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ICANN, new TLDs, and Congress?
itchyfish writes "Looks like the fight on TLDs is going to be a long one. It seems as though Congress is going to get involved. Could be a long, long time before any TLDs see the light of day."
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Not exactly. The internet (arpanet) started in the US, and most of the companies controlling TLDs/DNS stuff in general are American, so under the jurisdiction of the American gov't. It does make sense that the UN should have an internet subcomittee (if it doesn't already) to assist in these decisions though...
Why is is a US issue? Because Congress created ICANN (essentially). There are a couple of ways that TLD allocation can be handled
In general, I prefer things being done by the private sector, but the corporate solution will likely lead to a monopoly for the benefit of the big corporations. The government and ICANN are doing things badly - name.space has shown that there is no technical limitation to many gTLDs being created, but right now, the answer is to get Congress to force ICANN to adopt a better system, then figure out a way to get the government completely out of the picture.
So what the Internet needs is to get rid of the TLD that has become generic, i.e. .com, and to become very sticky about giving out .net and .org. The main TLDs for businesses would then become the country codes (.us, .uk et al.). If a business operates in multiple countries, it can have multiple country codes (as is common practice anyway). This would resolve some of the conflicts. The rest would IMO be beyond the reach of DNS changes, and would need to be sorted out between the parties concerned, possibly in court under national trademark legislation.
Of course this would upset a lot of people who have dug deep in their pockets to pay off .com domain name squatters, would give severe feelings of inadequacy to the types whose self-image relies on the equation "short domain name = big dick" and would lose ICANN nearly all its income ...
freedom, n. Allowing people you don't like to do things you disapprove of.
See the Top Level Domain Finder and have fun searching...
Edith Keeler Must Die
Enforcement on an international scale is only impossible, if all the major players in the international field decline. And even then, to paraphrase Frank Zappa: "There's more of us little motherfuckers than you are."
And about those responsible for mass killings, the international Court of Justice seems to be doing quite well regarding the most atrocious killers of the recent Balkan war, even so, that some of them are freely going there, to await justice and get it over with.
What we need a single, flat namespace that doesn't have any "distinctions." The distinctions are unnecessary, unmanageable and unenforceable. Multinationals will claim their name in all namespaces by carrot or stick. There's no shortage of domain names if you're willing to be clever. There are, however, a shortage of obvious generic name terms and trademarked names, but that would be true in any namespace.
I agree, that the current three letter TLDs are not meeting needs or wants. For instance, where I work, we originated as an university computer center, and are therefore still not-for-profit, but we do have very commercial clients, for instance, the largest national newspaper, and a large publisher. Since only the US is hesitant about using their national TLD, this poses no problem, because we use the national TLD. But imagine, soon we will lose the not-for-profit status, and, in US terms, move from .edu to .com, and our acronym is a female first name,SARA. SO, what to do, buy out some luscious girl or her pimp, who exploits a sara.com site? Or stress the educational part of our business with the more easily maintained .edu site? Since it's sara.nl, the question will never rise, unless at some time we grow so big as to contemplate sara.int, but I do not see that happenning for some decades. And by then, we could always choose a new name, more cheaply.
But with a single namespace name collisions would take place more often, resulting in money destroying court cases, so let's not go there. Simply hand over the non-country-based TLDs to the UN, and leave the other ones to the countries involved.
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
This thought has crossed my mind before, however this article provides an opportunity to share it. Why are we even allowing ICANN and the congress control the name space we use. Any name server can be set up to use two sets of root name servers. One for the ICANN / Network Solutions system and one for the GNU system. A simple plugin can be built for the M$ Windows users to access the system regardless of who the ISP is. As a community, the small ISP's and geeks can market the new namespace and make it the basis for doing business. Essentially rendering ICANN innefective. A good start would be to set up a domain .gnu and get some volunteer ISP's to set up a root DNS system. The community could make any software changes required to make this work, however, I dont think any are required. Now the GNU community could start using this domain for Open Source related content. This would help to encurage ISP's to include the new set of root servers in thier DNS systems.
Perhaps it is time to create .bofh, if it's not already been done, and
Stefan.
It takes a lot of brains to enjoy satire, humor and wit-
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
The only difficulty I see in making routers filter *.xxx... The routers would have to reverse lookup the IPs that pass through to see if they're in .xxx... Next we'll see rules that require .xxx stuff to have addresses in 65.* :)
Typical European... always barging in telling us how to run our country.... Did you people want to lift a hand to create the internet in the first place? Noooo.... but now that the Internet is the greatest thing since sliced bread you wanna take control.
GRASSHOPPERS I TELL YOU! GRASSHOPPERS!
(just kidding)
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Why must the US Gov stick its nose into any and everything? Do you think it will ever strike them that they do not own and cannot control the Internet?
I guess they figure they built it, so they own it. It's not like they ever declared publicly they were giving it to the rest of the world.
They can pass all the laws they want, maybe even laws banning certain goods to be sold online, but it wont stop it from happening
Actually, it will. They created ICANN. ICANN is creating new domains. Their laws affect the internet. Point disproved. Just because you don't like something you can't pretend it doesn't exist.
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Some astute (possibly evil) fortune builder could make themselves an internet power by giving ISPs incentives to use their root servers. Pay them, give them free support, whatever. Meanwhile, offer any TLD not taken already for a fee. Embrace and extend.... (goodness, I hope no MS minions are reading this).
