Slashdot Mirror
Update On Efforts To Block .us Giveaway
Froomkin writes: "ICANNWatch carries an update on efforts to block the .us giveaway, which include letters to the US Dept. of Commerce from Senators, from Rep. Markey, and from the US-ACM Public Policy Committee." The update also mentions this LA Times editorial drawing attention to the move.
Why Can't I register Ameri.ca
Then I could sale:
North.Ameri.ca
South.Ameri.ca
Goobers.of.Ameri.ca
Slashdot.hates.Ameri.ca
CIA.controls.Ameri.ca
etc. etc. etc.
Come to think of it, why don't they make
a few new TLDs:
And we can give them all away, in fact,
lets let anybody use any TLD they want.
I claim all of the following TLDs:
R.us domain to be very popular: goats.r.us , pron.r.us
Here's a link with their phone numbers (all 202 area code):
http://clerkweb.house.gov/107/mcapdir.php3
The revolution will NOT be televised.
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Here in North Carolina we sometimes say the same thing :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Maybe we could have "dot u s" at the end of all "stateside" sites, but only make it necessary to use it if outside the US, letting us go on deluding ourselves and making it more difficult for "foreigners" at the same time. :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I don't think .us TLD is as attractive to companies as .com
.US domain isn't even attractive to state/local governments -- historically the only people that have ever been there.
I saw a public service commercial last night put out by the State of California. Anyway, the URL was something.ca.gov. I thought it sorta funny that the
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Many states have their own debt. I also live in MN, and thankfully, our public debt is almost all bond issues to spread the cost of infrastructure over its useful lifetime. According to the MN state treasurer, we have about $2.5 billion in outstanding bond payments.
The national debt, as of July 20, 2001 is:
$5,723,280,631,657.09 ($5.723 trillion)
Total federal government spending for FY 2001 is:
$1,856 billion ($1.856 trillion)
In other words, the national debt is over 3 times the yearly budget of the federal budget. Maybe you should check your facts before posting lies.
I dunno, .me would work pretty well too. You could have fuck.me, etc. Is that even used as a CC yet?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
You're right about the running for office - assuming you can get media coverage, even if you're unelectable you can still force the debate into new channels towards what is really needed. Ralph Nader's last campaign was successful in this regard - he got issues on the table that neither candidate would have touched otherwise.
I'm not sure if just voting would cut it, though - both major parties combine a lack of knowledge of technology with a willingness to take the advice of giant technology companies at face value. In this last election, can you really say that electing Al Gore would really have changed the technology perspective? Remember, Verisign/NSI and even ICANN got the way they are while he was VP and self-identified as the tech-savvy guy in the White House. He's not magically going to become a /. devotée just because he was elected President.
Voting is only a sufficient check on the government if there are sufficient choices to vote for that the real will of the people can become known. As far as technology goes, there aren't really any forward-looking choices to vote for yet, just different flavors of tech reactionaries and big-business sycophants. Thus the will of the people in this direction, assuming that they even have one, won't be expressed.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The most significant thing you said: "brought in a lot of new voters". If a non-major-party candidate can energize the issues enough to attract exactly the people who are turned off by the normal political process, they can do very well. So maybe there is hope for the rest of us.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Folks, this is more serious than you might think. Right now, any school in the US can have their own domain address in the .US TLD, free of charge, with the technical limitation that they have to have a couple of name servers to point at the machine which actually houses the web site. Any town or City in the .US TLD, likewise. Any civic organization in a town or city, library, hospital, non-profit, etc. likewise.
Does anybody really think that the proposed changes to the .US tld is administered will offer anything good to these types of organizations? There is a bit about these sites being grandfathered in, but what about newer sites? Aren't they entitled to have a place on the Web without having to pay and then having the fate of their site registrations being inextricably tied to a company who consistently make unfriendly manuevers designed to control all of the most important TLD name spaces?
Wake up, make some noise, people. This needs to be stopped!!!
--Rant Mode Off--
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
It took a couple of years to pass, but CIRA changed the rules for .ca domains last year, and even allowed existing .ca registrants one or two months to re-register to make sure they maintained their domains instead of having them "expire" and be snapped up by squatters.
All relevant info can be found here (English and French) http://www.cira.ca/
The previous example, where you had to be federally registered or have business operation presence in 2 or more provinces made sense in a way: domains were free of charge then.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
There's also a story over at The Boston Globe but it doesn't add much if you've been following along.
