Will New TLDs' Restrictions Negate Their Aims?

Kyle writes: "According to this story on Wired, most of the new TLDs selected by ICANN will be restricted. For example, .biz will sport a $2000 price tag with an annual $150 fee, and will be limited to verifiable, legitimate businesses with specific commercial intent. The .pro TLD will be used exclusively by certified "professionals," including doctors, lawyers, etc. If the point is to introduce competition for .com, ICANN might have missed the target. Might this exclusivity limit the popularity of new domains? If almost no one is allowed to use them, the general consumer will likely be unaware that they exist, and continue in their .com'ocentric mindset." Problem is, who says what's bona fide? Would officious rules like this allow eccentric, personal Web-museums (like the online LED Museum) into.museum?

Comments

Check out the TLDs in the ORSC root system

[DNS Root]

Go here to set up your DNS:
http://www.open-rsc.org/
http://www.youcann.org/

Examples of the "other" domains:
http://www.commandments.god/
http://www.405.mov/
http://www.bbc.news/
http://www.cnn.news/

Re:Check out the TLDs in the ORSC root system

[Jason W]

Or, if you just want the nameserver IPs:

199.166.24.1 (ns1.vrx.net)
205.189.73.102 (ns2.vrx.net)

If you're using a real OS, just plug them into /etc/resolv.conf.
If you're stuck under Windows they even have a program that changes them for you.

I've been using them for over a year without any problem whatsoever.

Canada "had" a good tld system

[issachar]

Until recently, Canada had the solution for what ail's the .com. Unlike registering a .com name, registering a .ca name took more than cash.

The first rule was that a single entity could only have one domain name. Furthermore, that domain name had to be clearly related to your business/organisation, and as specific as possible to avoid confusion without being too hard to remember. In other words if I owned The Happy Burger Shop, I couldn't register Pepsi.ca. That obviously has nothing to do with my organisation, and I probably would be able to register Burger.ca. I'd probably have to go with HappyBurger.ca.

Furthermore, in order to register a .ca I'd have to represent a national organisation. (In other words, my business would have to be incorporated federally). If I was incorporated provincially, I could have HappyBurger.bc.ca if I was located in British Columbia. That was in the event that my domain name was also the name of another organisation in another province, (unlikely, but possible), they could have the domain name for that area.

The advantages of this system are clear. Cybersquating becomes difficult if not impossible, and the system didn't favour those with cash. Like when mailbank.com decided to register thousands of last names and resell them. They aren't creating wealth there, they're just trying to create another middleman. Something the consumer doesn't need, and the internet should do away with.

Unfortunately, someone at the .ca organisation decided to try and make money by copying the .com system. The result is going to be what has happened to the .com. Favoritism to large corporations and lawsuits where the the group with the most cash wins. There are enough "open" tld's. Why trash all of them?

Good idea, wrong gTLDs

[Tor]

It is a Good Idea(tm) to let only legitimate businesses willing to pay $2000 for one or two domain names, and not squatters collecting hundreds of these, register domain names under ".biz". In fact, it will most certainly unclutter the namespace sufficiently that the $1,000,000 price tags that some companies are now paying said squatters are a thing of the past.

But ".biz" is an incredibly stupid TLD. Imagine "sun.biz", "cisco.biz", etc. If anyting, it will only attract spammers, like flies. I.e. "direct marketing" organizations, and their ilk.

As a side note, the problem with inability to deal with squatting of ".com" (.net, .org) addresses has to do with several registrars handling these. Competition for domain name registration is Good, but no single TLD should be in the hands of more than one registrar. Why? Because they will compete for customers by lowering their prices - if one entity managed it they could actually increase the prices for registration based on the current shortage.

• Specific criterias for each TLD is Good. ".org" should be reserved for certified non-profit organizations (not per a specific government's tax rules, but per the registrar's rules). ".net" should be reserved for network service providers. ".pro" for professionals. A valid trademark for ".com". ".nothing" for domain name squatters.
• Price competition within a single TLD is Bad. Squatters can buy hundreds of domain names easily, then resell them at astronomical prices. They would not buy hundreds of $2000 names, but a legitimate business would.
• Stupid TLDs are bad. The price tag of $50000 for a TLD application filtered out common sense, and left only money left to speak. Bad idea.

-tor

RFCs, Anybody?