Whether or not they've used it wisely (um, definitely not), Network Solutions has wielded
a huge amount of market power. In part because they had exclusive rights to sell TLDs for a while, but in part because they have the root level nameserver.
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Tweet, tweet.
Here's a summary of what the letter says:
Dear ICANN:
We have taken control of the internet naming system. We have claimed ownership to any and all TLDs that didn't exist before January 2000. That's right -- we own words that haven't been invented yet and ccTLDs for countries that don't exist yet. Every permutation of the ASCII alphabet is ours. Furthermore, we have patented them all. Since we now own everything, none of the new TLDs you create will work, because they belong to us. You might as well close up shop, as you are now obsolete.
Anyone can register a TLD through our organization. Naturally, we are willing to negotiate licencing for the TLDs you have recommended. For a small fee.
SECONDLY
We must protest that you cater to geeks, rather than to "Internet Business Modellers" such as ourselves. The New Media world is rough on business who just want to strike it rich off this Internet thing.
Our organization hereby believes that ICANN sucks.
We will 0wn you.
Your sincerely,
Anthony Harrison
Director
e2p Limited
If yahoo and ebay are American (USA), they should be somewhere in the .us structure. The fact that they are .com should mean that they are international in their focus. This is direct example of the USA's "cultural imperialism", which is probably caused by the mess that the regulators made of the .us domain.
All TLDs should be internationally decided. The US should only have control over the one it is given, just like the rest of us.
Not if you really think about it. I may be wrong but I bet if any major country wanted to, they could add .xxx to their domain structure, and everyone else in the world will probably accept it, and that they are the controllers of such domain. Is it really america's fault that they we the first ones to come up with .com .org .net and control the root domain to them? And it seems as if we are comming up with more, I don't see whats stopping other countries from doing the same.
Try "host -v -l aq" - there are quite a few, e.g. scott.aq.
There are other, better ways to measure seriousness than money, like how effectively an applicant makes its case and whether or not the applicant's proposal is supported or opposed by others. $50,000 seems outrageous to me.
NO this ISN'T fucking America! It's the whole, goddamned world; and the US is less than 5% of that.
Normally I can ignore the "US FIRST!!!" posts, but this is just over the top.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
And what is more important, is current owners of *.com, etc will sue anyone getting *.shop *.web, etc. It's the Nissan.com thing all over again. So companies will steal, ahem, use the legal system, to take control and protect "their" Trademarks. And it means more domains Network Solutions can extort money from you, to protect yourself from some jerk putting a porn site on yourcompany.tv etc like nasa.com. Its a joke.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Amen, brother, AMEN! If every little pissant government on the planet is going to muck with the system, give each country its own sandbox to soil as it sees fit. I'd even argue against the .int TLD unless some enforcable provision is enacted for resolving international disputes over it.
So what if huge companies have to register a separate address in each country that they want an ePresence in? Let 'em register mcdonalds.fi, mcdonalds.ch, and mcdonalds.us. And if someone else beats 'em to mcdonalds.uz let 'em fight it out in the Uzbekistan courts.
Of course, if a little island nation somewhere wants to sell their TLD for some extra capital, that's fine and dandy. Its their domain, they can administer it as they see fit. Long live Tuvalu!
Chelloveck
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Why don't you use http://slash.news/? It works here.
Well, it would make a clear statement about how the owner feels about certain things. For example, www.nazi.pro (to take the French Yahoo thing a little further) would be a pro-nazi website and will most likely not be suitable for non-nazi lovers. Now will we have a .ant domain as its counterpart?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Why must the US Gov stick its nose into any and everything? Do you think it will ever strike them that they do not own and cannot control the Internet? They can pass all the laws they want, maybe even laws banning certain goods to be sold online, but it wont stop it from happening.
The fact is, most computer experts dislike the Government, for whatever reason(crypto restrictions, privacy violations, etc...). The government therefore cannot get a highly skilled staff of computer experts to work for them. So in a nutshell, they will not be able to regulate the internet. Why cant someone think forward and realize that you cannot regulate the internet. There are too many variables, too many people, too much data.
Id bet the only agency thinking forward is the NSA. And we all thought that Echelon was bad... I wonder whats next...
Did you just grab my ass?
2. First come, first served
3. No squatting
4. No trademark bullying
Sure, these are generalized principles, but I think they pretty much cover all the bases. Rule #4 is of particular significance, as it eliminates the overwhelming power of money.
You should move to Yougoslavia. They've got far cooler domain names...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
"Because TLD's are now international, not exclusively US'ian. It should be left to the UN to decide." Sure, let the UN decide. Let's see, since the US influences most of the UN decisions already, based on the inequity of military might, we'll have the US military once again in control of the internet. hmmmm...
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
And since the US government is pretty firmly in the pocket of corporate interest, there isn't going to be a lot anybody can do about that. Sit back and wait, kids.
WTF does congress think that they should get involved. Lets move ICANN and all other internet governing boards to some island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Govern that one baby.
Secret windows code
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
it's for professionals...
at http://www.icann.org/general/articles.htm read:
5.b. No substantial part of the activities of the Corporation shall be the carrying on of propaganda, or otherwise attempting to influence legislation, and the Corporation shall be empowered to make the election under 501 (h) of the Code.
What i'm not sure about is, how can ICANN be "independent", if it falls under US Law jusrisdiction, seing how it is a non-profit corporation organized within the framework of US law.
