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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
"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
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
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?
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.
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).
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
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
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.
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
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
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,
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
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.
I must register "chicken.coop"!
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D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
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?
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?
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.
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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
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
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
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... 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
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.
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.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Good point, except that the standard for getting a trademark registration and avoiding infringement of someone else's trademark is avoiding a "likelihood of confusion". If using different TLDs, each with well-defined permitted uses, does away with that likelihood of confusion, trademark law should allow different entities to have the same or similar "namespace", albeit with different TLDs. For example, if they were introduce a new TDL, .sux, defined as a complaint venting domain, problems with WIPO experienced by some Web site owners in the past would be non-existent.
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.
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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
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
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