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.

Comments

I can't believe they added .jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does steve.jobs need a whole TLD? That man sure has an ego!

Re:I can't believe they added .jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry - .nojobs is coming out shortly, they are just looking for somewhere to outsource it to.

Are these really useful?

[BluhDeBluh]

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.

Re:Are these really useful?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

The address of the New York Subway system (also called the MTA) is www.mta.info.

John.

Re:Are these really useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but I think we ought to add some extra TLDs to make things clear: .spware .scam .ripoff

etc.

And for ICANN, .kerching

Names

[DarkHelmet]

I for one can't wait until they approve .xxx. Here are a list of names I would snag up, both xxx and otherwise.

1. whitehouse.xxx (It would of course refer to clinton as president... it HAS to)
2. britneyspears.xxx (Imagine the hits you could get to a site like this)
3. g.mail (nuff said)
4. euthan.asia
5. steve.jobs
6. michaeljackson.xxx (Because I want the FBI at my door)

Not enough

[ites]

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?

Re:Not enough

[way2trivial]

and indeed, research public dns servers some time.

you'll find there are MANY alternate tld schemes, including one which was using .biz- and that got destroyed by icann..

http://support.open-rsc.org/.servers/
You can freely use any of these servers instead of your ISP's nameservers if you want to be able to see ALL the domain names on the net, not just the ones in the US Government controlled nameservers. You will, of course be able to see all the "old" domain names like .com, but you'll also be able to see all the ORSC new top level domains, too. If you need instructions on how to use these please see
for one example.

I'm thinking...

[ImaLamer]

blow.jobs
hand.jobs
head.jobs


Wait, let me get my credit card number.

.xxx is potentially bad news.

[\\]

I don't really understand the point of a .xxx tld. You can usually tell from a domain name if you should be loading the url or not, it isn't like everything will be forced to use .xxx once the new tld exists.. unless..

If the point of .xxx is to force adult web sites into using it, how long until adult sites are sued into the ground for using other tlds? What if I'm running a french or italian language site with occasional boobies on it on a .com tld, would some tool force me onto a .xxx? Or even a .uk site?

Blarg. .xxx is perhaps more stupid than the entire artificial tld scarcity bit.

Re:.xxx is potentially bad news.

[ImaLamer]

If the point of .xxx is to force adult web sites into using it, how long until adult sites are sued into the ground for using other tlds? What if I'm running a french or italian language site with occasional boobies on it on a .com tld, would some tool force me onto a .xxx? Or even a .uk site?

Maybe the first step is to just create the xxx domain.

What I'd do (if I was ICANN or whomever):

* Create the xxx tld and then take a select bunch of dictionary words and sell them to pr0n friendly bandwidth/hosting providers.
* Make them the official registratrs for "free.xxx", "anal.xxx" or whatever.
* This creates more imaginative and available pr0n namespace (pr0n is always going to be number one)
* Allow ISP's or OS vendors to block xxx domain
* Stop accepting pr0n sites for .com, .net, .org, (and .edu and .mil)
** Don't get into censorship, unspoken agreement.
* Allow pr0n marketing on other tld's...
** Direct community of pr0n content producers to use the xxx tld when the content is obscene
** Example: playboy.tv is a site about the channel, but it doesn't have nude content. When you want nude you click into xxx tld, unless your parents blocked it.
** Example (2): Playboy.com is a portal to all xxx tlds but contains magazine content; all images are hosted on a xxx tld.
* Only send form letters to .com owners when enough people vote for it or something...

I think we can solve the "censorship" problem a lot easier that way. Make it transparent to content producers who want to go wild and they will adopt it fast, and that is all it takes. Build the porn, they will come (no pun intended).

Some say this approach will cause it to become USENET 2010, but I say that depends on content producers. If they want to create pointy.boobies.bobs.image.xxx let them - but they will learn right away that won't work.

Re:.xxx is potentially bad news.

[houghi]

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

It's not a dupe!

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

"We've covered both of these domains before, but it would seem they are even more-approved now"

Whoah, back off people he's just applied a +4 magical dupe shield. Now we can't use our 4th level 'Cry of dupe' scroll.

