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ICANN Plans to Charge Fees to .net Domain Owners
museumpeace writes "ICANN, though it was soundly rebuffed for trying this in the past, is
reported by CNET to be planning a $.75/ year fee to holders of .net domains and will look at fees for other TLD's next year. Is this taxation without representation? And where would this trend stop?"
And where would this trend stop?
It wouldn't stop. Not until ICANN became less of an independant organization and more of an elected body.
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't tried to patent/Copyright .net domain yet.
First post.
> s reported by CNET to be planning a $.75/ year fee to holders of .net domains
75c a year isn't so bad.
How are they going to charge these too all those people that fake their registration information, like the spammers? So its just the legit people that get charged eh?
I noticed GoDaddy started charging the new $.25 ICANN fee that was initiated in November. Sheesh.
:)
Yes, Im sure that they will keep it at 75 cents too.
At least until they rationalize that they need to raise more money.
are they going to charge 0.69$ for the .orgasm domain?
News.com.com apperars to be slashdotted already...
...anyone have the article?
I'm going to wait at least till the third warning to pay. That way they spend more on stamps than they get from me.
...does netcraft confirm it? On the plus side it's not $75. More of a pain in the ass then a financial issue. Rather pay it to ICANN then to verisign, or worse the U.N.
John 3:16 - The easiest way to a BETTER YOU.
So how exactly does this cause anyone real grief?
Self-referential sigs are rarely entertaining.
If there was any assurance that it would stay at $.75, I probably would. However, there is not.
I would just like to say that this is completely retarded. Why do they need the freaking money anyway, they don't do anything usefull. Domains, and their registration and creation should be in the hands of Internet users anyway.
thisnukes4u.net
hey i was charged .25 cents a year Icann fee on my .com domain ah yesterday...ICANN needs to be elected though that much is clear.
Perhaps every domain you own should count as a vote. You could of course allow someone else to vote for you.
If I renew my .net domain now for another 10 years, can I save the whole $7.50?
Wake up.
So why are people upset?
Don't tell me all the 15 year olds who warez all their games are complaining about a 75 cent increase.
RTFA... it's $0.75 plus $0.25 they snuck in just recently... Notice how they're sneaking those in? You'll be paying a dollar and you thought it was only $0.75... Slippery slope, isn't it?
We must find a way to do distributed DNS over p2p or something, DNS shouldn't require suck a massive centralisation...
So .com already has a 25 cents charge, and .net is 3 times more expensive at 75 cents. Uhh.. why?
AccountKiller
There is no difference in requirements to purchase a .com, .net, or .org domain, so why should one have a different fee schedule from another?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
.... whats a penny, can't even buy a piece of gum right?
6 + billion people would result in a few dollars in my pocket, but that's not really the point.
The point is taxation without representation..
internet tea party anyone?
So why are they going to pick on us first? What's that about?
...it's business not a democracy. But, if ICANN wanted to charge they should have started at the beginning, not after the fact.
Those nice phone fees are where the legs of this fee grow from. The FCC line fee was introduced, and then increased under the same pretense -- "long distance rates will continue to fall, so even with increased FCC Line Fee you will see reduction of your overall bill". The hell it did.
So... I guess once this fee is applied and nobody's bottom gets removed from the high and mighty chair over this, there will be a fee increase, then another fee (for the regulation and patent disputes, for example), and another one (to help public schools pay for their domain names) etc.
All of those fees will be removed from the registrar's ads, so you'll see ".NET Domains for Only $5.95* " with fine print stating "Please note, additional fees and surcharges may apply" and final price will crawl up to $9 or more.
Look at cell phones and regular land-line phones... That's where it's heading.
Hyperom.com
75 cents per year for a domain sounds like a good measure against those who register a bunch of domains then sit on them. It at least keeps them paying attention. Kinda like the idea that a copyright should expire after $LOW_NUMBER of years unless the holder pays a $1 to renew it. I understand some of the reasons you wouldn't like this tax, but if the above is an (un?)intended consequence, then cool.