Regarding dispute itself, i'm somewhat surprized that ICANN acted this way (choosing submissions from some paying companies while refusing others), when their Bylaws, ARTICLE IV , Section 1: General Powers state:
c) The Corporation shall not apply its standards, policies, procedures or practices inequitably or single out any particular party for disparate treatment unless justified by substantial and reasonable cause, such as the promotion of effective competition.
I would say that granting some TLDs that benefit the companies which submitted them while rejecting others violates the above rule.
#include IANAL.h
#include disclaimers.h
-DVK
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
In fact, them weenies who have been suing over spurious trademark claims (e.g. Madonna) have really created the strongest support the current root servers could have. Should anyone challenge the DNS system with alternate root servers, the legal groundwork for burying them alive has already been laid, and they have done it to themselves.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Here are some of the main problems with ICANN:
If you really feel strongly about the issues you should go to The Committee on Energy and Commerce homepage, click the link labeled "Feedback" and help to educate these members of Congress who may not fully understand just how badly ICANN is screwing the people on the Net.
ICANN reviewed 45 applications -- submitted with $50,000 each
I guess this would be the #1 reason why there is no 'fair' process taking place... what a goddamn wonder - make the stipulation that "only profit motivated organizations with $50k to 'bet on the future' are allowed in this discussion. If you are not a business you dont fucking matter"
Jesus fucking Christ - did they expect these proposals to be anything other than land grabs by $whores$? and the 'losers' to be gracious? Again - am I the only one not surprised?
That being said, it's probably a good idea to question ICANN's bias in making decisions.
But while I personally have nothing against seeing another unaccountable institution sacked and burned, I have to disagree with all the ill-conceived cries to get government oversight out of this business altogether.
If alternate root servers were chosen and the creation of new gTLDs created by anarchic, everyone-for-themselves choices, the result would be loss of globally unique web addresses. Worse, the people with the most eyeballs would get disproportionate power in creating order back out of the anarchy. In other words, the dot-biz folks would STILL be screwed, and AOL would create, administer, and own the EFFECTIVE dot-biz. You can see where this is going... AOL keywords or nothing, and... the DEATH OF THE INTERNET PREDICTED.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
"Here at Harriston investments, we have a top-notch, high-end online investing system. Just visit us online at http://clownpenis.fart.
:)
"Sure all the other 'good' domain names were already taken. But that doesn't mean we're not committed to having the best online investment site around. Clownpenis.fart."
(Or was I the only one who saw that episode of SNL?
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
One of the many reasons we need an alternate root NS system...
> Or by insightful, did you mean that it gives us much insight as to what a narrow nationalist from the US thinks about their role in the world?
;P
Maybe they meant insightful as in 'insighting a riot'
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
http://www.nic.us and if you look real close you can see the tagline:
The US Domain Registry is administered by VeriSign, Inc.
You know...Network Solutions: "The Monopoly People(tm)"
Why? It doesn't really solve any problems, and is just a convenient way for registrars and lawyers to make more money. Consider: Who do you think is going to buy Amazon.biz, or Amazon.pro? Either Amazon.com will -- or some domain squatter will get there first, and then Amazon will have to go sue them.
Besides, it just adds to consumer confusion. What if slashdot.org and slashdot.info pointed to two totally different sites with different purposes? What good would that serve?
Adding .name seems logical at first blush, except it doesn't change the fact that there are still going to be a lot more people with a given name than there are domains that correspond to that name. So one lucky guy will get mikesmith.name, and the other 450,000 Mike Smiths around the world will still be SOL.
And who on earth thought of .aero? By that logic, why not .space (OK, maybe mir.space, hubble-telescope.space would be kinda cool) or .sea?
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Big companies are going to get all the cool domains anyway. Everyone else will be stuck with 'qjueoilder.ws' and/or other useless domains.
A P2p DNS system would eradicate this bullshit.
I thought it was "h-t-t-p colon slash slash slashdot dot dot"?
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Exactly. And French and German governments should leave web sites outside of their own countries alone and not force them to abide by their own national (local) laws.
America has yahoo.com and ebay.com and those are the ones that America should have influence over, not France or Germany. This is the sort of thing that gets European countries accused of cultural imperialism.
What do we need root servers for anyway? Secondary the root zone from the DNS provider of your choice and primary "." for yourself. Vote with your nameserver.
http://support.open-rsc.org
Need Mercedes parts ?
Frankly, I've stopped caring about the new top-level domains. Why? Because as things stand now, they won't make any difference to how DNS and name registration is run.
.com (or .net or .org). Unless there is going to be actual regulation by a multination organization with some clout over how the new TLDs are handed out, I don't see how they'll make any difference.
.com, .net and .org anymore, we're essentially using unlimited TLDs followed by an arbitrary string. Unless the new TLDs are enforced in some way (which at this point I don't see happening), this isn't going to change. AOL/TW will promptly go out and buy aoltw.coop, aoltw.store and so forth.
At this point, we essentially have unlimited numbers of second-level domain names that might as well be top-level domains, because they're all followed by an irrelevant and arbitrary
To sum up: because there's no difference between
Unlimited TLDs aren't the answer, what we need are the equivalent of zoning laws.
Causation can cause correlation
Why are .su domains still in use? Who will give Tibet a new domain when they split away from China? Why doesn't sealand have its own TLD. Why are there no sites in .aq?
Historically, congress hasn't been able to keep up with the pace of change.
By the time congress actually does anything, the internet will be completely different.
TLD may not even exist anymore (see this for one of the many proposals that would make this issue moot.)
any proposal which puts one person/company/country in charge is going to be bad.
