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.Info, .Biz, .Behind The Scenes At ICANN
You may have heard about ICANN's announcement that .info and .biz will soon be available for registration. Naturally, the deal ICANN wants to cut with the .info and .biz people has been negotiated in secret, by "ICANN staff", without public input. (Who needs public input anyway - ICANN's proposed budget for next year eliminates all funding for the At-Large elections.) And of course, by the time you want to register anything in those domains, it'll be gone - trademark holders get a special express line to register domains in the new .TLD's before they are generally available. However, ICANN neglected to mention that they need approval from the Department of Commerce before messing with the root servers. The DoC is in the process of approving Verisign's deal to keep control of the .com registry forever; they're daring to ask Verisign to give up .net earlier, and Verisign is threatening to walk out on negotiations - as if we'd be hurt.
Gee, it would be a shame if someone registered a .biz domain
with ICANN and then later found out that sometimes when people
type in a corresponding URL, those people end up at someone
else's web site, because someone else already owned that name.
They might get the idea of suing ICANN for fraud.
Seriously, this is something to play up and publicize: that ICANN's .biz domains have a lot less value than ICANN says
they do. Let's drive the price down and make the whole
thing an embarrassment.
perl -MLWP::Simple -le 'srand(time); $id = int(rand(3500000)); $r = get("http://dd.networksolutions.com/t/ts/remove.as p?id=$id"); print "$id $1" if $r =~ /<p align="center">([A-Z0-9_-]+\@\S+)/'
Everyone seems to think that once .biz is available, it will change everything. That's not gonna happen!
.tv, .cx, etc. hve not exactly taken off and reached critical mass such that they are widely used for anything serious. People thought .tv would be huge, but it clearly isn't. Of the major networks, only abc.tv resolves (and it's a mere redirection to their main domain). I don't recall going to one .tv site *ever*, and only two .cx sites, one of which everyone knows and the other which was only a friend's hobby site for her poetry.
.cx, there was and is a built in factor telling people that a .cx address is somehow second rate, a joke. At least with .org, .net, and .gov you had major institutions employing the domains regularly and getting you to enter them.
.nom and whatever sex-related domain gets through, if any (.sex, .xxx. .adult, whatever). The proposed .museum seems like a "gimme", but think about it; every major museum already has a domain name in .org or .com and has been using and promoting that name for several years now. Will moma.org change to moma.museum or modern.museum or modernart.museum? I don't think so! Will philamuseum.org change to phila.museum? It's only one fewer syllable!
.com holders to register those .biz names they feel are important -- and then fail to use them to do anything but a redirection to their existing .com site. They won't promote the name; they'll even feel weird about paying the invoice for it every year. And since the trademark holders will get first bite, there won't be any news about domain fights to encourage anyone to think that .biz is real and important.
.biz and the others have already been hobbled by the confusion over them -- adding to their second-class status.
The "speculative" top-level domains such as
The mAsses don't even necessarily understand that if a clause doesn't end in ".com" it's valid and it's a net address. As late as a year ago Jakob "Usabilty" Nielsen was encouraging people to continue to use "www" so that people would understand immediately that you're talking about a web page address.
Furthermore, with only, um, ODDITY sites using
That will only happen with domains where the domain holders will USE and PROMOTE their domain names. The big winners, I would expect, would be
The registrars will promote the existence of the domains and the importance of registering them. So we can expect
And
Second, the purpose of .biz was to alleaviate the conjestion in the .com domain, yet the trademark owners will go first. Do you think that Apple Moving and Storage, or McDonald's Hardware will get first shot over Apple Computers or McDonald's Resturants? Of course not. The preregistration for biz should only be allowed if you don't already own a 'reasonable' name in the .com arena, and if you already do, well, get in line with the rest of us. And domain names that are not in line with the company name should be disallowed at this time; eg Verizon should not be able to register Verizonsucks.biz, unless they legally change their name to that.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
http://www.paradigm.nu/icann/icannstage.html
I know I'm gonna get called a troll for this, but giving Trademark holders priority could be a Good Thing, under the right circumstances. What the hell am I talking about?