Libertarian: label used by embarrassed Republicans, longing to be open about their greed, drug use and porn collections.
Do we need an open peer to peer based dns service?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Correction, that would be a $5.00 fee.
This just give everybody who's concerned about ICANN's unchecked control even more reasons to learn about and support the Open Root Server Confederation.
The Internet needs to stay unregulated and as free as possible from the corporate mindset if it's going to stay in it's current shape. You can already see problems arising with corporations controlling so much of the public's interest in the Internet such as VeriSign's abusing their power by implementing programs like SiteFinder.
It's reasons like these and ICANN's increasing little fees they charge that something needs to be done at some point and the sooner the better. I suppose the very nature of the Internet is a saving grace - if the current custodians fail the public then the network can always be restructured, if very slowly. There is more than one way millions of computers can be inter-connected.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
They're introducing this because VeriSign's contract to administer .net runs out next year; they can take advantage of the bidding process for that contract to insert the fee. And they may do the same when the .com contract runs out in 2007.
ICANN only controls non-country TLDs. If you do not like the three quarters of a dollar tax, then move to a country TLD like .US.
Also of interest, everyone here complains about how closely aligned ICANN is with the US gov't. Now, from what I can see, they want to charge you 75 cents a year (1/3 the price of a cup of coffee) so they can privately fund themselves. This leads to getting the gov't OUT of the DNS game and truly internaitonalizes it!
Yes, it's not only the taxation without representation, it's the fact that it is - in fact - a large amount. Not to me, not to you, but to the recipient. How many .net domains are there? If there were a million that's $750,000... but I'm willing to bet there are a lot more.
It's like stamps: a 2c fee in a billion stamps still equals a whole lotta money - but frankly you're getting a lot more from the stamps and postal agencies than you are from icann.
I guess the big question is, who is going to stop them... or how far can they go before somebody does?
please forgive my ignorance, but what does icann do? is it a business or a government entity? if it is business and is the only one that does this and can it be held to the monoploy laws of thi u.s.?
always mosh clockwise
...just because THEYCANN.
You won't be saying that when you're paying off Bush's debt and trying to figure out why in the world he started a war with China...
Ignoring that ``they shouldn't be doing that'', etc., the question is: Who cares? I may sound like a troll, but who in the hell cares for $0.75??? I never understand people who try to save every single penny per domain---that's just stupid.
If you have a website (that makes money, or not), then even a few hundreds of dollars won't make a difference---and $0.75 cents is certainly nothing to complain about. Just look at how much taxes you're paying on your cell phone per month.
On the other hand, if you're in the business of hogging hundreds of domains in a hope of selling them... then I understand how a few bucks per domain can make a huge difference in that business model. But then I don't think those people should be in business in the first place.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Just like the RIAA trying to enforce their legal copyrights is a "Bad Thing", but when the FSF enforces the GPL on a violator, it's a "Good Thing".
I hate double standards.
when domains were $100.
See, a company I recently worked for had no qualms about registering 100 domains every other day for no other purpose than to use them for SPAM.
If the domains were $100 each, I am pretty sure that they wouldn't be burning through domains like that.
1. Register net.net, info.info, org.org, etc. (news.com.com.com.com has com.com already locked up. Bork bork bork.)
2. Re-sell everyone their same domain names as mysite.net.net, but charge them HALF what ICANN + registrars do.
3. ??? (wait till ICANN goes broke?)
4. PROFIT!!!
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I'll just add to that that I DONT WANT A SILLY NET DOMAIN, but some dirtbag with really bad ideas stole and squatted on my org name.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I hope you nerds enjoyed it while it lasted. The party will be over soon.
Your new around here arn't you?
Oh wait, your just an editor.
Isn't that how LZW earned it's reputation?
I would be afraid that the FCC may step up and 'help' us. Then the ICANN could claim to be 'regulated', and for their efforts would be able to recover their costs from us Internet users in some kind of misleading 'FCC Charge', collected in like manner as the phone companies.
