When Worlds Collide: The New Dot-Biz And The Old

angkor writes: "It seems the new dot biz domain conflicts with domains registered in an alternative root system." This is where all the alternative root servers conflict with the (ahem) interesting name choices made by the ICANN board.

Comments

Don't do it!

[davew]

You're right, there's a fair amount of power wrapped up in the various slashdot readers. And this slashdot reader sure as hell won't be joining you in your protest.

I know it's trendy to slag off ICANN. I know everyone has their problems with it. I know everyone feels like the only thing they can do against this new authority is to shout about it, or to "rebel". And in that context, splitting the root seems like a fantastic idea.

Don't do it, guys.

Internet "precendent" says that we've tried to work out problems through consensus building. Seriously! We get together in groups like RIPE and NANOG, present our ideas, and try to build consensus. We can fork, yeah, but we fork as little as possible, because when we fork, we split the user base and we are all weaker because of it.

But that's not the worst of it in this case.

Ever since domain space became valuable, there are so many special interests circling it that it's not funny anymore. It's pretty ugly, actually. Consensus building has been pretty impossible because people with dollar signs flashing in their eyes shout louder, and the people who are just plain kooks shout the loudest. That's hurt a lot of the development of DNS in the last few years. The one weapon we've always had against this is caution, and a recognised authority.

All those special interests are sitting, eagerly awaiting the day when a significant majority of admins reject ICANN and switch to another root. When that happens, they'll turn on each other, and that's when it gets ugly.

You think you have user problems because people think that "The Internet" is the thing behind the button on their Windows desktop? That's nothing compared to what we (all of us) will have to deal with if we split the root.

I'm speculating now, but here's my guess. See what you think:

1. ISPs will start advertising which of the conflicting roots they prefer: "We serve ICANN names!" "We follow AlterNIC!" etc. etc.
2. Users won't understand a word of this
3. Users will complain "Why can't I reach mysite.biz!"
4. Lawsuit free-for-all over misleading advertisements and broken SLAs
5. Lawsuit free-for-all over conflicting trademarks
6. AOL, Microsoft and some others will remove DNS access from the user (URL bars, email addresses, etc) and replace it with a directory system that they manage (keyword searches, address books). One of these will gain a monopoly. No one but slashdot readers will care.

Don't be fooled into thinking that everyone pushing for alternate DNS has the good of the internet at heart. Some of them mean well, I'm sure. Some of them are sound guys. I'm equally sure that some of them are out to grab a piece of the gold mine that is DNS, and are willing to damage it in the process. Believe it or not, ICANN is the one thing standing between us and a corporate takeover of the internet.

Yeah, I just wrote that with a straight face. I mean it.

To drag this back on topic? We're seeing the beginning of this now. Everyone's been bitching at ICANN to hurry up and introduce some new TLDs already (watch for buzzwords such as "artificial scarcity" in other slashdot posts near you!) What happened? Someone tried to preempt them and lured a some-thousand userbase to give themselves some credence. What do ICANN do here? Reject potentially better-prepared proposals for favour of this one? I don't think that's fair.

Guys, you really should know better than to measure something's worth through the count of its [slashdot|newspaper] headlines. Jon Katz had this one nailed down years ago. A lot of the criticism against ICANN is genuine; a lot of it's crud; and a lot of it ignores the best interests of the internet.

Think for yourselves. Don't be afraid not to fork.

Dave

Posted with mozilla 20000112721

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Re:Alternative root systems

[Osty]

And how is that much different than using subdomains? Rather than

ross.com ross.ross ross.cool ross.yeti ross.irc ross.sil ross.silly

you'd have ross.com, ross.ross.com, cool.ross.com, yeti.ross.com, irc.ross.com, sil.ross.com, silly.ross.com, and so on.

IMHO, one of the major problems that eat up so many domain names is people and businesses thinking they need a foo.com for everything, when bar.foo.com and xyzzy.foo.com would work just as well as bar.com and xyzzy.com. Movie labels are awful about this. Do we really need somemovie.com/.net/.org? Why can't we have somemovie.sony.com? or someothermovie.newline.com, and so on?

Other markets are just as bad, however. Why do we need a playstation.com, when playstation.sony.com would work just as well? And don't even get me started on crap like all the planet*.com sites. How about quake.planet.com rather than planetquake.com?

As much as I dislike themes (not that themability is bad, just that most themes are poorly-designed, pixmap-heavy, vomit-inducing eyesores), themes.org got this right. You want blackbox themes? Try blackbox.themes.org. You want themes for IRC clients? How about irc.themes.org? And so on.

If only dot-commers would pull their heads out their asses just long enough to see what the hell is going on, we might not have any need for new TLDs (well, yet, anyway).

Just my $0.02.

.pro

[jheinen]

I'm concerned about the .pro tld. Who gets this elite status? I can see doctors and lawyers, but what about other professionals? Does a computer consultant qualify for .pro? What about security consultants? Investment bankers? Supposedly you have to have credentials. What credentials count? An MCSE (god-forbid)? A CS degree? What if you don't have a CS degree, but nevertheless get paid $250 and hour for computer consulting services? Having a .pro site strikes me as being potentially very lucrative, in that it could be seen as a credential itself. What about people who may not have the "accepted" credentials, yet are still respected practitioners in the field? Seems to me like a lot of potential for abuse and unfairness is built into this one.

-Jeff

-Vercingetorix