Reaching Unsanctioned TLDs With A Plug-In

An anonymous reader writes: "Wired is running this article about Idealab creating new TLDs. They propose to do it with a browser plug-in. Many people are upset with ICANN, but is having an incubator distribute new code any better?" If it makes ICANN nervous, I think I'm all for it. If it won't work with browsers besides the Top Two, though, then I guess I'll miss out on dot-duh ...

Comments

Two things...

[EvlPenguin]

According to sources within the motion picture industry, Hollywood movie studios were informed of Idealab's plans late on Thursday, and the studios immediately came up with objections.
They just can't agree with anything, can they?

Idealab first entered the domain-selling business when it acquired the rights to the dot-TV domain from the country of Tuvalo.
But this is totally diffrent. .TV did not require users to install plugins. IMHO, a system like this can never work. Notice that the big two (Netscape and M$) apparently have no comment on it. Without their support, it would never last; because they would have to make this plugin a part of their standard browser, so next time people upgrade they will also gain access to all those new TLDs. Even if they do support it, how will the rest of the users know about these new domains and what's required to view them? Assuming the plugin works by capturing all requests sent to these TLDs and then redirects them to a specific DNS, then anyone who does not have the plugin will be screwed. It's not like other plugins, because with Flash, you get a message saying that you need a plugin to view the page. So anyone who tries to view a page on the new TLDs will just be left with an error message and no clues as to what they can do to fix it.

The only thing that would make a lot of users upgrade is the temptation of .xxx >:) Woohoo, a whole TLD full of pr0n.

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The rarely used .int

[Midnight Thunder]

One top level domain that most people aren't aware of is the .int. It exists and the European Space Agency uses it for their subdomain:

http://www.esa.int/

Re:The rarely used .int

[dr_labrat]

that would be http://www.itu.int

Broken solution.

[tshak]

This can break code that relies on HTTP calls (SOAP objects, content sharing via WDDX,etc.). What about "Real Names"? I mean, ya, they're kinda stupid for us tech's, but for the rest of the world, aren't Real Names a Good Thing(tm)?

CCC also wanted to make this...

[Tomcat666]

Last year the German CCC (Chaos Computer Club) also wanted to do something like this.

But they didn't want to write a browser plugin - their idea was just to start a new top level DNS server. People should just set the DNS server manually in their config, so they could access the new TLDs and domains.

The Chaos Computer Club is against the governmental control of the Internet & domain-grabbing of huge companies, so this was their alternative. Read about it here (German).

I haven't heard anything about it after that article though.

RFC1591 & INT TLD

[warlock]

The INT TLD is nothing special - it is defined in RFC1591 along with the other more well known TLDs (COM, NET, ORG, EDU, GOV, MIL and the ISO-3166 two-letter country codes). Anyway, it is managed by IANA (actually, I think the ITU is responsible for the maintenance and IANA merely handle the registrations or something like that).

It is not very well known because it is restricted to organizations established by international treaties, according to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), and international databases, which are defined as non-commercial entities that provide services of direct relevance to the operation of the public Internet. Clearly not as big a market as COM :)

Some examples are UN.INT, ITU.INT, WIPO.INT.

Re:Typical American disrespect for the law.

[raju1kabir]

I for one agree that material which is obviously pornographic and unsuitable for minors should be placed within a seperate name space which could be easily blocked such as: .xxx, .sex, .pr0n, .porn, .adult, etc. then we wouldn't have to put up with such stupid laws as have just been passed in Austrailia - That all content published on the net should be suitable for children - subject to the judgement of police officers and not courts, judges or a jury of ones peers.

If ICANN had got off their butts and allowed for such a TLD ages ago I would have less contempt for them.

One of the few smart things they did was reject these proposals. They are pointless. It is very clear (as evidenced by sites such as whitehouse.com) that porn operators perceive a disadvantage to pigeonholing themselves in obviously-porny domains.

