is a sort of self-healing network of interconnected nodes, all of which can search eathother. Maybe something more like freenet where the content moves towards the consumers.
There are two immediate problems with this, one technical, and one political. First the technical, because it's the most important (politics can go t hell for the moment...). The problem is that things like Round Robin DNS for server pools, and for those poor souls with dynamic IP's who still want to run a server, we need some sort of clever way to prevent this decentralized blob of servers from keeping stale name entries around. Maybe if each entry in the system got a UTC timestamp along with it's signature, and any server that had a previous copy would replace that with the new one, but it still has the capacity to stagnate. Maybe if when aquiring new links A La Gnutella, there could be some specific protocol provision for requesting at least a couple distant servers as peers to keep the average distance between any two servers small... I'm sort of sleep deprived, so i'm not sure if that would work, but how's it sound?
The political problem is trying to overcome the F.U.D. that will be kicked up by the powers that be when a system is created that cannot be 'sued' and from which names cannot be revoked because they are offensive, or because some stupid corporation is scared of them (think or the etoy-etoys ruckus...).
Oh well. *yawn*
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Play Six Pack Man. I
JB: Well, why don't i just sue you?
Lawyer: Sue who?
JB: Sue you.
L: Sue me?
JB: Sue everybody!
brought to you by a bored intern
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
> Almost any educational institution could get an .edu .edu
Almost any USAn educational instituation could get an
sigmentation fault
The political problem is trying to overcome the F.U.D. that will be kicked up by the powers that be when a system is created that cannot be 'sued' and from which names cannot be revoked because they are offensive, or because some stupid corporation is scared of them
.us, .de, .uk, etc. remains intact even while .com, .org, .net are subverted and countless new TLDs emerge.
This FUD is easilly gotten around.
Hack Mozilla and other browsers to recognize a different prefix as html, but using the new Name Service. Perhaps something like "alt://" instead of "http://" Allow the user to define one or the other as the default.
Then, whenever someone tries to look up alt://fucktheicann.com they'll get the anti-icann site, while http://fucktheicann.com isn't resolved because the ICANN has "reserved" it. (Disclaimer, the previous example is entirely fictional, I have no idea if such a domain exists or how ICANN would respond to it if it did).
One could go a step further, in inviting all of the country code TLDs to participate in both systems, such that the integrity of
This could probably be hacked using the existing DNS system, or an improved version with better security features. Names could be given on a first come, first serve basis (automated), with no provisions for arbitration whatsoever (take it up with the other party, if you get a court order, send the police to there house, don't bother us).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
But you're forgetting the all-important "In a statement.." This implies that ICANN released a statement, which DENIED the allegations that they "treat[ed] Afternic UNfairly." Hence, no misspell/bad grammar in the first place...
-------------------- Hmmm... what does this button d
So Maxwell Technologies would have to give up their domain maxwell.com if Maxwell Optical Industries challenged it? Not at all. They both have valid 'Maxwell' trademarks, just in different markets.
So who gets maxwell.com? Whoever got to it first, that's who, and to fuckall with latecomers.
A trademark is not an exclusive right to be the sole user of the word or name in every conceivable form in every market and in every corner of the world. It allows exclusive right to use the name for a product or range of products in a specific category, and that's all.
That site would just keep returning 404: Not Found errors :-)
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
Personally, I think the Official Pr0n TLD should be .xxx. I think the pornsites would like that too, since they already try to get as many x's in their names as possible (at least, so I've heard...not that I'd know from firsthand experience...or anything...er...ahem).
I'm more concerned about only nonprofits getting .org, no companies (sorry, Hemos).
My favorite suggestion is to let each country manage their own DNS. So, say, pets.com would mean pets.com.au in Australia and pets.com.us in the USA. To get to a domain in another country, just qualify it with the ISO country code (pets.com.au would always be the same site no matter where you are). Of course, there would have to be restrictions: a country couldn't create a TLD that matched a country code.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
1999 will go down in history as the year your mom found out about the Internet.
and 2000 is the year that attorneys found out about it.
I've been working exclusively on the internet since 1994 and one after another, there have been attempts by some cabal of evil greed-heads to get a free pass to gouge all the internet users-
from the CIX (commercial internet exchange) router controversy in 1994-5(?), to InterNIC to ARIN to ICANN, they are all the same..
I agree with the european domain registrars:
http://slashdot.org/yro/00/06/07/135 0254.shtml
ICANN is a leach on the internet, in bed with the 'big boys' preventing real competition. This story is just another very visible example of their blatent preference for the status quo.
Does this mean that *GASP* another internet giant is being toppled for *BLINK BLINK* unfair business practices?
I don't think that this is exactly the right tome for it to happen this way, but something did have to be done thusly. It's nice to have some organization to the way one reaches other services conveniently via the net, but there's never been a big need for control thusly.
Of course, I just want Big.Hat for my site.
"I'm not even supposed to BE here today!"
Wow, I'm sure my girlfriend wishes she'd had a "dick lameness" filter installed prior to Jan. 9th.
errr...I mean...