I have a blog.
Should register my.an.us.
Hands in my pocket
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Clear, Dark Skies
I can't seem to get to them today.
Best Slashdot Co
SOMEBODY SET .US UP THE BOMB!!
Sorry, sorry...
+++ ATH0 +++
You open up the LA Times editorial and read "All you dot-US are belong to us" instead of "Dot-US belongs to all of us". Damn...
more like 3 or 4 years
Those requirements wouldn't exist anymore!
Vote? Why bother - after the last Presidential election, it is obvious that the powers that be care not one whit about the desires of the American public. Democracy is dead, Mao Zedong was right - "All power comes from the barrel of a gun."
Democracy is dead. All kneel to the Commander In Thief.
Not that I'm opposed to having someone selling .us domains, but has anyone else here heard of this little thing called the "national debt"? Can't Uncle Sam try to count 'ol W's tax-cut with this? At least a little? Why give it away when you can sell it?
I am !amused.
I am a US citizen, so this is my opinion of my own country.
Why won't there be a
"Hey, we invented the internet. We own the internet. We create all the laws on the entire globe. Without the US, the internet would not exist."
It makes me want to puke. By having a
I quote (from your user bio) "...I am the founder and lead developer for Algorithims Unlimited Ltd. We are based out of India..." (emphasis added by me).
How does giving away a domain for an entirely different country stop your company from being great (as you claim)? It's not like they're giving away .com addresses. And India has it's own TLD (.in).
I don't understand your reasoning, unless your company has some sort of bizarre business plan to sell .us, which doesn't seem all that probable (and why would a company called Algorithims Unlimited Ltd. be selling domains in the first place?). Please explain.
Oh, BTW, that's a dreadful company name (Ltd. is short for Limited, so you've got Unlimited Limited in there), and I hope you got someone who can spell to register the company name - Algorithms only has one "i".
/. is actually an abbreviation for weak story!
The big problem is that most out there only see 2 parties and won't vote for anyone else even if there are better choices. I was telling my brother that the 2 major parties are pretty much the same and he said that he didn't want to throw his vote away on a third party and they didn't have a chance.
Following the Canadian example...
.ca TLD is now available to everybody and their dog, no restrictions and only an yearly fee. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Just for your information, I believe that pratice was recently changed in Canada. The
'Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.' B. Pascal
ICANNWatch carries an update on efforts to block the .us giveaway...
Look, the election ended months ago and Bush won. I don't like it any more than you do but do we really need to keep bringing it up?
I don't know, but this post seems a bit weak for a /. story. The news contained in the links is pretty much the same news when the story first posted. I would have expected more information or exciting news out of a post. Sorry guys; it isn't all that interesting.
Imagine NSI's new site:
www.all.your.domains.are.belong.to.us
And they aren't giving them up!
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Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
And part of it is the bitching and moaning. But the biggest thing we can do is the one thing most won't: Get off your lazy behinds and vote! It's a bit amusing and a bit sad to see everyone whining about how "they" are taking away our rights, yet half the people in the nation don't even bother to vote in presidential elections.
The system stinks? The people in power don't listen? Make them listen. Better yet, run for office and become a person in power. Democracy ain't easy.
And it sure as heck isn't served by pre-defeatism.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Nearly 100% of the power in this country lies not with it's elected leaders, but within the few members of the Supreme Court.
I'd say oligarchy, especially if we include all the filthy rich people who contribute millions to political campaigns, but hey....
BTW, do yourself a quick favor and look up firstly how many previous presidents were not from very wealthy families, and then go down the list and compare the percentages with those with positions such as governor, senator etc...
The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit: /.'ers since Spring 2001.
Pissing off coffee drinking
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I don't think .us TLD is as attractive to companies as .com
.biz .pro .coop, etc
Following the Canadian example My Company.us will be available only for federally registered corporations (or with a presence in at least three states, or something along these lines), otherwise it'll have to use something like MyCompany.ca.us or Mycompany.tx.us...
Harder to remember, dilluted even more with the proposed introduction this year of
I said this in the earlier .us article ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/07/19/05142 37&cid=158 ) and I'll say it again- we should avoid the whole Hague convention mess and force everything to go through the national TLDs. If we want to have our own squirrely IP laws, great, we can screw up our own world and leave everyone else alone. If the French or Germans are freaked out over free speech issues re: Nazis on e-Bay, we don't have to comply and they can block it at the telecoms. Simple, neat, and it leaves us out of being dragged into an international political correctness syndrome.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
There isn't really much in the article..... some of the links mentioned would have been a better news source.
