Slashdot Mirror
ICANN to Incorporate TLDs Already In-use?
An anonymous reader asks: "I recently found an article at cnn.com about ICANN considering new top level domains. Some of the proposed TLDs have already been introduced by YOUCANN such as .xxx and have been available to the public at select registrars such as new.net for quite some time. If ICANN incorporates already existing TLDs how will this impact those who have already registered for domain on these TLDs? What implications does this have and how will the ramifications impact how businesses view and utilize the web?"
What the hell is this even talking about?
ICANN is taking applications for registratars to oversee newly created TLDs again. However, a "parallel universe" of "unofficial registrars" already exists consisting of registration services that use various tricks to get their TLDs to be recognized by some subset of the browsing universe. The question is, if ICANN certifies a TLD that already exists "unofficially" to a different registrar, what will happen to the already existing namespace?...
It seems to be two overlapping namespaces headed for a train wreck... leading to questions over how much authority ICANN really has, and what will become of the pretenders to ICANN's throne. We're likely going to end up with multiple domain sellers claiming the root title over the same namespace, and that'll make a mockery of the whole DNS system.
They've already done it.
.biz was already in use when ICANN adopted it.
OpenNIC, for one, does not recognize ICANN's use of the .biz domain.
I would have pointed you to this link at cexx.org for info on how scummy new.net is, but if you visit it you'll see that new.net's scumball lawyers forced them to take it down! Instead, see this link for new.net info & removal instructions.
In summary: FSCK NEW.NET!
Extracts:
A new top-level domain doesn't really exist on the Internet until it is added to the root servers, so that any system anywhere on the net that is seeking that domain can find out from the root where the specific DNS servers for that domain lie.....
the operators of the root servers have a great deal of political power over the domain name system. Presently, these servers are operated by Verisign, but their policies are determined by ICANN, the organization set up to administer Internet naming and numbering schemes. Since ICANN has attracted a great deal of criticism (much of it highly deserved) for its biases towards large impersonal bureaucracies and against individual Internet users, various people have come up with the idea of "fighting back" against ICANN by setting up alternate roots.....
Setting up an alternate root turns out to be a very simple matter. The Internet has always been sort of a "do-it-yourself" thing, not centrally controlled or administered like a proprietary online service.....
a naming or addressing system only makes sense if everybody uses it consistently. If every telephone company had a different idea of how the country and area codes ought to be allocated, so that if your long distance service was with AT&T, "1-212" would reach New York City, but with Sprint the same prefix would reach Los Angeles, then telephone numbers would be in a state of chaos....
Moderate this comment
Negative: Offtopic Flamebait Troll Redundant
Positive: Insightful Interesting Informative Funny
Nothing to see here
I've been experimenting with alternative roots over the past couple of months.
.geek, .oss, .parody, .indy, .null, and .opennic . AlterNIC and Pacific Root alternate roots seem to be long gone - I haven't been able to find any current information on these alternate roots, and I have yet to come across a root zone file that allows resolution of any of their names (anybody know?).
.biz . The submitter's take that ICANN roots may soon start resolving these independent root operators is either woefully mistaken or badly misleading.
The OpenNIC root zone file seems pretty stable, and resolves ICANN domains along with opennic's own
I tried the ORSC root zone file, which is FAR more extensive, but it seems to be out of date - I couldn't even resolve some ICANN domains with it!
It seems that the YouCANN and ORSC web sites are possibly horribly out of date - can anyone verify that these projects are even active?
Now for a little editorial criticism: I don't see any indication in the article that ICANN is considering "incorporating" alternative TLDs as much as it's considering bulldozing over them, like it has for
What implications does this have and how will the ramifications impact how businesses view and utilize the web?
.xxx, it won't conflict with UCANN's .xxx, because you can only use one at a time.
.com, and if people are using the UCANN servers, they'd see that .com, not the ICANN .com.
.com, .net, .org, and the other ICANN tld's. Then UCANN adds their own .tld's, ones that ICANN has not assigned. This way, they get the ICANN tld's, plus their own additional tld's. Sometimes, though, ICANN goes and assignes one of these extra tld's, ( like .biz) themselves, and you get a namespace collision. DNS cannot use two versions of .biz. You get one or the other. Since 99.99% of the world uses the ICANN root, 99.99% of the world sees the ICANN version of the new .tld. Then UCANN whines because now their .tld will be pushed out of the way. It irony is, of course, that this same 99.99% of people who have always been using the ICANN root couldn't see the UCANN version .tld at any time before ICANN set it up. The only people this affects are the people using an alternate root, but they've always seen things differently.
None. This isn't going to have an effect on businesses. Well, about 99.99% of them, anyway.
See, DNS, by design, has a single namespace. That is, blah.foo.bar is unique. There is only one blah.foo.bar, only one right answer. In real life, you can have two people named John Doe, in DNS, you can't.
However, there's no technical reason why you must use the ICANN view of DNS. You can use another DNS root, like AlterNIC or UCANN (or a few others), and what you'll get is a *different* namespace. So now blah.foo.bar points somewhere else. But still to only one place.
So you can use the ICANN root (like 99.99% of the world does) or you can use another root. But you cannot use them at the same time. Therefore, if ICANN chooses to make a
This is why AlterNET and UCANN have always been seen as crackpots, to an extent. They whine and bitch about these things that have no relevance. ICANN is perfectly within reason to define their namespace as they see fit. And so is UCANN and anyone who wants to. UCANN could set up their own
Additional info: An astute reader will notice that things are not quite as simple as "one or the other" as i stated above. You see, what happens is that UCANN will use ICANN's
So, for most people, including serious businesses, nothing changes.