I just love double negatives. That one statement (from the article) means just about the exact opposite of the rest of the article.
Now lets just take that statement and remove the double negative (or multiply by -1, whatever you feel more comfortable with):
In a statement, Icann treated Afternic fairly
What I think they meant was: Icann denied Afternic, treating them unfairly; which would make a lot more sense with the rest of the article.
Icann is absolutely right for turning down Afternic. Its companies and people like them that prevent regular people from buying domains with simple, easily remembered names.
A decent analogy would be if a person or company tried to buy all the 800/877/toll free prefixed telephone numbers that spell something, in order to resell them at a later date. Its irritating at the very least, and although IANAL, I suspect it is illegal.
no, you cannot keep a trademark. granted, you can register it, but you cannot keep it if it is challenged. go to domain magistrate next time make sure you are well informed. - an NSI employee
Whoever wants to. You have your OWN "primary" DNS server. Whether its dns.slashdot.org, a local box of yoru own, or whatever. They resolve thier OWN specialty lookups. IF they don't have them, then you use your ISPs normal dns resolution.
For example. I set up my own version of freedns. Me, my friends and slashdot use it for a year. A year later, it has 100,000 entries. 50 bytes per entry is 5MB total for OUR DNS. The normal (luser's) DNs table is 100x that, or more. But "we" don't need to resolve microsoft.com or netscape.com. They'll be in the top level as they should be. Diffs, instead of DLing the whole thing, cuts that to about 1% a day, or a very manageable 50KB per site. 10 mirrors, with 10 mirrors each = 100 sites serving a 50k to 1,000 sites each. 50Mb is not much on a T1 at 1am, much less a T3 or god forbid, we actually get an OC link to join up.
Again, when etoy.com gets sued out of existance by etoys, WE resolve etoy.com to the right IP. We dont need to resolve etoys.com. ONLY when a site is improperly resolved/corporately hijacked do we need to resolve it.
Sites that we might want to always resolve could be whatever.free for instance. All our freedom loving non-domain squatting ilk can grab a domain like software.free And post thier DNS patches :)
No your freind the art history major wont be able to see software.free by typing it into netscape. But she will be able to see it by going to http://igiveaflyingfuck.freedomains.genericisp.com /whatsthisaboutfreedns.html
Think about it.
email:addy good, domain bad. Use domain decryption "Pig-Latin" to resolve.
I told you not to click on it =)
I'm not a lawyer. Everything that I have read about restraint of trade is in reference to restrictive clauses in contracts and agreements. Simple refusal to do business with someone is not a restraint of trade. If you want to buy widgets from me, but I refuse because I don't like people who wear green socks, that is your tough luck.
1. I agree needed are more TLD's, but they need to be logical ones. Sex sites on .sex, Map sites on .map, ISP's on .net or .isp, only real companies as .com's etc.
.com.
you must provide clearly delineated rulesets which define what goes where. for example, porn sites that are commercial enterprises (as opposed to porn sites that give their content away for free)... would they be porn.com or porn.sex? to further complicate the issue, would porn.com.sex or porn.sex.com be allowable? the issue isn't as neatly dividable as it appears.
2. There need to be rules and the registration services need to enforce them. aka if your not a company you don't get a
agreed. laws that are not enforced are useless.
3. First come first served, end of story. If you register xxxx.yyy its yours unless there is a superior claim. ie mcdonalds.com should belong to the company, but if you register mcdonalds.fam because thats your family name no one cna take it away.
if you used rule (1) and (2) above, then (3) would not be a problem. potential cases where it might be a problem would be two families who want to register mcdonalds.org, but this is solveable through subdomains.
4. Trademarks mean nothing on the internet, and should not be enforcable. see above.
this would probably not be nearly quite the problem that it is today if rules (1) and (2) were used.
5. A new central authority, the current ones don't work.
this is because the 'central authority' (NSI, previously known as Internic) has now been dissolved in the name of capitalism. IMO, the "monopoly" of internic was more efficient than the money-grabbing mess that it is turning into.
6. Registration services cannot own domain names, or horde domain names that they do not use as part of their business.
i agree, but without a practical way to enforce this, such a rule is without value. can anyone think of a way to safeguard against this sort of action?
7. Domain names are the property of the person who registers them, the fee is simply for the up keep of the central domain records, so your DNS server can be found.
i'm not sure about the term 'property'. i've never had any problem with the concept of registration of a domain... it's simply a lease of common domain space, really. everybody and nobody owns them... you're simply the person who holds the current license for it. now, on the matter of reselling the license of the domain (ie, selling the domain for millions of dollars as is done now), perhaps something could be written into the registration agreement that prohibits resale of the license, so that you can't register 'rock.com' and then sell it for a million dollars. you get the idea.
8.Owners have the right to move to a different service if they so desire at anytime.
what service? if there is a central authority then there is only one registrar, and DNS is all one service anyway. what would they switch *to*?
