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ICANN Officially Approves .jobs and .travel TLD's
EyeMyke writes "As reported on News.com, ICANN has approved the .jobs and .travel domains, and is pending decision on .asia, .mail, .tel, and .xxx. One has to ask 'Will these new domains actually prove useful, or is ICANN just avoiding the real issues confronting them in regards to regulating domain registration?'" We've covered both of these domains before, but it would seem they are even more-approved now, or at least the process is important enough to warrant an official announcement from ICANN.
Does anybody really use their last lot of domains, such as .info and .coop? I very, very rarely see either getting any use, to be honest.
TLDs should not be restricted in this way. It creates an artificial shortage which simply acts as a tax. Is there any technical reason why TLDs cannot be created by anyone with the capability?
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Clearly, monster.jobs is required, because monster.com has had such a low hit rate. And I suppose a few others. So we've created a top level domain for about 4 or 5 sites total.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Two reasons I think these new domains won't make a huge impact. ;) .COM is largely seen as the sole TLD around which the web is based. .mail, .asia and .xxx etc become available, people with .com domains would be seen as old timers in the field. I remember icann also approved of .pro. How many people do you know who actually use .pro? These extra TLD's are just another way of generating revenue for registrars. People who couldn't get sex.com and gave up on other names will want to grab sex.xxx in the future. Thats when google will be come a heavyweight in domain registration....
First because people can spell whitehouse.com better than whitehouse.xxx, due to the O
Second,
When
To make an analogy (uh oh) I probably should've made above, retroactively creating a .xxx is like trying to ban guns in a country that already has millions upon millions of guns already in circulation. It'll never work.
I see .biz/.info in spam all the time.
Oh damn, I've depressed myself.
Easy blacklisting, for school and library filters. Also, for scrupulous porn sites, it's good marketing.
Let's say hustler.com simply becamed a redirect to huster.xxx. Any school/library filter would instantly know it's a no-no site, without having some schlub at the filter company check to see if its about tricking people on the basketball court.
For various reasons, FORCING sites onto the xxx tld would be a bad thing - you'd have to put someone in charge of deciding what's pornographic, or adult, and that's a dangerous distinction to let any one group/person make. But the domain would be a great place for the sites that clearly acknowledge they're adult in nature -- after all, you'd know where to find them. It would be good marketing.
For the seedy sites that try to fool you into visiting them, or that pretend to be one thing when they're really another, this doesn't do much.
It's always annoyed me how companies must register two or three domains, to pull in the users that only know .com. If you are a .org (like Slashdot) it's best to register a .com as well, so lost visitors get to your site that way as well; if you're a .co.uk (like the BBC) you also need a .com for the same reason. It shows that the TLD idea wasn't thought through, or was designed to make people register many domains, generating loads of money (not best for the end-user).
.jobs domain. But not many people have heard of .jobs, so it has to get a .com as well. But why do we need these - what's wrong with 'http://monster' by itself? It should go to the main monster jobs page. If I wanted country-specific sites, I would go to the monster.co.uk or monster.de subdivisions. Categorising things by their status just confuses things.
Citing monster.com as an example again: it is a jobs site, so it should get a
I shouldn't care whether the site I want is a network, a company, or a non-profit organisation; usually I just want to get to the site.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
At this point the tld does not make any sense anymore. Sites are (were) classified in 2 big categories:
.de, .au, .uk, etc..) .com, .net, .edu)
.com, .org, .net identified Commercial sites, Organization sites (usually non-profit), .net i really never understood and .edu represent educational institues. So the .info was missing (but is largely unused) and they added it. Now .travel, .jobs etc are just confusing. How do i distinguish a travel agency from a informational site on travels from the TLD if they have the same TLD? This put in the same category completely different sites. I really thing the travel agency should be .com and the info site should be .info. Also .biz for me is a misterious entity because it could be interpreted as .com.
.info in my mind. Or .dupes, but that is another story.