[edibleplastic]

Whatever happened to our good old democratic Requests For Comments? It would seem to me that if an organization was going to make a decision that would affect oh, I don't know, hundreds of millions of people, that could either foster or wither certain amounts of intellectual and commercial growth, and that WILL NOT BE REVERSABLE (you can't go back after 5 millions .biz and .pro domains have been registered), that they would perhaps ask people for their opinion? In the past, when the Internet wasn't run by corporations, there was a public discussion when anything new was to be added. Email protocols, html tags, TCP/IP specifications were all publicly discussed, so that everybody could point out the bad points and good points of what was going on. These tlds were developed in a vacuum, and because of that they are going to be terrible and underused.

Re:Please... there are rules on the Internet?

[Wakko Warner]

please.

tell me visions.edu is a 4-year college.

then tell me what courses I can enroll in at root.edu.

Imaginal.edu looks a little suspicious too.

insurancefactory.edu? A college that does nothing but sell insurance?

people have mentioned california.edu before; it's just a portal site for every california college, but it isn't a school itself.

schools.edu is registered too.

discountproductmall.edu used to be.

clue.edu doesn't give out degrees either.

and that's just 23% of the .EDU root zone file. Do you need more examples?

- A.P.

--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Am I the only one here....

[scotpurl]

...who thinks that the latest ICANN decisions seemed designed to milk money out of those who can most afford to pay? Businesses, doctors, lawyers, hospitals....

Scrap .com/.net/.org/.edu/.mil

[main()]

Here's my solution...

1) Sale of all subdomains of these TLDs should be halted
2) Subdomains of .us should be created for each...
3) Existing .com/etc domains created under .com.us/etc. I guess we have to let them keep their exiting domains though 8-(
3) Leave it upto the naming authorities in each geographics TLD as to which subdomains they wish to create/for what price etc.

This is how it *should* have been from the start... nice and clean... like any good filesystem/home directory 8-)

Si

ps. No... I'm not joking... fair play to the yanks for coming up with this Internet malarkey, but these domains are a pants idea.

Remember When the Internet Was Non-Comercial?

[Phrogman]

Does Anyone remember when the internet was not commercially focused, when it was about making actual information available? It may just be me, but it struck me that the whole focus of ICANN seems to be not so much how to regulate the domainspace, but how to generate more cash out of it. I would be *so* happy to see the development of an entirely non-commercial internet where I could go to seek bona-fide information free of advertisements, commercial interests, etc.

I have developed and maintained my own website (Omphalos - The Directory & Search Engine for Paganism & Witchcraft) and expanded it to provide a wide variety of information on its subjects, and it has a growing audience (~40,000 page views per month). I have done so without any thought of making a profit from the site. My only purpose is to try to provide some useful information to others out there who might be interested in the topics covered by my website. There are many other websites out there which have the same purpose and their developers have put the same sort of time into their sites as I have into mine I am sure. We are all being lost in a sea of increasing commercialization on the web. I regularly see the assumption made that if you are on the web, and own your own domain you are naturally doing so for the purpose of making money and therefore can naturally afford the costs associated with any new requirements that spring up. When renewal time for Omphalos.net rolls around I can certainly afford the $75 required, but not if they were allowed to raise the rate to $2000. Can anyone see NSI claiming that since .biz domains go for $2000 they ought to be able to raise the rate on .com domains? I can. Therefore, I fear that it might not be all that long before the relentless drive to turn a quick buck might drive me out of my own domain space entirely.

And yes, I should probably register Omphalos.info as soon as I can, but what will it cost me?

Why aren't they doing this *now*?

[AdamHaun]

This seems like the perfect system to actually free up many of the domain names used now. Limit .com to actual commerical entities, .net to actual ISPs and the like, .org to actual organizations...and then create another TLD for everything else, free of trademarking disputes and the like. I'm surprised that trademark considerations haven't been mentioned with the new TLDs, considering the fact that Dr. Joe Ford can now acquire ford.pro...

Re:Why aren't they doing this *now*?

[jandl]

Ah, but they haven't left out TM's at all. Every proposed TLD has both a sunrise provision for TM holders and adopts the flawed UDRP.

All they have done is hand it over to the megacorps, just like they've done with .com/net/org. They haven't opened up the name space one bit. The individual dn holder is still screwed and Joe Ford would have to prove he's a professional to get the name. Nothing's changed except maybe the price goes up.

The .BIZ tld that has been in the ORSC rootzone is $6.00 and has one restriction. You can't transfer it. - i.e., don't register it if you intend to sell it, 'cause you can't. The same goes for .online and .etc. - all $6.00.