All of the new domains seem to be attempting to further subdivide .com, to re-assign meaning to the top level domain.
If we're just trying to create more namespace in the same mindset that rendered the difference between .com, .net, and .org meaningless, we may as well quit arguing about it and add nonsense domain names like .blorq, .argh, and .foom, and be done with it.
Seems like another conflict between the techies (pro-meaning) and the marketroids (anti-meaning).
ICANN only looks after the interests of big business.
.biz has been used so that it would conflict and delay the process again. They have been delaying all along - can you all not see that?
They have been hiding the solution to trademark problems - it is on my site - http://WIPO.org.uk - not the World Intellectual Property Organization.
I wasn't aware NetSol had the right to sell any of their TLDs at any time©
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Just wanted to suggest something that occured to me.
Why don't we ensure that every country, or other place that will need one, has a TLD, and then allow them for general registration? Of course, we would have to set the fee rather high, or else they would all disappear practically instantly.
But for $10,000, wouldn't someone register ".dot"?? I see no practical reason why this couldn't be done.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
AOL says fuck ICANN, sets up own gTLDs, lets anyone pay, then next thing you know, the beast from Redmond buys "slashdot.org" for AOLs users and redirects the whole domain to MSN. That would be fair, wouldn't it.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Another good point for having all sites be under a ccTLD, with only one international TLD: .int. Decide on a couple good 2LD's, like .com, .net, and .edu for example. ? Then the laws can apply where they're supposed to apply, and that's it.
.com, .org & .net users (over the last few years these have effectivly become .misc anyway) to accept this. .us, ..us or ...us type domain suffixes.
This would probably work, but the problem would be getting the current
Probably even harder then getting American organisations to use
That's how I envisioned it, yes. Perhaps Coca-Cola feels they're too big to be merely coke.com.us so they want to register coke.com.int instead. They'd have to agree to some provision that they can't buy up their name in any ccTLD's because they've got the .int, and they'd have to agree to some external arbitration: disputes wouldn't be settled in US (or any other country's) courts. If they didn't like the sound of that, let them buy coke.com.<cc> for every country they feel they need to. And like you said, they can then fight in the courts in all those countries.
Constitutionally Correct
So what if huge companies have to register a separate address in each country that they want an ePresence in? Let 'em register mcdonalds.fi, mcdonalds.ch, and mcdonalds.us. And if someone else beats 'em to mcdonalds.uz let 'em fight it out in the Uzbekistan courts.
They might well end up having to have mcdonalds.co.fi or such like. As well as having to fulfil criteria such as having an appropriate commercial presence.
Of course, if a little island nation somewhere wants to sell their TLD for some extra capital, that's fine and dandy. Its their domain, they can administer it as they see fit. Long live Tuvalu!
Problems come when a country, such as Canada or Ireland, changes policy after a period of time. Cahnging what had been a structured naming system into a free for all.
The question should be if domian names are "mining rights" with a first come first served basis or are they the equivalent of postal addresses?
Because they want .con ! Congress.con. All the senators and representatives can have their own pages..
.gov.us refered to part of the US federal government. .con, at least not until Microsoft is dead and burried, since CON has special meaning to MS operating systems.
But having congress.gov.us might not satisfy their egos. Even though it would be kind of obvious that anything ending
Also you probably don't want to use
This is how politics work. Companies pad the wallet for the campaigns of both parties, then wait until someone won't kiss thier ass, then get thier buddies who they help elected to do stupid things in thier intrest. One great example of this process is DMCA. How do we fix it? We can't because the public is brain washed by the media, which are owned by these companies.
certain buses in Santa Monica and Los Angeles, CA are now advertising .la domains (.la is a country-specific TLD for Laos, in Southeast Asia.)
.de
Does this mean that parts of the US will now grab domains from anywhere they have bombed in recent history??
"Ok Kosova you can be independant, you can't have your own domain name...."
The Germans had better look out too, maybe Detroit wants
Actually, a spell checker wouldn't have helped at all. Neither of those quotes have any spelling errors.
For more information, click here.
If 'con' is the opposite of 'pro', is 'congress' the opposite of 'progress'?
BigCat79
BigCat79
"The dead have risen and are voting Republican!" --Bart Simpson
The majority of these names make no sense to me. I know what each name represents, but my question is why? Do the members of ICANN actually use the Internet? I thought for sure they would approve a .sex or a .xxx TLD, considering the sheer volume of pornography on the Internet, and how everyone seems to think we should do something about it. A .xxx TLD sure would help us admins with firewalling rules. Wouldn't even have to worry too much about enforcing compliance either, seems like anyone who runs a porn site would actually want to have a .xxx domain.
Penguins run around naked everyday! The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
The current DNS system was designed by idealists who apparently decided that
It seems to me that either the naming convention recognizes these commercial aspects in it's design, or it abolishes them; there's no room for ambiguity here.
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
If this alternate system gets popular enough, all this will become irrelevant
AC comments get piped to
I'm wondering if anyone has noticed that in addition to the horrific grammer of "We'd pleased" in the second quote, there is also no closing quotation mark. Appropriate personnel at washingtonpost.com have been contacted and have been alerted to both errors. The funny thing is that while the washingtonpost.com producers can put the stories up, the iron fist of the powers that be at the paper edition of the Post crushes any attempt to modify or correct errors within the stories themselves without explicit permission from the paper edition side. Fear of powergrubbing, or somesuch. Alas.
