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Brad Templeton On New Mobile Domains

nfocus writes "CircleID has an opinion piece by Brad Templeton, Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, offering an interesting follow up to the previous discussions here on Slashdot: New Net Battle Over ".mobile" Looming. Brad suggests that 'the only way to get a competitive innovative space is to slowly get rid of the generics and allow a competitive space of branded TLDs for resale. .yahoo, .dunn, .yellowpages, .google, .wipo, and a hundred other branded resellers competing on even footing to create value in their brand and win customers with innovative designs, better service, lower prices and all the usual things. I presume .wipo would offer trademark holders powerful protections within their domain. Let them. ...Let them all innovate, let them all compete.' Also in the article 'The domain will not actually be named .mobile, rumours are they are hoping for a coveted one-letter TLD like .m to make it easier to type on a mobile phone.'"

9 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. How About... by robbyjo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not having TLD at all... Like http://slashdot

    That would be cooler because most modern browser may omit the http:// part. Lots of business would covet those!

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    1. Re:How About... by dsanfte · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Um, it's a database query, how hard can it be? How about we bring BIND out of the dark ages and give it a relational database with (semi-) fast searching?

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      occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
  2. Good idea! by raistlinjones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This sounds like a good idea. It would be really handy for, say, .wipo to be the "official" site address, and cease the lawsuit problems that have occurred with .com

    And, really, the more competition the better. And extra domains would be nice too.

    Wouldn't it be handy to have a .sex domain?

  3. whocares.m by thatguywhoiam · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I find the discussion about '.mobile' somewhat boring, just because I have yet to see a really compelling mobile phone/online experience.

    I am probably not in the know as I'm in Canada, and I really only have those impressions (along with what I've seen in the US) that I've seen up here... but boy does it suck. Rogers, for instance, tries to charge you by the kilobyte - and then ads useless colour banners with big file sizes to their so-called mobile sites... and then they disable the image-blocking feature on the T68i they sell. Nice huh?

    When I can just get some basic info quickly on a mobile phone without hassle - movie times, directions, etc - then I'll be interested. Frankly its a development problem, and a design problem... a new TLD isn't going to help there...

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  4. TLD competition for reputation by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Currenty, TLDs tell you nothing about the reputability of the domain owner -- anyone can get a domain at any TLD. Competition between TLDs could be a good thing in this regard. Some TLDs might become very selective of members -- creating TLDs with high reputations. This is in contrast to some domains, like .biz, that appear to be the lairs for so many spammer ecommerce sites (as far as I have seen).

    It would be nice to be able to trust organizations that have a particular TLD -- knowing that the could not get and retain that TLD unless they adhered to a strict ethical code and had the organizational resources to support whatever products/services/info they were providing.

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  5. Re:nuff said by JimDabell · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I want yahoo in my country, I go to yahoo.dk. With a yahoo TLD I'd go to dk.yahoo. This just doesn't make sense.

    It makes more sense than yahoo.dk. The rightmost components have authority over everything to the left of them. What makes more sense: the dk domain having authority over Yahoo's website tailored to a specific country, or Yahoo having authority over Yahoo's website tailored to a specific country?

  6. Re:Marketing by Roger+Keith+Barrett · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I see the Internet as the one great leveler in the world today. American Society has been totally bought out by large corporation and other groups of people with special agendas, the economy is measured by the well being of big businesses and not the family that can barely make a payment on their debt, etc... The current Internet DNS system is the ONLY place where a large corp., a small business, and a private individual bascially have the same footing. www.smith.com can be a large manufacturing venture, a small supply store, or a family website just depending on who gets there first and who will pay the $35 (or whatever) per year.

    Giving large corporations top level domains will KILL this. You know it will be expensive and only open to a "select" group of people, and all of sudden anyone that has to put a .something after their name will be seen as second class sites... I can the "tips and tricks" FAQs at to corporate sites now... "Don't buy from or trust sites with generic domains like .com, .org, or .net. Top level domains are a sign of quality!"

    We don't need the corps. to dominate the Internet any more than they do with their advantages of huge marketing budgets and default web pages that automatically go to "msn.com". We need the DNS to stay blind to organization size if we are going to keep any hope of having a platform to speak out that is not totally dominated by a corporate gatekeepers.

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  7. DNS cannot support this by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Interesting

    DNS is an easily spoofed protocol (and mapping *anything* to an IP address to do authentication is also a bad idea). Using it as an authentication system is an extremely bad idea from a security standpoint. Use certs with SSL if you want server-side authorization.

    This sort of thing can be provided by many other mechanisms, but "the existence of a DNS record in a TLD" is *not* what you want.

    Oh, and it also isn't hierarchical, which is a fundamental element of DNS.

  8. in a really decentralized way. by hummassa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    imagine... a system (not unlike freenet) that you control, besides the keyword to which you are server, the ones to which you are client, and the "popularity" of the link keyword->address is taken into account when a person who never accessed that link use that keyword.
    Trying to explain myself:

    Imagine you are CarCompanyX. You create your page and put in its NuDNS record:

    CarCompanyX := XX.YY.ZZ.WW:80 "CarCompanyX Official Website"

    You are Joe Bloe. You want to buy a car from CarCompanyX. Your NuDNS server returns <NONE?>; it goes to your peers NuDNS, and returns two options:

    CarCompanyX := XX.YY.ZZ.WW:80 "CarCompanyX Official Website"
    CarCompanyX := TT.QQ.RR.PP:8080 "CarCompanyX sucks"

    your browser can use the most popular of them or give you a choice.

    Now, you are Mary Hates CompanyX and you want to hack the system. so you set up a NuDNS record:

    CarCompanyX := AA.BB.CC.DD:8080 "CarCompanyX Official Website"

    CarCompanyX sees this, reclaims to a "court" of trusted (as in cryptographically), show its docs and says "this is not the official". Each member of the "court" makes its judgement, and sets up a trusted entry in its NuDNS records:

    CarCompanyX := TRUSTED:SIGNED(xxxx-signature) AA.BB.CC.DD:8080 Motive:Misrepresentation

    Now, this board/court must have, like, 10 to 20 members, so when Joe Bloe tries to access keyword "CarCompanyX", his browser can show him the options:

    CarCompanyX := XX.YY.ZZ.WW:80 "CarCompanyX Official Website"
    CarCompanyX := TT.QQ.RR.PP:8080 "CarCompanyX sucks"
    CarCompanyX := AA.BB.CC.DD:8080 "CarCompanyX Official Website" WARNING:seems to be misreprestation VOTE:12pro/2con/6abs

    his browser/resolver can (at his option) sort these entries, use only the "official", use the last one, use

    other options:

    * use special "tags", like:

    TAG: Trademark-owner
    TAG: Denouncing (or criticism?)
    TAG: Personal

    in the NuDNS records, let the system and the "court"/board sort it out. The "court"/board does not even has to be appointed/elected. People can put in their personal NuDNS servers:

    JoeBloeJr := TAG:Wants-to-judge PUBLIC-KEY:xsdfdsfsdf

    The system could gather everyone who wants to judge, their last votes, and each person could choose who to trust in his system.

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