The idea is to open up the name space and give everyone a chance. There is no UDRP. It will take a court order to lose the name, and then the only choice is deletion (cancellation). No transfer. No supra legal body to take the name away. You register it, you use it.

But! Here's another twist... It is finally up to DoC as to whether ANY of them are entered into the legacy root. Don't forget that. It ain't over yet. There are already challenges from Congressmen - probably more coming.

If you want freed up name space, you're gonna have to go to the ORSC root system. It's like it should be.... :)

-Leah-

Doesn't Matter, Everyone will Register in all TLDs

[JLester]

I don't think it will matter how many TLDs they come out with. Everyone will just register their name in all of them (corporations will anyway). If there are 16 available TLDs, does anyone here NOT think Coca-Cola will register coke.xxxx in all of them (plus coca-cola.xxxx, diet-coke.xxxx, etc.)? The .pro sounds like a step in the right direction, but I seriously doubt they will care too much if you have the cash. How many companies that aren't ISPs are network providers have .net for example?

Jason

THERE IS ANOTHER, OLDER, CHEAPER .BIZ

[rs79]

.BIZ was first deployed by Karl Denninger around 5 years ago. I think he charged $25 or something. Karl subsequently sold MCS.NET and these days Leah Gallegos runs .BIZ. I think she charges about $6 with the idea that that's wholesale and anybody can be a "registrar" for somebody else or just grab domains for themselves. The URL is HTTP://WWW.BIZTLD.NET .

The .BIZ TLD resolves in many of the popular alternative root clusters: ORSC, TINC, PacROOT

Being outside the ICANN/US Government system means it's not subject to dangerous foolishness like the horribly flawed UDRP and silly-assed "sunrise" provision.

Only reason Trademarks work

[Project_2501]

is because they are protected by the government. If trademarks were not protected by the law, each company could take on a variety of names instead of just one. Yes this may cause confusion at first becuase scumbag spammer types would use names that have nothing to do with the trademark but at the same time we would be making people more aware of the fact that this kind of thing may happen, and we could start an internet based blacklisting of individuals who are squatting or using names that are clearly meant to deceive the people.

Basically what I am saying is that we the people should be our own regulators. We don't need the government reulating what is legit or not, we the people are smart enough to do this thing on our own. Free intellectual property. Let the people decide what is a legitimate source of binary data over what is not. We are not kids anymore dammit, the government should give us this right. To not give us this right is an offense to our intelligence not to mention to the progress of the democratic world.

-= Griffis =-

.BIZ is already in operation

[DNS Root]

See:

http://www.biztld.net/

Won't work - Nothing will !!!

[DiviN]

Up front, I think ICANN has a tough job trying to please everyone. The logical result of such an attempt is that ICANN will never please anyone.
So, no matter what they do, nobody will ever be satisfied.

Next, new TLDs in any shape or form are useless.
The name of the game is dot-com.

dot-com is main street Slicon Valley and Wall Street [ny/ny] combined. Any other dot-ohheckimtoolateoricantaffordthedotcom has minute survival chances in a market that is hooked on dot-com.

Therefore, all new TLDs will only result in a land-grab of imbeciles and in money burning from doomed start-ups.

Would you do business with a company that doesn't have a dot-com? Maybe to buy chewing gum [caffeine] or an auction, well if it's cheap, you might. But would you buy thousands of dollars woth of goods from someone that can't be bothered to buy their dotcom domain?
Would you trust an online service provider or consultant that doesn't have his/her dotcom? Just how valuable could that service be, if the provider didn't even have the foresight to secure his/her dotcom?

So, who would take a domain, like say, dotbiz?
People who can't afford the dotcom, right? Why would I want do business with them? If they were reliable and successful, then the owner of the dotcom would have sued them out of their dotbiz by now, claiming 'prior art' and bad business practice.

Further, there are so much more dotcom domains available than meets the eye. heck, there are over 400 languages in use on the planet and the English name space is coming up with creative new terms [i-this, e-that, 1-more, 2-less, 1-4-u, etc.] on a regular base. So by adding new domain names, thgis creativity would be stifled for a short while, until everyone realizes that new TLDs didn't solve a problem, but created severl. Then we'll all be back to inventing new words and phrases like i_1_2_yell.com. Apart from that English is probably the language that assimilates new and foreign language words the easiest.
So, we are unlikely rto really ever run out of dotcom names.