So creating .xxx would achieve one thing and one thing only: Make it easier for people at unfiltered locations to find porn. Meanwhile, it would still proliferate at other domains (there is, after all, no real cost to making the same content available at multiple addresses).

The real answer is for people to grow the fuck up and stop worrying about it. At a certain age kids develop an interest in this stuff, and all the filters in the world aren't going to stop them from finding it, whether online or off. Before that, they don't care, they think it's gross, and they won't dwell on it or look at it any longer than they need to figure out that it doesn't interest them; no harm done.

The problem with this: NO SEARCH ENGINES

[wowbagger]

I run my own system, so changing my DNS to use (Alternic|OpenNic|...) wouldn't be a big deal to me. I could do in in about 60 seconds.

Let's suppose I did. OK, now lets suppose there some site, www.deepthought.42, that has all the answers to my life. Unfortunately, I don't know it exists. How do I find it?

This is the biggest problem with any of the alternate root servers IMHO: there is nobody indexing them! Now, suppose that Google set up to index that domain, and just to keep people from being confused set their system up so that they wouldn't list any Alternic domains in a search unless you were querying search.google, rather than www.google.com. Then, maybe I'd be motivated to use them. But until I can find these new domains, they are no good to me.

Now, what I keep waiting for: AOL gets pissed with InterNIC. AOL configures their DNS to resolve off AlterNIC (remember, you don't LOSE the current set of TLDs, you just gain new ones), and sets up a .aol domain. They offer their uses subdomains off that, so AOLuser JOE42 automatically gets JOE42.aol as a domain (which is an alias for members.aol.com/JOE42). Also, they do this for all the RoadRunner etc. customers.

Now, what a jumpstart THAT would provide for Alternic.....

Idealab is full of BS

[Jesus IS the Devil]

You know what. Idealab is the company that funded eToys, which was the stupid company that tried to sue etoy.com, which was active much earlier than etoys.com, to rob etoy.com of their domain name. I've also heard from many others that Idealab pretty much rapes you if you ever went to them for VC funding. I hate these MF's and will never ever use their stupid lame ass plugin. I'd rather slashdot or redhat start something like this... then I'll voluntarily install it.


---------
Did you just fart? Or do you always smell like that?

Theres already an alternate registry!!

[dr_labrat]

http://www.youcann.org/ And heres how you make one yourself!!

I'm hardly what you would call a guru...

[Anonymous Coward]

But isn't the entire point of DNS that it is so incredibly flexible when it comes to hierarchial naming? Why kludge it this horribly, with an ill-concieved browser plugin? It would seem to me it would be better to just run an unsanctioned root server, and have someone hack a bind daemon so that it could split com/net/org resolution off to the regular roots (no need to swamp your server with work that another server is willing to do), but duh/newtld/warez domains to your own. For Windows users, a simple DNS server could be coded, and point their own resolution back to themselves. Hell better yet, have this new unsanctioned root server be dynamic, so that it was truly open to something other than business.

We need heirarchical namespace back

[ka9dgx]

I like the idea of routing around ICANN, because there are some simple paradigm shifts that need to be made which they incapable of grasping due to the dollar wash.

I think that this particulary implementation of the idea, as it stands, is going to flop big time.

Why? ... because it requires work ... and the goal isn't good enough... do we really want to do all this just for some stupid domains like .film ???

It doesn't solve the basic problem, flat domains. Why should chicago.il.us be nonexistant? It could be the root for every business and person in the city. Geography makes a very good dimension to base domain names on, and should be taken advantage of. A tree structure that lets you walk down to a city or neighborhood is a very good thing.