Slashmail.org "The Open Source Email Company"
Shhh! that's just the kind of bad idea you don't want the marketroids to get. Don't you know they would love their own little exclusive namespace that they could market as something "only responsible companies" can own and spam you from. Surely, most would cut a deal with vermin of their own kind so that they would pay "low prices" for such things and have everyone else subsidize it. Let's just ridicule such an idea as ".moron" space.
Hope they never figure it out the same way greed heads have figured out exclusive franchise electricity. Industrial users of electricity have everyone else pay way more money for monopoly produced electricity than they do. Politicians have managed to pipe meterless electricity into public housing. Those left are increasingly few and pay increasingly more. It's a bad analogy, but the spirit is the same, pay up sucker.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Is there any reason another group can't offer the service of redirecting a person to an IP address based on a set of words?
If not, surely this will come to pass if ICANN gets to problematic with their own limitations.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Its really not a bad idea. I mean, how many times have you gone to register a domain name and its just some company holding it and not using it. They've had it for years and will continue to have it for years.. merely to have it. When I want a domain that is my last name.. I can't have it.. cuz they want me to pay them $500 for it, instead of $20 to register it myself. Its bullshit that some companies can hold onto thousands or millions of names for free.
Does anyone know what grants ICANN the right to essentially have a monopoly on the domain names? The internet is supposedly free and decentralized, and the article makes it clear that ICANN is not regulated by any government. In that case, how did they get to where they are? I admit that I don't really know what ICANN really does or provides, but it seems to me like someone else should be competing with them.
I own a .net domain that is solely used as a personal site. Who, specifically, can I write to in order to voice my opinion on this matter?
"Careful! We don't want to learn from this!" -Calvin & Hobbes
At last we can add in step two!
1. Get self on ICANN board.
2. Increase fees gradually so nobody notices. (formerly ???)
3. Profit!
If you browse at -1, then what's the difference to you? Or are you concerned that other people may not be getting "The Truth?" Trust me, it doesn't matter, it's an internet discussion board. You sound like you would be someone who'd complain about the content of example postulates in discussions on logic or something because they're "biased." It's just a discourse, the content doesn't matter.
It only looks like there's double standards because of contradiction, but you actually need standards for the "double" variety to exist: something which casual internet discussion lacks in all respects.
A lot of this seems way over my head, so I want to make sure I understand everything correctly. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a government run organization, correct? They control who gets the Top Level Domains (TLD). Currently, companies like GoDaddy and Verisigns ( I'm assuming ) bid on chunks of TLD's. Then those companies sell them individually as domains to people. Currently there is a $.25 charge on each domain name. When Verisign's contract bid ends in 2005, ICANN is going to add an additional $.75 charge to each .net TLD. The reason people are upset is because they feel that the $.75 is unnecessary for what ICANN does. If I am wrong about any of this or if I'm missing anything, let me know. Like I said, most of this is a little over my head and I want to understand it better before I make any kind of judgement.
As a result, I will be charging ICANN a monthly 7.50 'Blow Me' fee. Bitches.
Fees and surcharges are the first sign that you should get your gun and start thinning the herd from the top down, because someone has decided you're easy pickin' and an easy money bitch. ICANN does not DO anything, except charge poor fucks like me and you for having a shitty website.
Now mod me offtopic, you ICANN sniffing mod-whores. HAHAHA! Profanity is always uncalled for, and used by ruffians, and ner' do-wells, so eat it.
They're trying to get the money from the wrong people. There are a whole bunch of spammers out there that create a world of problems for ICANN and domain registrars; by registering so many garbage domains, using fake contact information, costing support desks tons of money as angry anti-spammers make sure that spammer's domains are nuked, etc. Maybe there's a way the money can be collected from spammers. Perhaps with some tougher contracts governing acceptable use of domains, giving ICANN recourse to sue those who misuse domain space in civil action.
