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New ICANN TLDs Are Live
BenBenBen writes "According to this story on the BBC, several of the new ICANN top level domains now have sites available. Examples are visa.info and afilias.info. " I'm still waiting to get my 'dot' TLD. The article doesn't say much new except it tells us a few biz and info sites that you can use if you just wanna see a new TLD working. I gotta say, it's pretty surreal.
Is is just me, or is seeing a new four characters after a url not actually all that amazing?
Thinking about this, its the tipping point I feel from the internet being a military network and a academic and a research network, to a full blown business network with significant commerical interests.
I don't know how to feel strangely, because we have known it will eventually happen, but it seems a little bit has been lost in the process of change.
I'm not against change, I just ponder where we are heading...
`find / -name "*your_base*" -exec chown us:us {} \;`
There's already hundreds of thousands of web sites that already fall under the wrong TLD category because current TDL's are too vague. These two only make it worse. There is nothing wrong with adding TLD's, but we need them to be MORE specific to prevent ongoing domain name conflicts. Dot info and dot biz... besides the fact that they seem rather "immature" and "umprofessional" respectively, they don't help clue me in much on what I'm looking at. "What's the difference between a COMmerical site and a BIZiness site? Isn't somecompany.com also a BIZiness?" "Is this ORGinzation just about INFO?"
.TLD. scheme to include regions? www.somecompany.com.east/west/se/etc.
These domains add confusion and too much generality. At the risk of a TLD being too long, why not create a ".store" for retail fronts, or ".gr(ou)p" for non-established organizations (that one would be great for OSS developers). How about extending the concept of the
I may just be blowing my horn here, but these things are just plain dumb. Some of my suggestions here may add some confusion, but won't adding to the mess also do that in a less constructive way?
Why bother.
It won't help clean up the .com domains. The reason is becuase most sex sites don't conflict with domain names that businesses want for their web sites. For example, does IBM in contest for hotsex4uandgoats.com? No. Do sex sites have domain names like microsoft.com? As amusing as that would be, the answer is also no. .sex, while making porn smucks look a little harder for the wares they seek, wouldn't benefit the rest of us. And if it was official, it'd be something our browsers would search through if the domain we were looking for was unavailable. It'd annoy me greatly if a route to debian.org was unavailable and my browser defaulted to debian.sex and a web site containing photos of Ian's and Debra's love life.
Why bother.
The only people I have seen bullying anyone have been the rogue TLDs.
There are plenty of name squatters who have bought up new.net swampland who would like their real estate to be connected up to the interstate. So they yammer on with squeals of complaint.
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Isn't one of the biggest selling points for traditional TLDs the fact that they are easy to remember? Sure there are many country specific TLDs, but usually they are used by people in your/nearby countries......
How many people are going to remember that my site is not www.thinkbrown.com but instead www.thinkbrown.info or www.thinkbrown.TLDoftheday?
Heck, why don't we go one step furhter, I want to define my own TLDs.
I don't buy into the arguement that traditional TLDs are all taken.... just stop the domain squatters and you'll be happy.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If 90% of these new TLD's are simply going to refer back to the .com of the business that snaps them up, like I suspect (dell.info->dell.com), and if those .com's aren't really changed in any way (no reason they should)...
.info or whatever are going to bother to create a new web site specifically for that domain?
Is this the worlds biggest DNS server? Meta DNS? Seriously, though, how many companies who snatch up an
Well, I was really going to rant about trademarks. TMs is usually the part of IP regime that I find the least problematic, but. There is something strange there.
Here's my story:
I have for several years maintained a site titled "How to use a compass". Since I've been orienteering for many years, and just because I could write this, just because the web allowed me to become a publisher, I did write it up.
It is time for the site to move on, I intend to open it up for many contributors. I intend to get a few excellent orienteers and expeditionists to join me in making this site even better, and I intend to release it under the GNU Free Documentation License (but with some modifications to allow people to print and distribute printouts more easily).
Obviously, I should have a domain for it. While I have other options, what can possibly be more fitting for this site than compass.info? It is the most used compass tutorial on the web, there are a few of them, but most are actually using my illustrations... The site is literally information about the centuries-old gadget called a compass.
However, it has been decided that trademarks owners should have a prior right to our language (eh, well, English is not my native tongue, I'm Norwegian). They should be allowed to grab first, and so, compass.info is gone. Like in some many cases, the compass has been used metaphorically. There is actually very little information about the gadget compass on the web, but there is extensive use of the term "compass" used metaphorically. In fact, this is a problem I've had when designing metadata for the site.
I'm quite confident (yep, I do have some self-confidence :-) ), that if
the delegation of domain names had been based on what merit a site has for
accurately describing what lies in a name, my site would have won... :-)
So, what is it with trademarks that makes them so valuable for mankind that it is more important that the domain name compass.info is used do point to a product that has nothing to do with what has for centuries been known as a compass, rather than an accurate description on how to use this gadget....?
I do not doubt that the American College Testing Program, who has been awarded compass.info has good intentions for it, but still, the question stands, why is it that trademarks should have that level of protection?
I feel there is something wrong about all this. Names are a scarce resource, and should be treated with caution. I feel the use of trademarks needs a review. This isn't what they are supposed to be: My parents went to China and bought "The North Face" jackets with a Gore-Tex membran for just about nothing. While they realize it certainly aren't real North Face jackets, I have yet to convince them it certainly has no Gore-Tex membran. They are going to get seriously wet one of these days... :-)
That's what trademarks are supposed to do for us: protect us from being
sold crap. They're not supposed to be used for grabbing bits and pieces
of living langauges...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Let me just talk about .ws for a second. This is the most meaningless TLD of them all. The nodename part of a domainname should specify what the service is i.e. www, smtp, ns, nntp, etc... otherwise we need to create all these others as TLDs as well, which I'm sure everyone would agree is silly.
And to those who have posted that we need regional TLDs, we have those already. The are called country code TLDs. In fact I think we should get rid of .com, .net, .org, .edu, and .gov and stick them under .us. It seems to work for the UK and Australia. A company should have to register a .com.ccTLD for the countries they exist in. The Internet is not just the United States anymore.
In summary new TLDs only polute the DNS name space.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
There is propaganda being spread by the authorities, that these new TLDs will solve the problems for trademarks - it is a lie.
THOUSANDs of new open TLDs will not solve any problem - even if every one has 'Sunrise Period'
It will not solve 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' or stop anybody 'passing off'.
Also, as an example on Sunrise, thousands of trademarks using word 'Apple' have no guarantee of being able to use name.
Apple computers will still protect and make claim to every Apple.[anything] - even though they share word with 727 others in the USA alone (plus all those in 200+ countries).
TRUE or FALSE?
No reply required - I know the TRUTH - The solution to trademark problem is at WIPO.org.uk.