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ICANN Sneaks In Reserved Names For Existing TLDs
"But, under everybody's noses, ICANN has recently snuck in some name exclusions for the existing TLDs, com, net and org. This was hidden in the revised agreements between ICANN and Verisign. See this page in ICANN's site (this is from the com agreement, but similar provisions are in the other two).
Among things that are excluded from use as second level domains are all one and two letter names, all names that are the same as another TLD (both the existing ones and the group like museum that's planned for debut this year), and, most questionably, various names and acronyms relating to ICANN, IANA, and other Internet governing organizations, including aso, dnso, pso, ietf, and ripe. No other organizations in the world yet have the power to ban their names or acronyms from use in all TLDs (though many are clamoring for these powers), but ICANN and IANA have taken this right in a bald power grab, stopping the many other entities in the world whose initials happen to match these from having a right to try to obtain sensible domain names for themselves.
These exclusions apply only to new registrations, not renewals, so the many existing domain names that violate these exclusions will be allowed to continue so long as they don't lapse for nonpayment or get cancelled by a domain dispute panelist's decision.
I have more domain name information and commentary in my site."
Do you want:
- Nissan Computers
- Nissan Motors
Same for anything else. sunsetmotel.com (I just made that up) would be an index to all the Sunset Motels in the world. If there are 15 legitimate contender, it's better to have an index, than to have one winner and people who can't find the address of the Sunset Motel they have in mind.
That's why I prefer an index like Google with some editorial power. Compare a helpful index with the winner of a stupid URL war.
Downplay ICANN! Use search engines and private indexes!
What happens when two companiesvie for the same name?
This bothers me because then the 'big boys' woulds decide with copyright holder is entitled to teh domain. Case in point, Nissan.com run by Nissan Computer services, but Nissan Motors wants it, too.
Under the old system, Nissan Computers got it becuase he was there first, and because he has a legal right to the name. Under the new system, I guarantee that Nissan.com ( dot-whatever) would go to Nissan Motors without any sort of consideration. This a a Bad Thing.
But then again, why Is Nissan Motors entitled to that name anyway? 'Nissan' is not their name, it's Nissan Motors (or something to that effect).
.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
Um, wait a second...
"In the ongoing and contentious debate over new Top Level Domains, one flamewar-provoking issue has been whether certain names ought to be reserved as second (or higher) level domains within new TLDs because there's something inherently (or at least potentially) abusive to their use"
Abusive? To American standards? To Muslim standards? To Buddhist standards? Does this mean the entire world has to compy with a view of what is abusive that is typically American?
It is bad enough already that the com/net/org domains fall under American jurisdiction, now we have to comply with American conservatism too...
When will everybody start to realize that the Internet is more International that the United States?
-- Nothing is as subjective as reality --
I do agree with the first two options (although not with the third as I think that is abusing the system badly - maybe Coke will pay ICANN and Verisign to reserve coke.tld in all namespaces in the future (even coke.book or coke.museum or whatever silly TLDs are released) whatever their Trademark covers).
However, if uk.com is accidentally not reregistered, then there will be an awful lot of angry customers of uk.com when their domains stop working. I imagine similar services exist for other countries, de.com? fr.com? eu.com I know exists...
Perfect as Verisign just start their own "uk.com" service using the reserved word because "The domain just wasn't reregistered - your credit card was never authorised (never entered into the terminal more like) - sorry, nothing we can do"...
In the UK, the first two rules already exist, hence there is only one 1 letter domain (x.co.uk), and a few 2 letter domains (bt.co.uk, f9.co.uk) that were allocated before Nominet came in to manage the namespace. It works quite well, and gets rid of confusion. You cannot have gov.co.uk, or nhs.co.uk, or org.co.uk, as the third-level-domain conflicts with an second-level-domain.
In general, with the exception of certain 'famous marks', a trademark applies only to one specific market.
I may hold the trademark for "Ferret's Bookstore", but that would only give me ownership of the domain "ferret.books" , not first dibs on "ferret.com" or "ferret.shop" or "ferret.xxx".