There was a great John McCain quote about the last such spectrum giveaway:
I congratulate the broadcasters and their surrogates here in the Senate and the Congress. I congratulate them on prevailing. I congratulate them for their incredible influence that has prevented us from mandating an auction of the spectrum which belongs to the taxpayers.
Surrogates! Ouch! No wonder they all hate him.
Kill, Tux, kill!
If you really want a democracy, everyone does need to vote.
Voting is a right and a responsibility, whether it's a law or not. Less than a third of Americans vote, which means two thirds of the country may object to the choice, but haven't voiced that.
Don't like the choices? hand in a blank or void ballot (writing reasons for not choosing either candidate usually makes a ballot void in most countries). This way, all voters are counted, and all blank or invalid votes are counted as such, displaying that people are willing to vote, just not for those options.
personally I think it's unlikely that the US will give non-us extensions to the global community... which is a pity, as
a true global domain grouping would be great, with clear listings whether it is fully supported in your country (ThinkGeek for example does not ship certain items to Australia)
- .ca
- .us
- .tv
- .bus
- .wtf
web address.So what?
Goto Google, type in "my needs", and choose a Web site.
Who cares what the TLD is.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
The USA's yearly budget dwarves even the national debt. If we were to not spend any money at all for a year, we'd be in the black twice over.
:) Of course, then we'd face the challenge of buildign everything back together after it sat and rotted for a year.
Ok, I made a mistake. Darn rounding.
No need to flame me over it. Or call simple misinformation "lies." (I will now prove I am a better man, by suppressing my urge to flame back. have a nice day.)
Perhaps all .COM should become .COM.US unless they can prove they are genuinely international? You could only be promoted to .COM if your site was both multi-currency and multilingual (maybe even with a choice between Yank and English).
Sooooo... Debt held by the public: $3,276,772,616,898.09 ($3.27 trillion)
Why do you need an .EDU in iran? Don't they kill internet users there?
Well, not exactly killing, they only make it a hard time for us, which some may consider worse. The problem is that we need to change the situation:
The current .ir registrar has a really hard mechanism for registering a domain, and for changing that, we need to tell them that Iranians will just go and register some .com or .net if they don't open the registry, and they will lose lots of money, among other things.
Global domains are good for that, the government can't restrict you with its weird policies. With one less global TLD, Internet content providers in a country like ours should go kill themselves if not killed by them. ;-)
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A member of the first GPL-ed software project in my country
I wonder what will happen to .edu: As outlined in the RFC 1591, the TLD belongs to the global community of educational insitutes, and not only Americans:
But according to this Slashdot article, the US Department of Commerce gave it away to something named EDUCAUSE, that doesn't let universities outside USA to get a .EDU.
As a user of a .edu here in Iran, that really aches...
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A member of the first GPL-ed software project in my country
It is impressive. BUt 'older' media outlets like newspapers seem to be doing a better job covering the Internet and obscure issues than heavy internet properties like CNN & MSNBC - their stuff is too whitewashed.
I've been impressed at the technology coverage of papers like the LA Times and the NY TImes. Sure, they may be a few days late sometimes, but they still give our issues a wider audience.
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
SAVE.US!!!
Yeah, that was lame.
Do you like German cars?
The .us giveaway belongs to the same pillaging outlook that characterizes this administration's view of its duty to the public trust.
.us domain? Give it to business.
Is there money in the
Are the public airwaves ripe for commercialization? Give licenses away for a pittance (while thwarting the licensing of small bandwidth community stations that would compete with corporate behemoths).
Is there oil in the Alaskan wilderness? Allow business to pump it, though the quantity is slight and the environmental damage great.
Is the health of school students compromised by the unsafe standards of the US beef industry? Sure, but relax regulations, anyway.
This isn't government of, by, or for the people, but a plain old fashioned free-for-all by the base and greedy, conducted under the nose of a public too bored and uninformed to care.
BUT...
He got elected, without a big campaign war-chest or corporate support. When he is in the position, he supports issues a lot of us feel strongly about, like campaign finance reform and ending the ridiculous practice of trying to legislate morality, such as whether you prefer to smoke or drink your favorite mind-altering substance.