THE US GOVERNMENT SHOULD FUCK OFF
.us domain e.g. .gov.us federal government; .com.us commercial organisations who operate from more than one state; .mil.us the US armed forces; all of \.us under control of each state government.
Rather the US government should come up with a way to use the
The meta-tendancy is towards a unified alternative root zone. AOL can do what it wants, but if they buck that trend they're an Island.
The political reality of 2001 is, they won't do anything though. They're an ICANN registrar and ICANN will pull their accredidation if they did.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Congress has every right to manipulate the '.us' domain. They do not to manipulate the top level itself.
.mil.us (though NORAD probably should be under .mil.int) .mint.us, etc.
They have some rights, not all, since there are SLD's which are specific to the states. Which would be covered by the 10th ammendment. They could create appropriate second level domains for anything controlled by federal government. e.g. congress.gov.us, sc.gov.us, whitehouse.gov.us,
http://www.icann.org/tlds/correspondence/
There is even a first court decision (in favor of ICANN).
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
IMHO, "slashdot.dot" is pretty high up in the ranks of "PIN number", "LCD display", et. al.
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The us department of commerce has last say on all this because, like it or not, the us goverment paid for most of the initial development and expansion of the Internet. Like the saying goes "he pays he says". Is it going to change any time soon?.. Its not likely. To quote The Queen of England (in reference to the falklands): "we don't see any reason to give up something that belongs to us". All the rest of this is hot air.
--locust
Germany doesnt force foreign pages to follow german law. They only imprision those responsonsible for the page whenever they are stupid enough to enter the Reich.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
That's cool. Each country partitions its own space as it sees fit.
That's between the country's government and the companies registered there. Think of domain names as being a neat new source of tax revenue for the country. Yeah, I know, that thought kind of makes my blood curdle too, but it really would work for the best.
Chelloveck
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Yes, perhaps you are correct that America should now give up control of the non nation specific TLDs, but how would decisions get made then? The UN is not exactly a model of efficiency (and even the UN has a small security council that wields most of the effective power).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
This is how I would recommend that most people do this. At the moment, .oss registrations are free. They will never be very expensive, since this is a user-owned and -operated TLD. Users would vote on any fees to be imposed strictly for administrative reasons. So if you are interested in supporting ICAAN's alternatives, simply get a domain in an alternate namespace, and then count hits to the new as opposed to the legacy domain. It would be possible to simply throw the switch once the new domsin accounted for some percentage (50? 75?) of visits to your site.
Doesn't cost a dime, and your're supporting a good cause. You don't have to give up your legacy domain names to use new ones. Use both.
-matt
Claim your namespace.
That's all we need is more companies out there hoarding up all the .web, .tv, .etc...
Don't we have enough lamers out there with "l33t" domain names.
Now we have to have "l33t" extensions too?
can anyone grab http://www.slashdot.sh or .web. or... ..you get the picture
Go see ramdac
We are the .CON company! .CON!
We put the CON in
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
If there wasn't a cost involved, they would receive all kinds of crap from people (Religious Groups: .satanisbad | Masochistics: .sayplease | AOL/TW: .werenotreallyamonopolyhonest etc...)
-p4
(c) All Rights Released.
This is exactly what the internet is all about: interstate commerce and commerce with foreign nations.
This reminds me of a true tale of an in-duh-vidual. An American (ok, US-ian) employee and a European employee of the same company were being transferred to an office in Japan. The US-ian employee got extra relocation money for an international relocation. When the European employee asked for the same amount, he was told, "but you're already international."
The Internet is not about interstate commerce and commerce with foreign nations. It's about commerce and communication between anyone, anwhere, regardless of who or where they are. It's specifically about not making distinctions between domestic and foreign parties in a communication.
And last I checked, "public domain" didn't mean "U.S. domain".
(and yes, I am a US citizen).
- Marty
Isn't there some country like "Sexslyvania" that these porn operators can license from- so they can get their .sex extension?
-p4
(c) All Rights Released.
The Opennic URL should have been this.
Too much coffee....
Claim your namespace.
I think that as long as you have the $50,000, you should be able to register a TLD. If it takes off, good for you, and if not... You shouldn't have to ask, you should just be able to buy your way in. Isn't this America? When you register your TLD, then you are responsible for all of the name-resolution. So what if someone wants to register .motherf__ker, or .kiss-my-ass, or .microsoft.... :-)
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...
If pro is the opposite of con, what's the opposite of progress?
Cheers.
The U.S. Congress can hardly do worse than that.
I must register "chicken.coop"!
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
I love this one:
...seemed to have potential to be more potential....
:)
Is that kinda like aspire to be aspire more or think about more thinking or read about more reading.
Unless you get several hundred million clients to start using the new root servers it all becomes irrelevant. Nobody is going to want to use domain names under them if no one else can get to them. Too bad someone doesn't come up with a nice open standard that is completely free and have ISC include it in the default root cache file they distribute with bind.
It gets even worse than this..
l -11oct00.htm
A company called e2p has notified ICANN that they have a patent on all new TLD's..
The letter they sent to ICANN is available for viewing at http://www.icann.org/tlds/correspondence/e2p-emai
It starts off by telling ICANN that they shouldn't be thinking about new TLD's, then goes on to criticize ICANN for neglecting "Internet Business Modellers" in the search for new TLD's.
The letter (and e2p's website) are pretty stark of details, can anybody shed any light on exactly what these bozo's are trying to pull?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How about several million tons of AOL disks? Between the 5-6 PC mag subscriptions, I think I have that covered.