- By language (.it,
- By kind (and assumed language was english (.org,
The first category is ok and works well. But then we come to the second. Having these 4 original category:
So why can't people just use the 2nd level domain to describe who they are? The TLD is already composed of enough entries to distinguish the category.
Slashdot should be
Below is one of several posts I made on Domain Name Policy List back in 2000 and to the Public Comment Forum regarding New TLD Applications.
.SEX, .XXX, .KIDS TLDs Restrict Freedom of Speech
.SEX & .XXX TLDs:
.SEX and .XXX seem well intentioned as a way of partitioning off adult oriented materials from minors, etc.
.SEX and .XXX only.
.SEX and .XXX will probably result in ICANN dictating content too.
.KIDS TLD:
.KIDS too...
.KIDS will probably result in ICANN dictating content too.
.SEX, .XXX, and .KIDS TLDs are well intentioned, all three of these TLDs are all primarily intended to *restrict* content as opposed to merely categorizing it. It's very important to keep this distinction in mind when considering new .TLDs.
.SEX, .XXX, and .KIDS TLDs would do and thus they should *not* be added.
--------
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 23:52:50 -0400
Sender: Owner-Domain-Policy
From: Ron Bennett
Subject: [ICANN COMMENT]
To: DOMAIN-POLICY@LISTS.NETSOL.COM
First the problems with the proposed
The proposed TLDs
But how does one exactly define adult oriented materials? -especially considering the internet is an international medium. What is considered adult oriented here in the United States isn't elsewhere and vice-versa.
And what happens when ICANN or whoever decides to go the next step and restricts adult oriented materials to *only* certain TLDs - for example
And how would such content restrictions be enforced?
In the end TLDs such as
In regards to problems with the proposed
Many of the same points above apply to
How does one exactly define kid oriented materials? -especially considering the internet is an international medium. What is considered adult oriented here in the United States isn't elsewhere and vice-versa. For example, nudity in many parts of the world such as parts of Europe and Japan is not considered harmful to children. On the other hand, violence aimed at children is widely tolerated in the United States, but not content containing nudity.
And how would such content restrictions be enforced?
And as I said above, in the end TLDs such as
TLDs should be used to better categorize content, but not to restrict it. While
Bottom line is that TLDs should be for categorizing content, not restricting content which is what the proposed
Ron Bennett
bennett@wyomissing.com
--------
More posts and comments by others involved in domain name policy regarding these issues:
http://www.circleid.com/article/530_0_1_0_C/
While I applaud the .xxx TLD simply because I'm a male, I'm not sure it's going to help resolve any namespace conflicts. After all, one of the main reasons for adding new TLDs is because the old ones are getting too crowded (the other reason for this one being easy filtering). But the thing is, girlswithhorses.com is probably going to be just as pornographic as girlswithhorses.xxx. Can anyone actually think of a case (besides spoof sites like whitehouse.xxx or motel6.xxx that ride their .com counterparts' coattails) where this is going to resolve anything?
(Personally, I almost never care where a domain is hosted, because I use Google to search for my "bookmarks" and rarely type-in domain URLs manually. The new TLDs are just a limited opportunity for registrars to print new money, IMO.)
Power to the Peaceful
They're usually on spams. You know, the kind that wants you to think that citicorp.biz is the Citicorp web site and therefore you should give them your password and credit card. (As far as I can tell there is no citicorp.biz, actually, but you get the idea.)
.com name but some local consultant thought that FooCorp would be a cool name. Not fraudulent, but just a latecomer.
.biz web site if I can help it, and if dice.com and hotjobs.com want to open dice.jobs and hot.jobs, go ahead, but when I need to I'll go through the dot-com domain.
Actually, I see it most often on business cards from extremely small businesses. The kind where FooCorp has taken the
Like another poster said, I never give personal info to a
You can usually tell from a domain name if you should be loading the url or not
whitehouse.org
nice-tits.org
Both not really the sites you might expect
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I think these days, with increasing conservatism in the US, it is better to segregate the porn into its own zone. This way, schools, etc. in the red states could block all the content they don't want with a simple filter. Parents could also set up their home computers to block out the xxx content.