Before suggesting that an international organization take pains to protect American trademerks, first consider the definition of a "trade" "mark", and how a registration for a specific term used for a specific market in a specific locality applies to a global naming system.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
...people and organizations that cannot stand a bit of humor and fun. This is what that is. If no-one can register icann-sucks.com then no-one can make fun of them, right? Wrong! This is a call-to-arms! Spoof them now! Let them know that we will not stand for this desperate grab to appear legitimate!
Or we could just sit back and do nothing. Because, this is not that important or anything.
Ciao.
nahtanoj
When dealing w/ legal contracts such as this, nothing is hidden from the two sides making the deal. They've both been over the contract many times w/ a fine tooth comb.
Apparently someone thought it was a small enough concession to allow the contract to go through... me thinks you should join ICANN and complain there... Hate to break it to you, but complaining on /. might not be all that helpful
I ate my sig.
New TLDs could start off with domains priced at some very high price (say, $10 million each), with a 10% price cut every day until $10 is reached, about six months after start. Now that would be a market.
Why not just throw in "puppy kickers vs noble citizens" while you're at it? the range of suggested exclusions looks like it spans the whole spectrum of entrenched, new, corporate, civic and public health concerns and definitly some would favor a "more" free and open internet than others. To put the whole range short of internet anarchist (those who prefer an anarctic internet, not a political appalation) as "intrenched interests" and the "no rules except first comes first served" crowd as moderates is just insulting to the intelligence of your readers.
yeah, /. has an agenda, and I know that when I come here, but could you lay the propaganda a little less thick next time? Some people want lots of limits. some want a few, some want a different few. You want none. Don't let your position blind you to the existance of a range outside of it, it just makes you look foolish.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
This is a blatant abuse of their power and position, and is completely wrong... but to whom are they accountable? As far as I can tell, they're the top of the food chain in this situation. If you can't trust the police, who do you get to police them, right?
There are two major products that come out of Berkel
...When starting a new country, make sure that you don't pick a name that has the first two letters of someone else's country, or you might not be able to get a TLD for it! And then, no digital e-commerce revolution for you!
ICANN mentions "aso", "dnso", "icann", "internic" and "pso" as reserved for their own use as second-level domains. But www.aso.com is already "Aircraft Shopper Online", and www.dnso.com is a very nice anti-ICANN site. OK, www.icann.com already belongs to ICANN, and www.internic.com looks pretty official. (www.pso.com, on the other hand, is one of those spartan "under construction" doodads).
(I haven't checked the longer "IANA" list, but there are probably a few of these that are already taken, and not just in .com.)
Anyway, I can see why ICANN might want to shut down the "Gnomes of Zurich" (who claim credit for dnso.com), but what about those poor guys selling aeroplanes? Are they being forced to relocate?
Does this mean I can't register IANAL.com?
Maybe if IWAL (I was a lawyer) I could get away with it.
Tyranny, I tell you! Tyranny!
-- Chris
-- Chris
$email=~s/[^a-zA-Z0-9@.]//g;
-- Chris
-- Chris
$email=~s/[^a-zA-Z0-9@.]//g;
Can anyone enlighten me?
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Fact is that the national TLDs are more of a problem than a solution. Most companies have global aspirations. That is why nobody wanted the OSI names that started C=US, what does a company like Nokia put there? Many companies do not want to introduce parochial national issues into their names.
I buy a burger from McDonalds, not McDonalds.US. Even products that are linked to very specific countries such as sports cars are global brands. Everyone knows that no Jaguar is ever going to be built outside the UK and no Ferrari is ever going to be built outside Italy (except for certain F1 machines :-). Even so Ferrari and Jaguar are world brands, not national brands and are managed accordingly.
There is certainly a case for a new directory infrastructure. Folk who want to rip up DNS to build it need to take some reality pills though. Fact is that DNS is the ASCII of the Internet, you might like to change it but you ain't going to.
New directory systems are going to come along. Names and keywords in those systems may well become valuable as the DNS names have. However they will be supplemental, not replacements.
Lots of companies have started directory schemes, most fail. Even the companies 'selling' names into spurious DNS spaces only they and about six other people resolve through have seen revenues shrivel.
To establish a new name space a company is likely to have to meet the following criteria.
Be a significant Internet player (we are talking Microsoft, VeriSign, Cisco level here, large positive cash flow, millions of customers not CMGI or Idealab! startups).
The names must be useable by hundreds of millions of users.