What we need are domains that actually make some sense... and use the heirarchical namespace properly for example:

• CHICAGO.IL.US could actually be open to businesses and people in Chicago... with the home page having information about the city... so if a business was in Chicago, it would be (for example).... goldcoastdogs.chicago.il.us, or ibm.chicago.il.us, government.chicago.il.us, etc.
• .soft could be people who make software, with each language having a sponsor (or two).... delphi.soft would be run by borland
• .rating could be used to host sites that rate the equvalent sites without the .rating at the end.... thus ibm.com.rating would give feedback about IBM's services, etc.
• .anon and .free could be used for dynamic hosted information that needs to be anonymous because of persecution.
• .act could be for activities.... with examples such as photography.act, runner.act, hiker.act, etc.

Each level in the heirarchy as the "price" of getting the domain name would be required to host a list (in XHTML) of all the available subdomains that were registered, so that search engines, etc.. could make life easier, and serve as a convinent way to show what's available to everyone. A look at the chicago.il.us site would allow you to discover new businesses available, etc.

The load of mirroring could also be distributed up and down the heirarchy in a uniform manner, since the data is structured in a uniform manner, the chicago.il.us domain could be mirrored between a group of servers that are members of the domain, such as IBM, the City Government, etc.

The dispute resolution process would then go down to the local level, and namespace saturation could almost disappear. If two businesses had the same name, in the same city, they would be differnetiated by the services offered. Sams.plumbing.chicago.il.us wouln't get confused with sams.publisher.chicago.il.us, for example

So if someone can put together a heirarchical, locally administered namespace, that routes around the existing ICANN endorsed mess, I'll sign up... I've got a list of little nodes in the big tree I'd like to run, including:

• amateur.photographer.chicago.il.us
• apcu.computer.usergroup.chicago.il.us
• amateur.photographer.us
• etc....

My choices for domain names in a tree would tell you far more about me, and be far less random than a contrived name like http://basicsoftware.com ever could.

A nice side benefit to all this heirarchy is that it could serve to remove money from the domain registration system, for a lot of people, that WOULD be worth the cost.

Re:Wouldn't a better solution...

[luge]

Actually, the one article I read indicated that they would be providing tradtional DNS. However, for most people, if your ISP isn't open to using the "new" DNS, then you will never be able to reach those addresses. This is why all the other alternatives have failed- they've depended on ISPs and such to connect to their DNSs, and that hasn't happened, so only folks who know a great deal about their computers are able to use the alternatives.
Idealab's stroke of genius (IMHO) is that they are going to offer a way around this. Sure, they'll offer traditional DNS, but in the meantime they'll build market and mind-share by allowing folks to just download the plugin and do the name resolution that way. If they distribute enough of the plugins, they'll be able to demonstrate interest to the ISPs- and then the ISPs might get off their butts and incorporate the alternatives into their systems. It's a neat way around the chicken-and-egg problem that has plauged past alternatives.
Now, I'm not claiming that this will work; certainly all past attempts at this have failed miserably. But if any of them have had a chance, this appears to be the one. Now they just have to convince folks that it is worth their time to put up content on these new domains, and (as someone else wisely pointed out) you need to convince Google to index it. If those two things happen, they've figured out a work-around to the one other problem that has always plagued alternative registries, so it just might work.
~luge

If the idea of this excites you:

[mr]

1) Consider the past efforts. RealNames, AlterNIC, and one (I think) OpenNIC
RealNames and AlterNIC have been around for a LONG (internet that is) time. How often do you run into these? (I bet about as often as a Cue Cat sound on a TV that takes you to a web site)

2) The enemy of my enemy is my friend makes for a nice warm feeling for a few minutes, but is not good long term strategic planning. If you don't like ICANN, going off and embracing some alternative just BECAUSE it is an alternative and "would piss off ICANN" isn't good technical logic.

And the gods of the 'net like LOGICAL arguments.

3) Hate to tell you this, but the Internet goes beyond web browsers. Uniform Resource Identifiers need to be addressed. As the 'idea' here is 'we are gonna do this with browser add-ons', this shows these people are not thinking in terms of the big picture. Just a small, http: view.

