Slashdot Mirror
Berners-Lee on the TLD Explosion
kmccammon writes "Tim Berners-Lee recently released a white paper outlining a number of justifications for stalling (at least temporarily) the expansion of the top-level domains. Among the reasons cited: bad economics. As evidenced by the .biz and .info debacle, more top-levels does not necessarily mean more domain name availability. All it really means is that every .com/.net owner now needs to rush out and buy the same name under each new TLD. Thus, the 'value of one's original registration drops. At the same time, the cost of protecting one's brand goes up.'"
Introduction
.com. To this extent, in the world of memorable domain names, the hierarchicalization of the domain system had failed to happen. In the public's memory, example was the mark, and the difference between example.com and example.net merely a source of confusion.
.net, .com and .org is delegated to set of parallel registries whose business model is nominally the charging of registration and annual fees. There have been temptations for the registry companies to consider themselves owners of unclaimed names. Rumors have abounded about systems which would automatically rent a domain name about which a potential renter was inquiring, or would redirect traffic from an unclaimed Web site to their own Web site, and so on.
When the Internet was being collaboratively developed by a substantially technical community around a growing but still manageable Internet Engineering Task Force, the Domain Name System (DNS) evolved as a hierarchical solution to the problem of keeping track of which computers had which Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The tree structure was an improvement over the previous flat space of host names. It reduced the chaos, by allowing new names to be allocated in sub-domains without recourse to a central registration system. Because the frequency of allocation of new names decreased as one ascended the tree toward the root, the actual cost was kept manageable.
As email and World Wide Web (WWW) use blossomed and became increasingly important, domain names crept out of the messages syntax for Internet protocols and crept into daily parlance. It then became valuable to own a short domain name. This turned domain name space into a limited commodity. After some tussles for control (ongoing at the time of writing) and some large amounts of money changing hands in some cases, the system has now settled down to a market-based one in which names can be rented, transfer value can be asked by the old owner of the new owner, and one-time and annual fees are typically payable by any domain to any company managing the higher domain. An anomaly was that unclaimed names were deemed to have no owner and no value, and were allocated in a "first come first served" frenzy in which speculators made great profits and held to ransom those who may have been considered the more logical owner of a name. This anomaly created great instability. It has costs, in that any trademark owner had to beware of parties who would register domains which included their trademark. The Example Manufacturing Company had to ensure that it owned not only example.com which it had used for email and Web site for many years, but also example.net and example.org to avoid unscrupulous competition setting up sites to benefit from Example's excellent reputation. As the business grew, Example had to also acquire example.fr and example.co.uk to ensure that confusion was minimized.
The fact was that the public memory was not for the domain name, but for the brand name which was sandwiched between www and
As each node in the tree represents a potentially valuable asset, control of any subset of the tree is valuable. Control of the entire tree is managed by ICANN, which is set up to be a non-profit international institution, with the intent that it should as such carry the trust of the entire community in its efforts to manage the system for the common good. Control of subtrees such as
The Cost of Change
The top level of the domain name system, and to a lesser extent the IP address space, are the single weak, centralised, points of an otherwise strong, decentralised system. The Internet is a net, and the WWW is a Web, but WWW and email use DNS which is a tree, which has a single root. Although there are many benefits to a system with global identifiers, there are also costs, such as a single common DNS tree. As a community we have all decided that the benefits of the system (such as being able to quote example.com anywhere in the world and
Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!
Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?
With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!
Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!
$Id: ceren.html,v 7.0 2004/01/01 11:32:04 ceren_rocks Exp $
I think you are an ass fucking bitch hole... Umm, I mean I politely disagree with your statement. I think that .edu and .mil and .gov TLDs are used by the "common joe".
Look ass fuck, just because they aren't going to go to a school doesn't mean they wouldn't go to a school's website. There is a lot of content on .edu servers, and even your "average American" may want to see it.
It isn't really that bad. Check out this chart that shows how many of the important domains were grabbed by squaters the last time a new TLD went public (Spoiler: not many, but you should see for yourself).
Mod parent up! This chart is very relavent. It isn't a troll just because you don't agree with it.
XML causes global warming.
Man you suck monkey balls. Just shut the fuck up. You don't know what you are talking about.