Here is me new patent pending idea Wiki DNS. No more lock in with registrations. Create an entry for you favorite web site and add an IP address. Think you have a better slashdot than slashdot? Update the DB and let the world be the judge. Develop a mesh query policy and dump the root servers. The DNS DB could live all over the net rather than in some sealed bunker somewhere. Power to the people.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
This is the danger of having one controlling body over essentially the entire Internet.
Perhaps people shouldn't have dismissed alternatives like PacificROOT in the past -- at least there'd be some competition to prevent these sorts of things.
Looks like I'll be paring back my domains next year.
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
--
Build an internet incorruptible by corps and goverments.
Metanet
What was broken with the domain system before ICANN and why did the powers that be decide ICANN was the solution to the problem?
Uh. Why should it be in the hands of internet users? How would this be done? I don't know about what icann is doing but this statment:
Domains, and their registration and creation should be in the hands of Internet users
*is* retarded. It makes no sense. How could that possibly work? Would they vote? Would it be internet voting? For evey domain? How would disputes be settled? I'm sure nothing could go wrong. And talk about making decisions by committee. And that's a damn big commitee.
works great for me. No fees. My own site if I want it. No problem. Just remember to donate every now and then..
Good idea. Maybe, after that, we could do something about the congress who, you know, actually controls the budget.
I dont make any money off of my .net
And let's not forget the interstate highway system,
The FCC is probably a better analogy.
My other first post is car post.
Am I the only one who sees this. It's not 75 cents, It's millions of dollars. I have no idea how many domains there are but assume 100 million for arguements sake. .75 * 100,000,000 = 75,000,000 dollars !!! Holy Freaking Crap!
That is 75,000,000 dollars a year!!! Why the hell do they need that much? Perhaps the organization needs some Ferrari's and a beach house, and a private island.
They are one of those things that, once they start being charged (rather than just a base cost) that never go down, and can snowball real quickly. Just look at telecom fees:
I have a cell phone plan that is $40/month. Pretty good plan too, for that money. However when the bill shows up in my box each month, it's not $40, it's $48. Why? Well taxes and fees. There's a 911 fee, a USF fee, 3 different taxes, etc. A dollar here, a dollar there, but the net effect is we are talking a final bill 20% over the quoted price.
Or how about my home phone? They are pretty cheap where I live, $13.80 for a basic, no frills phoneline. That's all I need, it's main purpose is a place to park DSL anyhow. OH but then there's taxes? Ok. Service fees? A $5 fee to help out rural customers? All in all, I get charged $25/month for the phone line, not $14, when the fees and taxes get added up.
So that's the worry here. IT might not be a big deal NOW, but if ICANN decides to start playing the fee game, I can easily see domain getting to the point where it's "Only $10 per domain!" but when you actually get to the pay page, you are being charge $20+ for each domain because of "fees and taxes".
The way $.75 has been used might probably mislead a number of people into reading it as 75 dollars.
Keep this in perspective folks. 75 cents.
Bah, just move to Mono. You can get .Net for free, then.
... What?
Oh. Nevermind then.
bazily
------
http://gibsoncompany.com/
real estate for bankrupt dotcom companies
Why cut IT when your office space costs $3/sf? gibso
As owner of a .net domain, I do not greet this news with the warmth and happiness they might have expected.
.net = network resource?
I already pay a reasonable fee for my domain! Why is it absolutely necessary that I pay ANOTHER fee for it?
I sincerely hope that they do not impose such a tax on my desire to provide a free resource for people seeking information. All I wanted was a cost-effective way to share with other people, and transfer files between laboratories and my computer.
This move will make a lot of people have second thoughts about providing their valuable resources. I need resources to do my work, and those resources I need are in small enough supply already. Folks... Are you prepared to force the world to lose unique and precious information just to make a quick few bucks for you and your buddies?
Have we forgotten that
Is this taxation without representation? And where would this trend stop?