This would be just like the local sex shops in many places: no windows and isolated or gathered in their own seedy and defined district. Everyone who wants those products and services can get them freely but the businesses at the same time don't offend the morally conscious in the community.
For this reason, the right wing type won't be encouraged to press their congressmen to pass laws that will shut down the industry completely. Remember, we've got about 50 or 60 years of increasingly right wing government ahead of us.
As for the borderline sites, well, the admins would be best to admit they're selling sex and go with xxx and not risk the wrath of the Feds. All it takes is one underage model accidently pictured along with thousands of of age models and the site owners will wind up in jail for child porn. Even the suspicion of an underage pic or two would bankrupt them in court proving otherwise and the accusation would utterly destroy the individuals' reputation in society, even if proven false in the end.
As for foreign sites, they'd wind up switching to xxx over time also. Although US law doesn't apply, all it takes is a quiet call from the US Ambassador in some poor country to the President, Prime Minister, etc. mentioning displeasure over the not xxx porn and how their foreign aid tranche seems to be stuck in Congress for some reason
For richer countries, there's always some trade benefit, local terrorist group whose US assets the locals want seized, dissident who shouldn't be let in to the US to speak at the UN or gather money, etc. well worth breaking the heads of a few grotty pornographers who don't want to understand that
But what is your definition of pornography? is it going to be the same as Howard Stern's definition of pornography? is it going to be the same as the Relgious Right's definition? A lot of legitimate art contains nudity, or representations thereof - should art galleries be forced into the .xxx category? What about plastic surgery clinic websites with 'before' and 'after' pictures of things such as breast enlargement?
.xxx domain (it would sure make managing the blocklist for the average large UK college easier, *ahem*), but there is a lot of overlap and disagreement over what constitutes 'pornography' or 'objectionable content', and I don't think one organization or committee should be handed that much power, especially with the way the Religious Right controls much of the power in America.
.xxx bandwagon - hardcore pornography needs to be kept away from kids, but a dedicated TLD for 'objectional content' is the first step on a very slippery slope.
Sure, filtering out hardcore pornography would be made a lot easier if all sites were forced to use the
I'm personally of the opinion that the only person capable of making a judgement about what your kids can and can't see is you, and handing the power to do so over to a government committee is just letting the government raise your children for you, which would be a sad, sad day for parenthood. Just look at the furore Janet Jackson's nipple-slip caused amongst the Religious Right, who found it perfectly alright to proudly show 'shock and awe' footage of cities being devastated on prime-time TV - are these the people you want dictating what's right and wrong for your children to see? I consider the desensitizing effect of proudly showing off the devastation of enemies at war far more damaging to young minds than the odd celebrity nipple-slip
A lot of people in the world have a seriously messed-up system of morals, and they've already got far too much power - don't jump on the
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I am absolutely appalled at this decision to create more TLDs. Not only will they create more confusion for the end user, but they will also make it much more expensive for companies to secure their name on the Internet. Why should I have to buy 10 domains with different TLDs to make sure that nobody will try and rip off my company's name online? Anyhow... how many sites do you actually *trust* with a .info domain? Most of them appear to be stupid advertisement link sites. There is no reason that we need any more than the basic TLDs we've always had... .com, .net, .org, .edu. .gov and of course the country domains (.uk, .nz, etc).
It seems to me as though ICANN is being motivated to do this for unethical reasons. I can only hope that the community will understand how stupid this is and fight back.
It only seems to do that on domains that are entered by hand. It didn't do that when clicking on the URL that you posted.
The really sneaky thing is that whenever a .jobs server goes down or there's a typo, Monster will get the traffic instead, and will no warning (in Firefox) to the user.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I don't know about you, but I find myself typing a lot less URL's these days. Google gets used a lot. Firefox makes the address bar an I'm-feeling-lucky search if it can't resolve it, so you dont have to worry about monster.com/.jobs/.net/.porn you simply just say "monster jobs" and it goes there.