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Not that I want to play grammar police ... but calling the internet ".NET" is like giving in to Microsoft, saying, "Yes, you can control the world. We believe in everything you say." So don't try to be clever -- just call it the internet, or, if you want, the net (notice: not period, no capitalization.) Or ARPANET. Or Earth's big LAN party. Or the Information Superhighway, if you have to. Just not .NET.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Even if you cut them the slack on the insider-related approvals, the applications leave so much about the actual operation of these new TLDs in the dark that it's hard to be enthusiastic about them.
That being said, the general principles behind the new TLDs are sound, if ignored by the slashdot hoi polloi. Primarily, they are selected to PREVENT further disputes over who gets what domain. Dot-pro is being limited to licensed professionals. Presumably, you will only be able to purchase dot-name for your own name. Not many people can pretend to be an airline, so dot-aero is pretty clear. The museum thing could be problematic. Dot-biz will be expensive, so it will be a "platinum card" option for businesses, making it good for e-commerce; presumably, less likely to be a fly-by-night company. And possibly, dot-biz was chosen to flex a little muscle against the folks who have already been registering them.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
The DNS Root web site (http://www.dns-root.org/) allows ordinary users to find and evaluate the many different root service providers out there.
It, like the US, has a TLD assigned to it (.uk in the UK's case, .us in the US's case), and it could create a '.xxx.uk', but it certainly couldn't add a '.xxx'.
Congress has every right to manipulate the '.us' domain. They do not to manipulate the top level itself.
Those who are asking it to do so are asking, effectively, for the balkanisation of the Internet. If US political interests are going to dictate the international aspects of the 'net, ignoring the consensus driven part of it, then we can seriously start to expect other countries to take matters into their own hands too.
It's already happening - China is about to launch its own Internet because it doesn't like the content of the original. We can expect that behaviour to be the rule, not the exception, if individual countries, such as the US, start to impose their wills on how they believe the Internet should operate.
If Slashdotters think that French courts dictating what Yahoo is allowed to sell is bad, imagine the situation if the US government dictates how people around the world are supposed to access the 'net in the first place. By comparison, the behaviour of the French courts looks almost sensible.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Actually since we created the .NET and we control most of the servers and pipes, we get to make the rules.
Personally, I welcome the government's inquiries... I hope they dissolve ICANN or restructure it. It has served no other purpose than to promote the interests of those with the most $$, in the same way that the WTO has decided to hand out previously legally owned domain names to any corporation with a few $$.
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Yeah, like when Vint Cerf flatly rejected .iii,
drawing on his unquestionable techical knowledge:
"dot i-i-i? What does that mean?
That means nothing to me."
Seems at least one of the criteria is that
it has to be aesthetically pleasing to Dr Cerf.
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
Actually, with the exception of the Security Council (which is next to useless anyway) the UN is strongly anti-US, frequently voting in overwhelming numbers to criticize the US and US policies. The military and economic stuff doesn't give us control- it just means that we can ignore them when they criticize us, which is basically all the time.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
So does that mean that going to http://www.con.con will crash a windows box?
Which of course means, "It's all about the money."
Nope, no sig
Oh, no- didn't mean to imply that. If anything, it would be great if we were forced to listen to the criticism more often. It's just that the original poster implied that the UN never criticized us, which is quite wrong.
~luge
P.S. Of course, I'm speaking mainly of the assembly and lower functionaries- the higher ups only criticize the US obliquely. But they probably want to and wouldn't have any impact if they did...
IAAL,BIANLY
I'd really like to agree with the "break up ICANN" sentiment. The problem with that, of course, is that one of the few bodies that is more heavily influenced by $$$ than ICANN is Congress. So, they might look into ICANN and break it up or "fix it", but the fix won't help those of us who aren't AOL. Damn frustrating, really...
IAAL,BIANLY
Well, their money's as green as anyone's..
I don't think it has anything to do with alignment..
-- The Funk, The Whole Funk, And Nothing But The Funk
Every judgement, comment, and position which comes from ICANN that is detrimental to someone with money is going to be brought and scrutinized by the US Congress. What we have here is a poorly masked attempt by our Draconian (and getting worse with George Retard W. Bush stealing the White House) goverment to keep control of the Internet's overseers.
"It's not stealing if you don't get caught!"
"It's not stealing if you don't get caught!"
since we created the .NET
Bzzzit Wrong, M$ invented the .NET
If it's money they want, people should be able to post their ideas and have others contribute to some sort of a PayPal escrow. From a central site, people could propose TLD's, and those that backed it could make a contribution. I think there is a bigger mandate from 100 people willing to spend $1/each than there is from some organization that has $50k to burn.
Besides, I think there would be significant support on all sides for a
--
the fun thing is that, in french "con" means "stupid", "idiot" (...)
Well, here we go, the government sticking their heads in where it doesn't belong. There are some things that the government just does NOT need to have its hands in and this is one of them. Why is this a US issue for one? Yes the DOD invented the internet but it is now public domain.
------ This has been provided as a public service! ------
... how long before we see "www.slash.dot".
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Hm, it might put an end to some squatting. Who else wants a .con?
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
None of the new TLD's are worth seeing the light of day. They're simply another 7 domains for *.com to purchase.
In a word, yes. There's really nothing they can do about it. They'd have no reason to be concerned anyway, because even if AOL did create new TLDs, nobody except AOL customers and those who willingly switched to AOL's new root would see them. It's the same as the keyword thing they already use. To put it simply, the ICANN domains can flow downstream into AOL, but the AOL keywords can't flow upstream into ICANN.