It will never stop. Observing trends, taxation is increasing for long as past 4000 years. Next phase is Slashdot charging all Cowards $.03/year for keeping them Anonymous...
There you are, staring at me again.
The electric light
The telephone
The jetliner
The internal combustion engine
Yes, well, obviously those, but apart from that, what else have the Romans done for us?
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
shock site
With the dollar being as worthless as it is, I really could not care less about a $0.75 fee.
Please please PLEASE people, quote the part of the parent post to which you are responding, so that, even if it gets modded down, readers will still know what you're on about.
.dk domains cost 10$ per year to hold. This fee is mainly to prevent cyber squating. It works, and I think this is fair.
And perhaps if ICANN actually had some money to spend, they would have time to investigate issues like domain hijacking which is a rampant problem.
BTW don't mistake this for a hosting or dns fee. This is a fee paid directly to dk-hostmaster, just for owning the name.
This is an organization charging fees, not taxation. ICANN isn't the government. It can't tax you.
Likewise, the net isn't a place or a community, We have no more right to have representatives in ICANN than we do in AOL or Microsoft.
If you want a voice in how the net is governed, then let the government run it. You'll get to pay taces then.
People who use the net are gonna pay for it, one way or the other.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Heh, just in case someone see's this and goes "oooh" what a cool hosting company, check out their forums... every once and a while you'll find posts from people who can't access their accounts, and can't get any support... I was one of these people, and it literally took me 6 months to get them to stop charging me... at the very least, try calling their customer service line, more often then not, no one will answer, and when someone does, they wont do crap... try another company, try any other company... but fuitadnet sucks.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
I'd rather ICANN be responsible financially to domain name holders (me) than to nobody in particular.
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
Why .net and not any other suffix?
Indeed it is a slippery slope:
. ht m
./ because people will actually call it by name while they are using it as an argument.
http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/distract/ss
"The Slippery Slope" is a logical fallacy, not a valid argument. It's easy to spot on
"Right now it's $0.75, then it's $1.00, then it's $100, then it's you first born! This change will lead us to slavery!"
=Shreak
Um, you can't just "move" your domain. That would break every link on your Web site. It would break all of your email addresses.
Keeping your Web location constant over time is what domain names are for.
There has to be some sort of checks/balances against this sort of random price adjusting. We (the consumer) don't have any options in regards to alternate sources for .net, so we just have to suck it up.
Doesn't seem right to me..
This sounds similar to a solution I heard for returning stale copyrights to the public domain.
Charge a small yearly fee. If it doesn't get paid the domain returns to the pool. It would prevent domains from remaining out of circulation even though the original claimer has forgotten about it (or passed on...).
=Shreak
uh, fees are taxes no matter how you cut it. The "license fee" is a tax, registration "fees" for anything are taxes. they aren't called "taxes" because of the bad connotation that comes along with it.
The vote is private you tard
Did anyone else read that as $75?
Not that I like the thought of any tax on domain names, but I could live with $0.75 while I'd be mighty angry about $75.
Why not just go up on the price of a renewal? Why tack on an extra fee?
Do they have the ability to enforce this?
What a scam.
What was that story again about killing the golden goose out of greed....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well... If you had ungodly gigantic pipes and servers to throw around like you had hats made out of money, then why not create your own DNS servers.
Call it "the intarweb 2" or such like that except your DNS servers point to something else.
People wouldn't use their ISP's DNS but point to your DNS server's IP instead.
Yes it would be the "great internet divide schism of the 21st century" but you could a "secret" internet that pointed to totally different things than the "real" internet. You'd still have the ip address etc, and it would be a small group much like BBS were in the day...
But people are lazy and it would be more efficient to create a different protocol all together. Feh.
The internet had no such nonsense when it was all run by the US Government. Then Commerce decided to abdicate some responsibility and let an entity in Europe run it. Big mistake, we should have known better than to let Europe get involved. They have a lot to learn to catch up to our civilization.
Uh, no, you're wrong.