Offer names on a uniform, non discriminatory basis. This means that the registrar does not cherry pick the best names and sell them at vast rents.
Names must be offered on a freehold basis. Many directories try to rent names. So I spend $20 million to advertise a name and you raise the price on me...
Names must be usefull to the end user. Yahoo is no longer any use to me, I no longer find what I want, I find an idiot advertiser that paid Yahoo. If I type in Microsoft it has to take me to Microsoft, not a MSFT hate site. If I type in About Microsoft I get those.
On the TLD side proper, one solution is to simply go to a flat structure. There is no technical reason why the root could not have ten million names in it. The dotcom zone already has that number of entries and works just fine. The engineering required to make it work just fine is non-trivial. But if the world wants to type in www.cnn. or www.google. and have it work there is no technical reason. VeriSign would just love to run it for $6 per name the same price as dotcom.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I'm not sure if they'd pull the plug or not, but it would be a public relations coup for the alternate domain owners if they did. Can you imagine how much of a black eye the backbone providers would get if they did this? But I can't see them doing this. Why should they care what root servers their customers are pointing to? Now, if you mean that management at the various ISPs would pull the plug on this if they found out their admins were doing it, yes, they probably would, and I'm not sure I'd object to that. If I owned an ISP, and I found out that my employees were doing something without my permission, I'd be pretty pissed off about it, especially something as fundamental as redirecting DNS traffic. But the question becomes how to do this without causing mass confusion. IOW, what exactly are you wanting to do? Create new TLDs? Rewrite the rules for existing TLDs? Both? Overthrow ICANN and replace it with something else? Personally, I think that the main danger is that'd we'd end up with a splintered domain naming system and the chaos that would go along with it. Therefore, overthrowing ICANN would probably be the wisest course of action. If we went that route, then the first step is to set up a rival organization. Get some well-respected folks on board and write a charter that Internet users and admins can support. Build the organization up from a grass-roots level and make no bones about what its goal is: to replace ICANN with or without ICANN's support. And don't be shy about what will happen after that. If the new organization intends to repudiate the agreements that ICANN has made with Network Solutions, then say so. If it intends to throw out the current domain name dispute resolution policy, then make that crystal clear. IMHO, these are all things that people hate about the current situation we find ourselves in. Capitalize on that anger. Point out all the things we've grown to hate about ICANN, then put forward an organization that'll fix these problems. Don't go the "underground" route with this. Let everyone know what your intent is. But above all, keep the new organization unified. The one thing that will scare the hell out of people is the possibility that all you're doing is creating chaos.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
ICANN already owns all the single-digit domains, and the double-digit domains are probably all held by cybersquatters, so I just don't see this as something to be outraged about.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
Possible explanation: New countries are popping up all the time. Are only countries which exist in the 1990's (or whenever) allowed to have their own domain?
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
We may live in democracies, but that is only true for a few days every four years.(barely--witness the American Presidential "elections")
The rest of the time capitalism wins the day, and money greases the wheels of the gears that make it possible to hire (some) of us at inflated salaries.
The Internet no longer belongs to the long-haired phone-phreakers of the days of yore. That is why they *privatized* Internic, because the gov't could no longer subsidize the beast.
We know that webpages and email aren't the internet and that it so much more, which is why we get in a snit about shit pulled by the corporations, but explain that to the majority of users. Napster is about as close as most of them will ever come to realizing the potential of the Internet, and they are more concerned about getting free music. Welcome to the Hive.
(grumble) I must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed today..
Either way, W's campaign had to sacrifice at least some resources on their part to do this. Those that ordinarily might have bought up these names, other than Gore's campaign staffers at least had the opportunity to do so. Under this proposal, no such equalizing system exists. It's preordained that the powerful will not be "tampered" with.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
I would oppose reserved names for this reason beyond all others. In the sex.com litigation, a federal judge ruled that domain names are not property like a trademark or copyright. Rather they are a service, like a phone number. Anyone can buy a particular 1800 number as long as no one else is using it first. You can have 1-800-gateway and Gateway computers could not touch you. It should be that way with domain names as well. If a multibillion dollar corporation wants to have all the top level domain names for its trademark than it can shell out the 70 bucks per piece that us regular folks have to. And if they don't want to lease the domain names and pay the money then someone else is gonna do it.