(Do not sign anything.) -- Fell, Planescape: Torment
Why can't we just all say "LOOK! We're DOING IT!" and setup our own root servers? Tell ICANN to piss up a rope, and let them catch up with the rest of us? It's astonishing to think that we've been limmited the way we are for so long because some group of morons can't decide if .porn or .nom can go in the root servers! What's up with that?
Fawking Trolls!
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
Enforcement on an international scale is impossible. The "world community" can barely enforce a common morality with regard to mass killings, do you really expect them to forge unity on whether or not slashdot.org belongs in .com?
I suppose some of the leftists on slashdot that get warm and fuzzy about one-world government might find themselves actually believing this is possible, but it really, really isn't.
What we need a single, flat namespace that doesn't have any "distinctions." The distinctions are unnecessary, unmanageable and unenforceable. Multinationals will claim their name in all namespaces by carrot or stick. There's no shortage of domain names if you're willing to be clever. There are, however, a shortage of obvious generic name terms and trademarked names, but that would be true in any namespace.
Just what we need the ogranization where a bribe is called a "contribution" getting involved to ensure fairness. They probably want to tinker with the restrictions on ".coop"; after all we shouldn't have accurate labeling for cooperatives.
~~ What's stopping you?
at worst (or best i suppose) congress would just force icann to accept more tld's. i wonder if there is anybody in congress capable of understanding the technical reasons why or why not to have a bunch of tlds (architurally). only thing that's for sure is that this has the potential to become a huge mess.
I'm just glad these stupid TLD's might be stopped intirely. WTf is the difference supposed to be between .com and .biz? It just makes another TLD each company will pay out $35 / year for.
What the hell is the BFD over new TLDs?! Why is this SIMPLE process taking so damn long?! You would think that this would be a simple process. Just name them, vote on them, implement them. Very simple. Especially so since the govt. gave the "Net" away so many years ago. It should not still be under their control (most of Congress can't find the power button on an iMac, much less know the importance of TLDs).
Goddamn politicians. Just get the hell out of our lives already!
<grumble> <grumble> <grumble>
I'm moving to Canada. It's final. <grunt>
--
While I would like to agree that TLDs should fall under international jurisdiction, that simply isn't the fact. Remember that InterNIC owns the domains issued under the .COM, .NET and .ORG TLDs, and that it only licenses second level domains internationally.
BTW, I don't think the UN has ever made a straight out decision; most of the member nations usually agree to proposals. Another important think to note is that UN is far less efficient than any national government.
I find it somewhat ironic that on one hand we are angry that Congress gets involved with TLD controversies but on the other hand, we expect laws and court ruling to prevent Verio from 'boting Register. Like it or not, the gov. is and always will be a part of the 'Net experience. The trick is educating Congress and law enforcement about what the 'Net really is before they enact the policies that will guide it. Letters, phone calls, votes: they are all needed. Or maybe poisonous snakes in strategic areas...
There is no guarantee that the content has been read or understood.
Or by insightful, did you mean that it gives us much insight as to what a narrow nationalist from the US thinks about their role in the world?
The Internet is a global network. If Americans seriously believe that their government should dictate how people use it, then sooner or later you can expect that network, previously founded on the principles of consensus building and cooperation, to split up. ICANN may or may not be the appropriate body to assign the numbers, but the US government, and any other group answerable to the US people alone, sure as hell isn't.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
In the UK, a 'pro' is common parlance for prostitute, certainly.
However, I'm not sure I agree with your 'easy to identify' statement. Here are the 'obvious' meanings (to me) of some of the other TLDs.
.com - communes, man. Or for commies.
.biz - bizarre things.
.mil - the Amish, and other grain workers.
.org - orgies
FatPhil
-- Real Men Don't Use Porn. -- Morality In Media Billboards
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
I couldn't agree more. I cannot for the life of me figure out why they didn't approve a ".xxx" or ".sex". This was one of the things that I thought would have been an easy decision. Maybe they've got their head in the sand and somehow just don't want to "admit" or recognize that porn is pervasive on the net. It's not like the porn sites are just things like "hotsluts.com". Type one wrong letter someplace and you're very likely to wind up on some page for hot asian sluts. Although with the complete eradication of the difference between .net, .com and .org I suppose nobody could really enforce it anyways.
Huh? I thought Microsoft created .NET.
We have too many TLDs already. TLDs don't increase namespace given the trademark situation, they don't accurately categorize content, and just lead to user confusion and site owner headaches.
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The thing is, that's just begging people to pass laws saying x-rated material should be restricted to .xxx or .sex...
Next thing you know...
1. ISP routers will be legislated into blocking such addresses at the national and ISP levels
2. at the same time, legislation could be passed that all kinds of "distasteful," "immoral", etc. (whether sexually, politically, etc.) material be religated to that TLD
you'd end up making it real easy for a government to create a national black hole list.
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Well, I somehow doubt the Amish would be real concered with registering a TLD.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
America has the .us domain, and thats the one congress should have influence over, not the international TLD's. This is the sort of thing that gets America accused of cultural Imperialism.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The
I want Monkey.biz to resell it to Ximian (former Helixcode).
Maybe all those .com's I'm sitting on will actually be WORTH something :)
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Reading the article, I wonder what type of site a .pro domain would be used for. Fair enough, with the other suffixes it's quite easy to identify the purpose for which they are intended (e.g. .biz for a business), but .pro? Protein? Prosthetics? Prostitutes, even? .web suffix should have been allowed instead of .pro. It makes more sense.