Taxes are levied by governments. ICANN is no government. Any fees they charge are no more a tax than the fee your ISP or your cable TV company charges.
You have a right to be taxed and governed by a government you elect. You have no right to elect the people that run the Internet or your ISP or your cable company, or your grocery, for that matter. You have a right to stop buying their products. If you don't want to pay 75 cents for a domain name, don't buy the domain name.
It isn't as if they charging you for something to which you're entitled.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Yeah, let's keep on supporting the UN too while we are at it. This is where your "Hate America" attitude gets you.
I'm not even sure the old, old $100+ fees would be a deterrent. 100 domains at $100 each is only $10,000 and while not a drop in the hat is trivial in many marketing campaigns.
Back when domain squatting/hoarding was considered more of a problem (especially by deep-pocketed corporations that wanted anagram-level control over every domain its trademarks could possibly spell), I thought that the best fee-deterrent solution was to charge an exponentially higher fee for each TLD registered by a corporation or each beyond some "everyman" threshold (like maybe 5).
This way even small organizations could have a few domains registered, but any organization, even a large one, would have to think twice before mass registering hundreds of domains, since the charges would quickly run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Geez people, there use to be the days of InterNIC charging 100$/year for a domain. this is nothing
Why do I get the feeling that the "C" in ICANN stands for "Cartel?"
Qtone
--We are Legion
What does this mean to users?
It means prices are coming down. This "tax" is on the registrar. Verisign gets $6 per domain right now for every domain in the .NET area that is sold. Currently, $0.25 of that goes to ICANN. With this change, $1.00 of that goes to ICANN.
This change impacts only whoever runs the root server. Who runs the root server? Verisign does, so since this directly impacts their profit (by lowering it on a per-domain basis), what do they have to say about it?
First of all, nobody reading this article pays the tax. The tax is paid by Verisign as part of their contract to provide the master databases for ICANN. Again this has absolutely no impact on anyone other than VeriSign, and they agreed to it when they renewed their contract with ICANN.
How is Verisign responding to this massive increase? By lowering the price that they charge to other registrars, such as Go Daddy, EasyDNS, etc., for the root level domains.
Now I left my tin foil hat at home, so you'll have to explain this to me. How, exactly, is ICANN taking Verisign's money bad for anyone reading this article? How exactly is Verisign lowering what they are charging other registrars per domain going to have anything other than a positive impact on the prices of the domains?
Look at the scathing comments about the change from the companies that actually will pay the increased fee:
Ouch! It sounds like Verisign really believes this increase will hurt its ability to make loads of money off of every domain sold. Listen to that scathing criticism of the plan, even as they are lowering what they are charging other domain name registrars per domain. I really feel bad for them, it sounds like they really don't want for this to happen.
Certainly we can find another biting criticism of the plan from the registrars themselves in the article:
Oh my god how overwhelmingly against Verisign being able to retain a lower cut per-domain. Can't you just feel the a
If your code is acting bloated, and is running rather slow, it's likely and predicted that some loops you will unroll.
Just register one domain: freedns.org and have it provide dns services like a root. Now you have a dns registry that anybody else can access as their.domain.freedns.org and people running a local proxy server (or patched glibc) access just like the normal DNS. It would only take a few days to get this working.
.75 cents total AND they've lost their control of the domain names AND you get rich.
... ?
Then ICANN only gets
1. Set up alternate DNS server network
2. Wait for people to start using it.
2. Randomly substitute ad sites for real address lookups
3.
4. PROFIT!!!
I, Hier(anon)onymus Coward, patent this idea.
And copyright it.
Great... how long until Comca$t(.NET) decides to pass on that $.75/year to its customers in the form of yet another monthly rate hike?
Whaddya think it'll be? A ".net convenience fee" to the tune of $4.99, $9.99, $14.99?
GEEZ!!!
75 cents a year?!