Can we have a .dot, too while you're at it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would greatly improve slashdot's domain.

http://slashdot.dot sounds great. Like morse code or something.

Re:Can we have a .dot, too while you're at it?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be http://slash.dot, you insensitive clod!

No no no

[Anonymous Coward]

What we REALLY need is a .blog and force them all onto it so we can exclude them from search results.

Plus it'd be really easy for goverments to censor them all in one fell swoop! :)

TLDs should be optional

[tehshen]

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).

Citing monster.com as an example again: it is a jobs site, so it should get a .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.

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.

Re:TLDs should be optional

[Tom]

It shows that the TLD idea wasn't thought through, or was designed to make people register many domains, generating loads of money

No, it shows that the TLD idea is from a time when net users were expected to have minimum tech knowledge. Once AOL entered the picture, the idea became too complicated for the average luser and broke down.

At this point...

[brainnolo]

At this point the tld does not make any sense anymore. Sites are (were) classified in 2 big categories:

- By language (.it, .de, .au, .uk, etc..)
- By kind (and assumed language was english (.org, .com, .net, .edu)

The first category is ok and works well. But then we come to the second. Having these 4 original category: .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.

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 .info in my mind. Or .dupes, but that is another story.

Re:At this point...

[Adelbert]

At this point the tld does not make any sense anymore. Sites are (were) classified in 2 big categories: - By language (.it, .de, .au, .uk, etc..)

What language do they speak in .au (Australia) and .uk (the UK) then?

Originally, non-international websites were meant to use their own countries (correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a .us?). However, more and more companies, organisations and people just go for .com, .org, .net or whatever.

Its not even consistent between countries. In Australia, they have .com.au, but the British equivalent is .co.uk.

Now, with the introduction of .jobs and .travel, the whole thing is becoming more and more confusing.

I'm still waiting for .spam, .l337~h4XX0r and .mockedupimitationusedforphishingscams

Re:Monster.jobs?

[Just Some Guy]

You've nailed it exactly. Supposedly, each company will want to rush out to register example.jobs in addition to example.com, but that's just dumb. What's so hard about www.example.com/jobs, or jobs.example.com for that matter?

I can't imagine a big push by webmasters to move their visitors off their primary websites onto another domain. They'd suddenly have a pack of extra issues to deal with, like realizing that their current authentication cookies that are set for .example.com won't carry across to their new site.

I can almost see the utility in adding a small set of additional TLDs (as opposed to opening the TLDs and being done with it), but the ones they pick are invariably stupid special-interest projects that maybe 15 people will use. I could understand one for, say, .rest for the millions of restaurants out there. Why they labor and strive to bring us .giantballofstring is beyond me.

.SEX, .XXX, .KIDS Restrict Freedom of Speech

[Ron Bennett]

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.

--------

Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 23:52:50 -0400
Sender: Owner-Domain-Policy
From: Ron Bennett
Subject: [ICANN COMMENT] .SEX, .XXX, .KIDS TLDs Restrict Freedom of Speech
To: DOMAIN-POLICY@LISTS.NETSOL.COM

First the problems with the proposed .SEX & .XXX TLDs:

The proposed TLDs .SEX and .XXX seem well intentioned as a way of partitioning off adult oriented materials from minors, etc.

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 .SEX and .XXX only.

And how would such content restrictions be enforced?

In the end TLDs such as .SEX and .XXX will probably result in ICANN dictating content too.

In regards to problems with the proposed .KIDS TLD:

Many of the same points above apply to .KIDS too...

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 .KIDS will probably result in ICANN dictating content too.

TLDs should be used to better categorize content, but not to restrict it. While .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.

Bottom line is that TLDs should be for categorizing content, not restricting content which is what the proposed .SEX, .XXX, and .KIDS TLDs would do and thus they should *not* be added.

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/

Re:www.jobs

[AndroidCat]

Firefox is playing silly buggers behind your back. When www.jobs doesn't answer (try ping), Firefox adds .com and tries again. www.jobs.com is owned by Monster. Firefox should update the URL you typed in to let you know that it fixed it for you. (Can't remember what IE does.)

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.