I think that the
_____________________________________
I've been to Heaven and Hell, and all I got was this lousy sig.
In the absence of such scintillating new TLDs as .sex, .www, .web, and .now, certain buses in Santa Monica and Los Angeles, CA are now advertising .la domains (.la is a country-specific TLD for Laos, in Southeast Asia.) Amazingly, not very many people have bothered. I see several .tv domains, but the only thing I see advertised with a .la TLD is the registrar itself.
I don't see the use of alternative TLDs really taking off until Joe "AOL User" Shmo is a little better versed in the workings of the Internet.
Just my 34 lira...
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Does anyone else think the $50,000 application fee for a TLD to even be considered is enough for investigation?
What the hell is ICANN doing that requires 50 G's to process an application???
Perhaps their data entry personel are making $5,000,000 / hour...
Under the US Constitution, Congress has jurisdiction over interstate commerce and commerce with foreign nations. This is exactly what the internet is all about: interstate commerce and commerce with foreign nations. Any state that wants its own internal tld system is able to set up its own system of name servers. States could even band together and share dns databases with each other. But the final national decision is left with the Federal government where the Constitution puts it.
That's what's good about our system: 200 years ago, no one could have known that dns servers could even exist someday. But the same constitutional principles enacted then govern now and govern well. I welcome this latest reaffirmation of the beauty of our government in action.
Read the rest of this comment...
Power up the laser, and say : "I think ICANN..." :o
'Nuff said.
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
Another good point for having all sites be under a ccTLD, with only one international TLD: .int. Decide on a couple good 2LD's, like .com, .net, and .edu for example. Then the laws can apply where they're supposed to apply, and that's it.
Some will say, "But the web is about transcending national borders!" That's a load of junk. We still live in meatspace, and we still have to deal with those issues.
Constitutionally Correct
I'd have to agree. As much as I distrust government's motivation, I distrust corporations' motivation even more. At least some people go into government wanting to improve society. I doubt that happens very often in corporations.
No, the solution isn't less government oversight of the corporations. It's more societal oversight of government. Seems like we've got an awful lot of corporate oversight of government, and very little societal oversight. Somehow, we (citizens, geeks, whoever) have to figure out effective ways to distribute clues to our representatives. Try to get them to understand how some of these policies and decisions will truly affect society, and keep reminding them that they're our representatives rather than the corporations'.
[Okay, enough preaching to the choir, eh?]
Ah, I see. You're assuming that the government represents the public's interests, rather than the interests of the private groups who lobby the government. I'd love to believe this, but evidence seems to argue that public interest is less important to government lately...
what about setting up a system of multiple sets of root servers that are able to handle requests for different DNS networks? the same kind of idea can be seen with IRC (Undernet vs. Efnet vs. Dalnet vs. etc... -- all are IRC networks, but each is seperate). Perhaps you could modify the way that resolvers work to allow for a new DNS network convention. URL examples:
http://user:pass@ICANN!slashdot.org:80/
-or-
http://user:pass@NEWDNS!hostname.tld:8080/
using a system such as this would allow for users to select which DNS network they want to use for resolving name collisions.
of course, something like this would require modifications to the current name resolution system, but i think that with a little time and effort, implementing a system like this could work.
just an idea...
yomomma.ho
Blar.
Create your own TLD
For this project, you will need several million tons of sand and/or steel sufficient to build your own island nation in international waters.
Now you must name your nation. This is the most vital step! EG If you want a .news TLD, name your nation Newsonia or, the Democratic Repulic of News. Beware names like Assonia, Crapia, etc. as you may not be taken seriously as a nation.
Finally, simply build your nation and get it recognized internationally as a country. If you want to make extra cash, make your nation a haven for drug money, war criminals, or anonymous bank accounts.
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
I've got dibbs on being the sole licensor of the
Comon, you guys know it's going to come to this, now that congress is going to decide it... pork barrell politics at it's weirdest.
--
RumorsDaily
Again, when the Internet was researchers e-mail and college kids playing, you can do whatever you want. Once you become integral to the economic prosperity, the government must oversee it. Why? Because private groups will not represent the public's interests.
For a company that got put in control of the infrastructure, they are in a weird situation. The normal approach would be for ICANN to be an Executive Committee (i.e. appointed by the President), but they went with this quasi-public organization.
This has advantages and disadvantages. It mostly shields the Internet from Presidential Politics (although Evans could get Commerce back involved), and gives it more leeway, but it forces Congress and the White House to take major steps if they want changes. This prevents micromanagement, but it means that if it doesn't like the direction, it can get involved.
The wheels of government are slow but awesome. Perhaps we'll finally start realizing that government isn't obsolete, it still has the guns, and therefore rules.
Alex
I think it (the mentality which I, as an American, agree we have a problem with) has to do in this case with the fact that the Internet was originally the US Govt's project, so they still think they have control.
I say we just cut the fiber to DC, let AlterNIC be our root, and go on our merry way. Who's with me?
--
This looks like another example of Congress and big Gov't trying to make decisions that should be left in the technological realm. There are reasons the approved TLDs were approved and those reasons are probably not fully understood by Congress. Although I would have added TLDs like .xxx (so blocking them would be relatively easy), I trust the decision.
Space Invader... Lurker of the Far and Beyond. Welcome to my Realm...