I better start digging under my couch cushions. Looks like my dreams of owning a domain are evaporating right before my eyes.
http://24.125.12.101/meta.html
.tv and .fm are also in your "mismanaged country TLD" category - all the two-character TLDs are country code TLDs. .tv is Tuvalu, and .fm the Federation of Micronesia, if I recall correctly (both in the Pacific Ocean). Both have signed over their domains to third parties for marketing (definately Tuvalu, not 100% sure about Micronesia).
BFS - Boiling Frog Syndrome
Throw a frog into a pot of boiling water and he'll jump out but throw him in warm water, slowly turn up the heat and he'll boil to death.
If ICANN starts by charging a larger fee then the $1 extra already introduced then people will take action. If ICANN slowly increases the fees by a few cents here and there every year, most people will shut up and pay (or boil to death).
BFS - Bullshit Fees for a Service.
Geez.. I love it, selling product doesn't make money anymore.. just introduce something with montly service charges or something you can tax the crap out of. Those are the real money makers, services that don't increase in value but the cost is always rising! Who says you can't run a MONOPOLY?
As a offtopic post I like mentioning. If someone can't elect the gov't that does that mean it they have the right to not be taxed at all?
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
I doubt that. You would probably still have a site - it would just have an impossibly long URL like http://someservername.yourisp.com/~yourusername/yo urdirectory
Having a domain name is convinient and makes it easier to refer people to your site, and makes your email address catchier, but it's not necessary to have a website.
I have blog like everyone else
nt
What's the motivation for only charging .net? Why that one (first) ?
It took me a while to figure out the real reason they're going after the .net domain. It is not just b/c the contract up for renewal.
If you hop on over to OpenNICYou'll see that all of their important domains also have a .net domain in case you're not using one of their servers yet. Now will the folks at OpenNIC have the resources to renew all of their domains with this extra fee? At the very least it will drain their resources off. ICANN is doing this to kill off any competition.
ICANN must be stopped!
No, I can be taxed and goverend by people who I don't elect, and often are even in a so-called democracy like the USA.
In this case, ICANN pretends to represent the ordinary internet users, and was chartered by the U.S. Department of Commerce to handle in a non-biased manner disputes over governance of the Internet. And this is governance, not just simply a company that you are buying a service from. Just who else is going to control the issuance of IP numbers and domain addresses? Is there an alternative that you know of?
And ICANN is trying to expand their power and authority over the internet in even more ways than simply this limited set of domains. In addition, they have at least over what they do control full legislative, executive, and even judicial control over internet governance. If you have a dispute over an internet domain, you go to ICANN, and they are the final authority over who gets the domain. You can't even appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
And yes, I am entitled to have fair access to community resources. And I should expect that these community resources, like frequency allocation for radio communications or port access for loading and unloading cargo, are in the realm of government authority. Allocation of IP addresses is no different. This is a scarace resource that needs regulation and ICANN is that body who does this.
In the case of ICANN, I even elected a reasonable representative, and frankly I think he did a damn good job representing my interests. His name was Karl Arbauch, and as far as I'm concerned he is still my representative at ICANN even if ICANN no longer recognizes his position as a member of their board. How ICANN removed elected representatives from their board speaks volumes over what they think of us poor schmucks who depend on using the internet on a day to day basis.
While I don't have the right to elect the people that run my ISP, I do have the right to set up my own ISP if I think my current ISP is full of BS. I can't set up an alternative to ICANN because it is a government-granted monopoly to internet governance. If I tried to set up my own "internetwork of computing devices", I could actually go to jail for even trying. I don't consider that to be something that is reasonable nor fair.
So in short, this is taxation without represntation, and ICANN needs to be eliminated. Hopefully I can convince elected government authorities that this is the case and be able to stop it.
time to create our own internet or do away with domain names entirely. so.. slashdot.org becomes 66.35.250.150 :).. How about a boycott? start using numbers instead of the names.... ;) With google nowadays you d on't even "need" the domain name.. you just search for what you're looking for, and the domain name is practically irrelevant.. get what you want and be on your merry way.
:D