Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Battle for .Web

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-just-want-my-.dot-tld dept.

Tripp Lilley writes "At FOCI: Friends Of a Competitive Internet, we've sent out this letter to a lot of folks interested in the battle for the .Web TLD in the ICANN New TLD Program. While ICANN's Criteria for Assessing TLD Proposals call for, among other things, "the enhancement of competition for registration services" and "enhance[ment] [of] the diversity of the DNS and of registration services generally", over one third of the proposals on the table come from a fascinatingly intertwined group of existing registries and registrars, including NSI, CORE, and Melbourne IT. (Oh, and before anyone flames me for not disclosing my affiliations, read the full disclosure that's been posted on the site and attached to the letter since we began)."

2 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. TLD's by Tei'ehm+Teuw · · Score: 5
    Should be dynamic. Keep some basic guidelines, such as three letter TLD's and then just deal with it.

    The controlling parties know that by introduction of a schema like this, they would lose their stranglehold on the pay for TLD services, regisrtation etc, and in the end the power they hold would be lost, so woulld the profits. The massive amount of stonewalling to keep the few TLD's out there is really getting old.

    Open 'em up, lose the regulation and force the TLD controllers to change their business model. Now it's a striking similarity to the US area code system running only a dozen or so area codes.

  2. .au registration rules by lpontiac · · Score: 5
    On the other side of the world, Melbourne IT owns an 80% market share in the .au TLD, which is increasingly recognized not as geographically bound to Australia, but as a Global TLD in its own right.

    I'd be interested in hearing more about this ".au is global" if it's actually true - and I doubt it. http://www.melbou rne it.com.au/ver2/html/services/indexinww.htm states:

    The .com.au is the official designated space for Australian Internet names - it is the official space for Australian business. In order to register a .com.au domain space you must be a registered Australian commercial entity and your Internet name must be derived from your business name.
    This is common knowledge in .au - the rules for getting a .com.au are pretty damn strict. To get a .net.au you need to be a registered company that's involved with the Internet and to get .org.au you need to be a registered non-profit organisation. Oh, and Melbourne IT isn't in charge - they licence the right to manage .au from the .au Domain Administration.

    Melbourne IT's apparantly also into the .com registration business, so perhaps this is where they got confused.