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."

Comments

ICANN is a disaster.

[bigtallmofo]

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?

The nature of the spirit of name restritctions

[gihan_ripper]

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.

Give it a few years

[jfried]

Even now, people hardly remember domain names. They use google to find it because its easier that way.

Give it a few years an people will be asking you, whats your google search string?

But anyways its .pro, Frankly this is the first time I have heard about it. I dont think anyone will shed a tear for them.

Re:Isn't .com enough? One domain ..

[ites]

Indeed, .com would be enough since trademarks mean anyone with a .com will try to get .net and .org as well.

So, if everyone was under .com, you could just remove .com and get the same result - more or less what I am proposing.

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. .tv, .to, etc.

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.

Re:.pro?

[pklong]

Google is your friend as ever. Looks like nothing worthwhile is on .pro anyway...

Isn't the 'sprit of internet naming'...

[Andy_R]

...simply "let's get rich quick"?

I'll believe otherwise when .tv sites start being about the island of Tuvalu.

Here in the uk, (where .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.

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 .uk.com