The internet != WWW

[Masem]

Besides the fact that it needs a browser plugin, this would also limited only to http requests. Any other non-browser-but-net-enabled program, such as IM, Napster & clones, and whatnot, would have no idea about these new domains, and therefore would not work if the servers were based on those alternate names.

I think the whole DNS things needs to be restarted from scratch: the only possible TLDs would be country codes, .intl (for anything international), and .net (for network systems). Within the country codes, it's up the country on how to split it up (This means that trademarks that apply in one country cannot be used to grab a domain from someone in a different country where the trademark may not apply, such as the Corinthians case). The US, of course, would probably just replicated .com, .org, etc, which is fine, but restrict these, and make sure that there are enough TLDs that are NOT related to e-commerce so that nearly every current site can be classified into one of these. If done right, then there would be no reason for a company X to own X.net, X.org, etc in addition to X.com, which makes trademark problems even more limited between two companies and not being a large company and a small-time webmaster. A system should be opened up to allow anyone to introduce an idea of a new TLD, with a public comment period before granting or accepting it, as long as the TLD does not replicate the function of any other TLD and provides a namespace that would have sufficient size to be useful.

Wouldn't a better solution...

[tsetem]

...be to provide a genuine DNS Service? I mean, provide a DNS Server that resolves the new TLD's, this way all services can work correctly? And all you would have to do at the OS level is change your resolv.conf (for Unices) to point at the new system and change the DNS lookup order for Windows.

Of course another solution would be to provide a hack that sits at resolver level that allows all "normal" DNS lookups to go through your ISP, but these special requests get filtered at the OS level and forwarded to the new system.

But the best solution (IMHO) is for the ISP's to add the DNS Server to the named.ca file so it gets resolved (more or less) proper.

Providing a plug-in is a fine hack, but it must provide someway to resolve names to DNS Entries. It's just a question of whether the resolution comes at the application or the OS level.

Re:Wouldn't a better solution...

[isdnip]

Yes, that would be a better way.

Idealab this time seems again to be Cluelesslab. DNS is a hierarchical system. Most retail end users now get their DNS service from their ISPs; commercial end users (leased lines, etc.) may have an in-house DNS but that too is hierarchical under their ISP's.

Now anybody can point to any other DNS, but it's not trivial for Joe User, so it's really best if the ISPs do the fix in their DNS servers. They can simply add these alternative roots next to .com et al. Poof, it's done, for all applications.

The tricky part is Worldcom's UUNET, the largest backbone ISP (upstream from a lot of retail services). Vint, the Elizabeth Taylor of the Internet (famous because he's famous, and didn't he once make a movie about a horse when he was a kid?), works for them. So Roberts gave him the hot title at ICANN, so he won't defy them. But UUNET's customers (who mostly run DNS servers) can still do the fix.

But plug-ins? Gross needs a cranial plug in.

(BTW, Idealab has put up for sublease its fancy Boston digs, occupied for less than a year. They're shrinking away with their stock portfolio)

Looks like a privacy nightmare

[martyb]

Though the article only mentions that the plugin would resolve the new TLDs, I have to wonder what ELSE the plugin would/could do.

Where/how is the resolution going to be performed? And who will own/maintain/operate/control these resolvers?

Plugin to resolver: Hi! I've got this request from a user. Here's all the stuff I could find out about him, and could you please make a record that he wanted to access this URL? Oh, and by the way, could you also resolve this for me?

Marketers would LOVE this; privacy advocates may not be so thrilled.

./ers new home

[mephinet]

since the new domain registrar, new.net allows everyone willing to pay five bucks to open his own TLD, an enourmous growth of the .cowboyneal-tld has developped interesting urls like

• www.whois.cowboyneal,
• www.ilove.cowboyneal, and
• www.fsck.cowboyneal.

despite our intensive research, we couldn't find any firm named cowboyneal, and we don't expect any indiviual to exist with a name like that, so the hidden humor behind this tld will stay obscure...