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Loophole found in Internet Domain Naming
kyndig writes "Just what is the 'spirit of internet naming?' ICANN can tell you, as they are the naming experts. In a recent CNN article, ICANN states EnCirca Domain Register is violating the spirit of internet naming by reselling .pro names.
The report states that in early 2000, ICANN allowed 3rd level domains (foo.bar.pro) to be sold. Later, ICANN allowed 2nd level domains (foo.pro) to be sold for .pro as well. The restriction to this selling was that a user must have the 3rd level domain first. There are no reseller checks or usage enforcement other than the request to own a 3rd level domain from ICANN. EnCirca president plans to continue reselling 2nd level .pro domains, unless ICANN places a restriction on doing so."
Nothing they do makes sense to me. It seems like they're just creating new TLDs willy-nilly and giving control of them to new companies apparently without the ability to enforce any of the controls they've created. What exactly is the purpose of all these new TLDs?
I'm a big tall mofo.
An honest question here --- could someone please explain to me why the action of EnCirca is in transgression of the "spirit of name restrictions"?
I don't see the problem myself, and would be grateful if someone could explain the situation.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
Even now, people hardly remember domain names. They use google to find it because its easier that way.
.pro, Frankly this is the first time I have heard about it. I dont think anyone will shed a tear for them.
Give it a few years an people will be asking you, whats your google search string?
But anyways its
I thought the third level was essentially handled at the web server, is that not true? So, if you had foo.pro, you could set a link that went to bar.foo.pro, or make your webserver serve bar.foo.pro or whatever, but routers would always send requests to *.foo.pro to your IP address and let you work it out from there. Is that not the case?
A modern day witchhunt.
Indeed, .com would be enough since trademarks mean anyone with a .com will try to get .net and .org as well.
.com, you could just remove .com and get the same result - more or less what I am proposing.
.tv, .to, etc.
So, if everyone was under
The current system just translates into lots and lots of registration fees.
Take any business that operates in many countries. It is ridiculous for it to have to get domain names businessname.countryname. No-one wants to categorise companies or organisations per country.
What it should be able to do is get countryname.businessname. Thus, we'd see names like "uk.itunes' instead of 'itunes.co.uk' (which incidentally was snapped up by a bright young thing before Apple could get it).
The concept of national domains is anarchaic, and irrelevant. It's a totally useless concept and every popular country domain is one that is abused - e.g.
Trademarks are entirely compatible with a freer scheme. Imagine two companies share the same name but operate in different markets. Easy - if you have a trademark, you are entitled to request a 2nd-level domain matching your name. I.e. two businesses with the same name, in different sectors, can share a TLD, with one or other acting as registrar for the other. The ICANN can be kept for arbitrage.
We'd see the end of cyberquatting, stupid disputes, and fat fees for registrars just because one has to register an endless list of domains just to get adequate protection for a trademarked name.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Where is the value over a .com? I say, more power to them if they can convince "professional" organizations to pony up the cash.
I see that some sites offering .pro domains mention an expensive vetting process to determine the authenticity of the registering party. I have to ask, "why?" Where is the value to the end user or to the registering party?
There certianly isn't any value for me (as a professional or as a user) and I imagine these "rules" will be relaxed as some point where .pro will be just another .info or .biz - a TLD I never bother to check for availability when I register a domain.
Google is your friend as ever. Looks like nothing worthwhile is on .pro anyway...
Philip
Signatures are broken
The only TLD that even makes sense to add at this point is to add .phd, .mba,etc. for accredited university graduates. And where the hell is the .adult or .sex to pass off all the adult sites onto? You could just require that adult content has a .adult extension and then censor the hell out of .com, and no one could really complain, since free speech would still abound over at .adult, or whatever.
stuff |
...simply "let's get rich quick"?
.tv sites start being about the island of Tuvalu.
.co.uk is the normal domain for businesses) we've suffered years and years of the company that owns the (supposedly invalid according to ICANN's rules uk.com domain selling worthless 3rd level domains to people, who unsurprisingly find lots their traffic going to the 'co.uk' with the same name.
.uk.com
I'll believe otherwise when
Here in the uk, (where
99% of my spam comes from people who work for foo.uk.com (where foo is my company's domain) who sign up for junk and get their own address wrong. ICANN doesn't want to know about this flagrant abuse of the system, presumably because there is no financial gain to be had by closing down
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I hate calls like that. Invariably, you ask them what they are typing, and they tell you "www.example.org". Then you ask them to tell you exactly what letters and buttons they press. They tell you "w w w . e x a m p l e . o r g and enter".
You finally end up going to see them, and yep, they are typing "www.example.org.com". And when you ask them to tell you exactly what they are doing, they don't read out the ".com" even though you can plainly see they are typing it.
It's a similar retardation to whatever makes people say "an error message" when you ask them what's on the screen, no matter how many times you ask them to read out what the error message says, they always reply "something about an error", and you have to repeat exactly the same question five times before they understand that you want them to read out the error message.
Imagine if people did that with cars.
"It doesn't work."
"Does the engine start?"
"It doesn't work."
"Do any lights on the dashboard light up?"
"It doesn't work."
"Does it make any funny sounds?"
"It doesn't work."
Finally, you figure out they left the keys in the house and can't open the door.
I wouldn't call this a loophole. ICANN is in the business of generating revenue. If they stop these guys from letting them register domains then they're just stepping on their own airhose.
On the matter of artificial scarcity in the DNS, you may find my "Cornucopia" idea interesting. It's in the category of crazy ideas that ought to be considered, even if only to break people out of an established mindset. (Also at my site.) The basic premiss of the idea: "What if every domain name you wanted was available?"
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.