9. Anyone can provide registration services, just like networksolutions, register.com whatever.
i think that this would be a mistake. i do not agree with peer-to-peer domain registration concepts. i believe that they would result in more chaos than they solve. they achieve a loss of centralized control (perceived as a good thing) at the expense of centralized order (perceived as a bad thing IMO). again, if there was a 'central authority', this rule would be unnecessary.
10. Domain names cannot be suspended or taken away, unless you can provide a superior claim, TRADEMARKS do not count. You must simply have existed longer doing what you are doing on the internet...first come first served again.
what constitutes 'a superior claim'? who decides which claim is 'superior'? many of the court-combats over domain names are for easily-rememberable domain names (such as mcdonalds.com, although i doubt they've been in any litigation over it... i'm simply using it as an example.) yes, people aren't that smart commonly, and you want a commercial domain name (any domain name, really) to be easily rememberable (that being the entire point of domain names in the first place), but any advertising/marketing department worth its salt can make a terrible domain name carve itself into your retinas.
11. You have the right to a single top level domain. If you have xxxx.yyy you cannot own xxxx.zzz as well unless it is providing entirely different content and services. This is common sense stuff, that personally i had always thought was just standard practice until I really started paying attention to internet politics.
why should i have the right to a top level domain? what's the point? if things are organized well (see rules (1) and (2), and also keep in mind that DNS can go 127 levels deep in subdomains) then the need for more TLDs should be reduced significantly. anyway, with the xxxx.yyy and xxxx.zzz stuff, if you follow the recommendation of another poster and charge higher fees for domain registrations to a single entity (person/corp) then they will not want to own too many of them. again, rules (1) and (2) aid in this effort to control "domain spammers" as well.
eudas
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
Yet Another example:
The University of Toronto
www.toronto.edu and www.utoronto.ca.
So please, get your facts straight before you post.
This is my
This is my
--An Oldie, but a Goodie!
so TLDs really aren't a part of it.
ICANN has not rejected anybody's application. Afternic and a few others are on hold. Not granted != denied.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
One small question: Why does the Times play up the claim of "Oh, we're so innocent. See, the brothers Mom likes better get away with the stuff she punishes me for." And this without really looking at whether the firm is question is fundamentally slimeballs? Like, sociopaths always know how to talk the prettiest, but the Times once had reporters who weren't quite so easily suckered in.
Keep in mind that the damages these jackasses are looking for would more than bankrupt ICANN. Now, sure ICANN is truly unfortunate, but can some of you say "It sure was better when Network Solutions ran everything." ICANN kisses too much corporate ass, but there's no way to win at all except play the corporations off against each other. Like, someone want to change the GNU license so IBM can't use Linux? Course not, even the most pure want to use the corporations to destroy each other. There's no other game - it's not like you can defect to the Soviets anymore if you're looking for a truly competing power. Don't sell ICANN short. Help them stomp Alternic, and NetSol, and then push on to the next frontier.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Can't anyone tell that the system that is currently in place just isn't working out... The Registration system needs fixing and it needs fixing fast. .sex, Map sites on .map, ISP's on .net or .isp, only real companies as .com's etc. .com
1. I agree needed are more TLD's, but they need to be logical ones. Sex sites on
2. There need to be rules and the registration services need to enforce them. aka if your not a company you don't get a
3. First come first served, end of story. If you register xxxx.yyy its yours unless there is a superior claim. ie mcdonalds.com should belong to the company, but if you register mcdonalds.fam because thats your family name no one cna take it away.
4. Trademarks mean nothing on the internet, and should not be enforcable. see above.
5. A new central authority, the current ones don't work.
6. Registration services cannot own domain names, or horde domain names that they do not use as part of their business.
7. Domain names are the property of the person who registers them, the fee is simply for the up keep of the central domain records, so your DNS server can be found.
8.Owners have the right to move to a different service if they so desire at anytime.
9. Anyone can provide registration services, just like networksolutions, register.com whatever.
10. Domain names cannot be suspended or taken away, unless you can provide a superior claim, TRADEMARKS do not count. You must simply have existed longer doing what you are doing on the internet...first come first served again.
11. You have the right to a single top level domain. If you have xxxx.yyy you cannot own xxxx.zzz as well unless it is providing entirely different content and services. This is common sense stuff, that personally i had always thought was just standard practice until I really started paying attention to internet politics.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Whether it is good or not, .US domains are still like this. But I don't think it was necessarily so great, because there is a potential for abuse. Its fairly easy to make sure only schools get k12.LOCALITY.STATE.US, but what about organizations who want to register a domain? Do they have to be non-profit? if yes, doesn't that waste a lot of potential domains for useful services (movies.LOCALITY.STATE.US, etc.). Who's going to do the research to follow through? What if the person in charge of the somebigcity.STATE.US domain is not representative of the people of Some Big City and refuses a gay organization's request for a domain? It's not like they were elected to register domains, they volunteered and did the work needed to set up a DNS server. There are extensive rules listed at nic.us but they still have a lot of holes and makes the whole .US TLD seem muddled, IMHO.