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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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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
If this alternate system gets popular enough, all this will become irrelevant
AC comments get piped to
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
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?
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
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
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...
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