.biz are business-related domains (especially .biz), so it makes sense that businesses should get first crack at them. I am assuming (probably erroneously) that the method used will fairly resolve trademark conflicts (e.g. Apple Computer vs. Apple Records for www.apple.biz), and will be fair to holders of trademarks in all countries, not just the US.
.info and
Furthermore, there needs to be the creation of a TLD only for personal use (no trademark lawsuits or WIPO-whining allowed). If all these things happen, this could actually be a good thing. "If"...
I know, I know, given ICANN's track record, it's not looking good for reason and rationality, but we can hope (and write letters to congress, if you happen to be American).
Real men use IP addresses ;)
Their service is abysimal! Tucows/OpenSRS should get control of the .com (and other Verisign) domains! It takes forever to use Verisign's creaky, error-prone, unaccountable "process" to get domains added, deleted, transferred, etc. Contrast that with any OpenSRS registrar, such as domainmonger, where I can make all changes to a domain myself, via an https web form, cheaper that Verisign charges for their "service".
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why is it that ISPs, DNS and root nameserver admins worldwide are enabling this exploitation of their resources?
.biz from Verisign and receive it from another source (or not at all)?
.biz?
While I can't confess to completely understanding TLD operation, it'd seem that since ISP networks are required to recognize the domains offered by the likes of Verisign, etc., and by recognizing them, establish the value of the name by allowing their millions of business and residential subscribers to access websites using the names, then Verisign and the likes need to pay a license to the ISPs.
In the absence of any alternative, however, the ISP's threat of not recognizing the domains is absent.
So, is there an alternative? Can an ISP decide to not recognize
Or maybe UUNET needs to have its own
*scoove*
I'm all for telling both Verisign AND the ICANN to take a long walk on a short plank. The Internet doesn't need them and the only thing they're good for is pissing everyone off.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Claim your namespace.
And to answer your question, no, the issue was never resolved. ICANN very clearly decided to simply ignore the existence of alternate roots and prior claims to TLD strings. (though they are inconsistent in this stance. Their decision not to approve a new .web TLD was clearly related to the existence of a prior claim by Image Online.
Yet another example of heavy handed authoritarianism on the part of ICANN, and yet another reason for all of us who care about the DNS as a public resource to dwitch our DNS to an alternate root system. Visit the OpenNIC to find out how. It's easy.
Claim your namespace.
Okay, I'm missing one key thing here. I thought the election of At Large Members was supposed to take care of these issues with crap business deals, poor management? What are the At Large memebers doing?
these TLD's? I mean ".aero" ? WTF is that supposed to be? ".Museum"? WHAT??? Are there so many Museums that they need their own TLD? I haven't noticed that the net is overrun by museums desperately seeking attention. Sounds like an attempt to make the Internet look and feel like they want it to instead of how it really does.
Time to bypass ICANN, the Department of Commerce, and any other organization that thinks they can artificially create scarcity where no such scarcity exists. There is NO technical reason why there can't be MILLIONS of TLD's.
.microsoft root zone. Ditto for all the other manufacturers.
.xxx, .adult, .sex too. then we don't have issues like whitehouse.com.
How can this monopoly be bypassed?
Simple.
Bind needs to be configured to have a different set of name servers for the default root zone. All distributions of Linux, IBM, HP, Sun, SGI, Apple, Microsoft, etc. should use the new set of zone servers in thier DNS server software configs. ICANN will be effectivly ignored, and everyone will be happy (Well, except for Verisign (network solutions) and thier cronies.)
Why should the major OS vendors support this?
I think Microsoft would LOVE to have the
I would like to see redhat.linux, debian.linux, etc.
It would be nice to have all the p0rn secured at
The new TLD group can enforce a REASONABLE set of policies including anti-squatting, require a minimum number of e-signatures for new TLD's (with some exceptions) etc.
While it's not reasonable to flush out a full plan in this post, it's doable. While it may not be perfect, it would be a HELL of a lot better than what we have now...
There has been a long standing tradition of squashing technology via official bureaucratic incompetance in govern in the USA.
You have to go know your history on this, but it goess back to things like the assembly line manufacture of rifles just after the revolution (date?), Robert Foulton's Steam Engine, and even far more recently as seen in NASA.