Our most recent presidential election showed us that the nation's voters find themselves neatly split down the middle of an ideological divide where the difference seems a lot like Coke vs. Pepsi and a lot of people feel like their vote has little meaning. Jesse took a similar situation, found converts on both sides of the fence, brought in a lot of new voters, and took a race the pundits never gave him a chance of winning. At his wackiest, I at least know that his actions are motivated by his own twisted Jesse sense of what's right, not by the latest opinion poll or what his old-boy's power club handlers think he should represent. You may not like the politician, but the model is sound. We can put minor party players in office.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
But more importantly the reality is that Jesse won by capturing a complex demogaphic based on a campaign that cut across a variety of issues. He won the votes of a large number of conservative women who like GOP fiscal policy but don't want their right to a legal abortion overturned. He captured a lot of pro-hemp and pro-drug law reform votes as a candidate with a better chance than the Green or Grass Roots party candidates. Naturally he secured many Reform Party and other libertarian votes.
Certainly his fame as a former pro-wrestler and B-movie actor was a strong factor in his victory. But so was his success as a local Mayor, his popular radio show, his clever and cost-effective series of radio and television ads, and his relentlessly optimistic stumping - Ralph Nader could learn a thing or two from his "We Will Win" attitude.
Jeeze, do the GOP and DNC pay you people to schmooze around the 'net bad-mouthing minor-party politics? Why don't you shut up and leave political discussions to people who aren't afraid to put a name to their thoughts?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I know there's a lot of support for the "free market" on Slashdot, but somehow I don't think this is what y'all mean. When are people going to stop bickering over meaningless partisan differences and start realizing that most politicians on both sides of the fence are interested in their own political careers and accumulation of power above all else, and are more than willing to sell our interests out for relatively paltry sums? For crying out load, vote for someone that takes a credible stand on campaign finance reform! (Hint: if the phrase "one of the costliest campaigns in history" or something similar shows up nest to their name on a regular basis, then their stand is not credible).
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Imagine being the owner of screw.us or suck.us and I can think of about a hundred more. Then you could sell a whole variety of pr0n subdomains to the highest bidder, I could imagine getting big bucks for the sub come.suck.us and teens.suck.us.... As a matter of fact the screw.us name would be great for political sites as well. How about government.screw.us?
I am impressed this is being covered by a major newspaper. I wouldn't think they would pick up on this. Its also nice to see that there are some senators and congressman that took notice and said "Hold on just a moment." I bet the commerce secretary didn't expect there to be this much negative feedback.
Its always nice to see the folks in Washington working hard to make sure that things are handled correctly.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
Quick - we must trademark "are.belong.to" so we get first dibs on "are.belong.to.us".
- -
I have dibs on "all.your.ninth.level.domains.are.belong.to.us"
Yes, the nick is flamebait
You are right. Things are going downhill quite fast.
I has became fashionable to openly try to change election rules after the fact and claim the victory based on these new rules as mr. Gore tried to pull of in the last election.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
"he got issues on the table "
...and that would be ?
PS.
It is a serious question.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
The .us giveaway doesn't differ much from the American tradition of irrevocably giving blocks of broadcast frequences to commercial entities. The average American is screwed in the process, and the rich get richer. With their extra money, they can buy more politicians^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H donate more money to political campaigns and continue to dictate our national policy
We can bitch, we can moan, we can hang politicians by their ankles, but we can't prevent this from happening. History, however, will judge this as it really is.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
I think one of the things that stop my company from being great was the threat of this free giveaway.
-- R Tasnumi
I say let them give it away. I don't think it iwll severely affect the market, considering the requirements for the URL, with all the dots. and blah blah blah.blahblahblah.blah.mass.us and whatnot will be desirable for large corperations. They will be most desired by people who don't want to spend the 10-30 bucks, who most likely won't take away much market
Because Verisign is in bed with ICANN over it, or so the CNN article seems to hint.
.coms .nets and .orgs. I wouldn't mind being able to get the .us of my choice; just as I can get a .com or another TLD.
.us TLD and they are notrious for NOT handing over their power to the people.
.us sales and the big corporations will get their pick; leaving the rest of us with the carrion.
It's really sad. All we US citizens get slammed for buying up
I don't really see that happening, though. The suits in DC like the control they can wield over the
It's sad, really. Europe has a much better approach to country TLDs. But; in the States, Verisign will probably get the deal for the
But...imagine the RIAA's new URL:
www.all.your.music.are.belong.to.us
Or DC's new website:
www.all.your.freedoms.are.belong.to.us
Phoenix
I am me. Insightful, isn't it?