Of course, the no-brainer names for people who have problems to articulate in their first language will be incresing in price on an ongoing base. But so what? Does it affect anyone here if someone makes a gazillion for iknewitfirst-dot-com? Aren't most people just pissed off that they didn't do it themselves, when they hear about a cybersquatter making a killing?
I think, there should be laws against taking someones dotcom brand and registering similar names only to sell it back to the original owner.

Remember the first guys that registered a go2...-dotcom? I think they should own the rights to all domain names that have a go2 in them. They had the idea first and should have the right to claim 'prior art'.

But they can't, because they are a bunch of young techies that had no idea what gold-mine their idea could be. Then came Go2Networks, snapped them all up, sold out to Disney and recently the people who can demonstrate that they registered the first ever domain name that had go2 in it received a letter from WIPO...

So, coming full circle, while Slashdotters love to trash issues, it seems that most of them miss the point. Copyrights, Open Source, Domain names, Legal system, they all fit in the same catgory - "things to be urgently reviewed"

While I do not share the script kiddies' hostility towards ICANN/M$/Business/their-mum, I do think that ICANN completely missed the picture [again]as well and tried to solve a problem that didn't really exist by isolating incidents and studying them in an artificial surrounding - the best recipe for questionable scientific results.

Instead of yelling and raining mayhem, Slashdotters should have combined forces and mailed ICANN when they first said that new TLDs will be introduced. Instead of isolating the fact that big-bad-corp is likely to benefit, we should have tried to explain to ICANN why it is they are missing the point and what potential damage they might cause.

Sure, we should have a dotsex or dotxxx and then make it law that adult material has to be on those TLDs. Would be so easy to please everyone, if people would put their heads together and talk instead of bumping them all the time.
If dotsex was the law, no dotcom would be permitted to ever display any adult material whatsover - and it even fits with the first ammendment...

I can not see any solution to the problem - which wasn't really there until everyone tried to fix it aprt from a drastic one that would require a complete system overhaul.

Unless IE6, 7 or 8 has it's own embedded system that resolves any type of entry to the closest matching IP [provided IPv6 is widely spread to permit huge numbers of new IPs]; and that our 24/7 connections are fed the latest IP updates on an ongoing base, dot-com will be Fifth Avenue and everything else will be slums.

Nice thought, poor execution.

[Ndog]

All this is a good thought, but ICANN has screwed the pooch (or the average person in this case).

The TLD will compete not only by offering extra space, but additional prestige: dot-biz domains will cost $2,000 to register and $150 to maintain.

The higher price means that only serious registrants will be getting dot-biz domain names.

So, someone who can't afford the higher price is automatically considered as a registrant that is not serious? And will a tld like .biz really mean extra space? Costing what they do, mostly established companies and companies with a bunch of cash will buy domain names. These same companies will already own the same .com name or buy it at the same time. While it is technically extra space, I think we will mostly see the same names registered to both .com and .biz.

If they were really serious about alleviating the shortage of domain names, they would have provided a tld for the average person and/or business.

Get this through your head....

[Chagrin]

The new TLDs serve only *one* purpose: to make money for the registrars. There's obviously no logic in the choices for the new TLDs (except that they attempted to spread the wealth evenly) due to the limited use that the new names innately have (I'm sure they're just tons of .museums out there), with .biz being the exception.

Oh god, can the screw it up MORE?

[bluephone]

I had hope when ICANN was founded. When I saw that there was a FEE just to PROPOSE new TLDs, I was shocked, but thought, "Well, they have to get funding somewhere, I suppose." Then I learned that whoever recommended the accepted new TLDs got a lock (like NSI had up to a year ago) on the TLD, I was angered. Where went the idea of opening up the net? Then I learned they shot down two of what I felt to be the most important TLDs; .kids and .sex or .xxx. There could have been a lot of good done with .kids, and .sex or .xxx would have helped separate the .coms from the .cums out there. Now this. This is insane. Since I'm a professional, not a corporate entity on my own, I should be able to register a .pro for myself if I WANT to, I shouldn't have to pass some moron's arbitrary judgement.

It's official, ICANN is useless.They're just as useless as they were before they made any decisions.

Please... there are rules on the Internet?

[Wakko Warner]

I know plenty of people who have registered .EDU domains without being an accredited 4-year institution. Someone once told me that I'd have a hard time getting a .net domain without being an ISP. And, though I'm not a commercial entity (though credit card companies seem to think I am!), I had no problems getting a .com either.

These rules will be adhered to about as strictly as all the others.

- A.P.

--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.