For Example, NASA turned from a place to get things done to a place to park the development of technology while developing boondoggles and pork barrels. It has turned into a place to squash the development of space flight. For an interesting take on this, check out Jerry Pournelle's idea that you could have a contest for Business to go into space, or go to the moon, setting up a permanent base, and have a 10 Billion dollar prize for the winner.
So don't worry, the government will take its' time, but will eventually come up with some agency to stall and stop the development of the Internet until it is nothing but a government or private office with the efficiency of the post office and the warmth and caring of the IRS.Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You know we probably wouldnt need any new TLD's if something was done about squatters - Sometimes I think more domains are held by squatters than are actually being used.
I am sick of looking for a free domain and finding its taken by "Dirty Domain Squatters Inc"
no sig.
Is for a not-for-profit organisation (I mean a REAL one...) to have a server set as forwarder (and cache the replies like normal) on each of the root servers, then for that server to simply forward to anybody who wants to run a server and can be vetted as having enough capacity. Perhaps then domain names could be bought like the items they are? A couple of lines in a text file...
See what happens when you get Government involved in things its not supposed to touch? They don't work anymore. The web wont die because of ICANN but we will have one more pain in our butts.
~~Apathy alert: Approaching the Point of No Concearn
So what's the beneficial use of this piece of spyware? URLs that contain New.net's TLDs (such as .kids) are routed through the spyware successfully. However, I suspect that there's a bit of traffic monitoring and submission of logs to a server somewhere. Either way, it's a very bad piece of spyware; the only reliable way to remove it is either by using Ad-Aware or by reinstalling Windows.
It's truly sad when a company resorts to spyware when they can't get their way. ICANN should at least look into this, since it's a blatant violation of their policies.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Turn off the root name servers and the Internet grinds to a halt over about 24 hours.
The offer to run .biz for 90% of the VeriSign fee for dotcom is not half as generous as it appears. Serving dotcom is much more expensive because it has more of the high traffic sites. Aslo all the browsers are at this point programmed to look in dotcom as part of the search algorithm. The dotbiz domain will have much less traffic per name so the bid looks pretty high.
Equally the assumption that DNS needs to be hierarchical is now bogus. The fact that dotcom can be supported demonstrates that a flat namespace could be supported - dotcom has consistently contained approximately as many names as all the TLDS put together had 9-12 months before.
Of course in a flat namespace .web and .biz lose interest since comapnies would shift to names like www.microsoft. and www.cnn.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Every ISP that I know of uses the same root servers as the rest of us, or if they don't, they'll still be able to resolve .us, .ca and the like. Country-specific domains have been around since almost the beginnig, just that the people in charge never enforced the use of them. .com, .net, and .org just became 'what people use'. When was the last time you've seen a .us domain?
In order for region-specific domains to PROPERLY work, ICANN/verisign/et al have to STOP allowing the use of .com/.net/.org (except maybe multinationals), forcing everyone to use their country specific domains. Unfortunately, the predominant mindset in the USA is 'the internet is American, and the rest of the world can use their country TLD's. This has nothing whatsoever to do with ISP's switching.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I mean, with ICANN being based on consensus building and cooperation, I assume they did resolve the issue didn't they? After all, not resolving the issue would look, well, caustic, pointlessly uncooperative for the sake of, well, spoiling other communities on the Internet. I mean, isn't the whole reason Cerf et al thinks that making ICANN democratically accountable is bunk based on the idea that ICANN is founded on the principles of cooperation and consensus building?
Are we likely to see a major ISP turn around and point their root servers at a rival any time soon, or do we have to put up with this crap forever more?
--
KMSMA (WWBD?)
What's the point, if you are going to give all the names worth having out to those who have trademarks on those names? If I have superhappyfun.com, then I get first dibs on superhappyfun.biz, superhappyfun.info. And given the way a lot of these things go, and the indications from ICANN, I could kick off anyone who registers them before me.
.com name, they'll also register it in .biz and .info, and probably point those back to the .com. The only benefit is to line the pockets of registrars.
.com database.
So now when someone registers their
The whole point of new TLD's is to be able to have the same name used in different TLD's so that similarly/identically named organizations can have peaceful co-existence of their websites. The way they are going about this is defeating that, guaranteeing not much more than 2 identical copies of the
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya