Slashdot Mirror
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."
Well, i've asked the same question. The simple answer is that bar doesn't make any sense alone. foo.bar is the only way to complete a thought.
.pro domain anyway?
Why does this stuff get posted? There is no opinion on this, nobody mentioned that ICANN generally sucks, and who wants a
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
The problem is that nobody seems to care about what ICANN has to say. Which is a shame. But I mean really, ICANN isn't going to be able to fight a corporation so they should probably quit with these little nitpicking events they have, as they always wind up to be a waste of bandwidth and nothing more.
I normally don't agree with ICANN's position on many things but it seems to me that they could be taking the right stance on this. I'm not sure I would prefer tighter restrictions on domain names and TLDs but wouldn't it be nice if everyone stuck to a consistent naming convention? Imagine something a lot like what we have with newsgroups.
Bah, who needs DNS anyway? Real hackers memorize IP addresses! All you need to know is 216.239.57.99, really.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
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.
I wonder how useful all these extra tlds are. I've worked on a helpdesk for a .org and a .edu, and one of the REALLY common problems we get is a call from users complaining they can't get on. Invariably, they're typing "www.foo.edu.com" or "www.foo.org.com".
I bet there's a lot of "why can't I get to lawyer.pro.com??" going on.
Am I the only one who's never seen a .pro domain? .pro domain.
There's one cool thing about this TLD. You have to provide proof of your profession to buy such a domain. Now that's probably the reason why I've never seen a spam advertising a
Underholdning.info
As so often, a bunch of administrators have decided that they need to regulate the market, but are driven more by self-interest (justifying their jobs) than by interest in supporting a free market.
It's Parkinson's Law: bureaucrats expand their work to fill their budgets. It's why half of my country's GDP goes to pay for civil servants.
In the case of internet domains the only satisfactory long term solution is to allow any company to register a top level domain, with some rules to avoid abuse, and then to allow a free market for reselling, giving, using sub domains.
Since the market has been restricted for so long, there should be a period in which existing domain holders and trademark holders can get "their" names without excessive conflict.
All the rest - the "official registrars", the annual fees, the ICANN and their rules - it's just a tax on using the Internet for building interesting communications structures.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
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
Can .pron be far?
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
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.
There is no "Loophole found in Internet Domain Naming" as the headline says. The loophole lies in the Policy for a certain TLD. It has nothing to do with internet domain naming.
I think that the point is, they wanted the 2nd level to be a generic description of what type of professional service the business provides.
*shrug*
does it really matter?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I like your plan to have more top level domains, but it is ultimately pointless to have more, since trademarks make it hard to register similar domains under different toplevels anyway.
.com is enough, although I admit it is nice to have separate TLDs for nations and non-profits.
Therefore,
One domain to rule them
One domain to bind them
One domain to bring them all
And in the darkness find them
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
The purpose of all the new TLDs is "To allow domain registrars to make more money."
.com domain, rather than having a virtual directory under the domain of the publisher - e.g. paramount.com/drecky_summer_movie/
.biz - after all, I know that when I see a .biz domain I feel great trust for the domain holder, as we all know that .biz mean business, and that anybody with a .biz must therefor be trustworthy!
That is why every little movie simply must have its own
That is why Joe's garage on the corner down the street must have JoesGarage.com, or at least JoesGarageAtFifthAndMain.com, rather than joesgarage.ict.ks.us.
Domains get cheaper the further down the heirarchy they get - domain registrars cannot charge as much for *.lawyers.com as they can for *.com.
Unlike physical items like land or gold, new TLDs can be created ad infinitum, so the registrars "figger" (they don't "figure" or "reason" or "think" - that is beyond them) they can get ICANN to keep creating new TLDs and they can continue to make the same amount of money forever.
Of course, that has worked out so spectactularly well in the case of
.
.
.
.
Excuse me, I had to replace the sarcasm fuse in my keyboard.
www.eFax.com are spammers
The .pro domain was specifically stated to be created for 'professionals' - doctors, lawyers - basically jobs you would have recognized as professionals in 1950, it's not just ANY professional that could get a .pro!
.pro for anyone who has the cash. Personally I wouldn't see that as a problem, but the fact of the matter is it was originally intended to be established, checked, professionals.
.com - maybe the net and org - and are done with it. A few of the niche markets get their .tv for example (oh the irony), but that's recognizable - and they're pimping their URL at you constantly while you watch. I could understand a .law for lawyers and the likes, but .pro is just too generic.
The problem is they're not doing any checking, they're just opening up the
I suppose the real point was to say "these people have been checked and have shown they are professional, so you can trust them - at some level - with your information". Basically a free 'level of trust', similar to a SSL cert.
The problem is, amongst other things, nobody would goddamned well know that. Joe schmoe is going to put more trust in law.com than law.pro - "what the hell is pro".
Most people just go out there and get their
IMO - the concept has failed, and was a bad assumption to begin with. If you're going to be branching out more and more domains, trying to bring in the big bucks, make them really friggin specific so they're useful.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
It shall simply be for .
.XXX, everyone assumes ".com" .com
Yeah, you heard me... '.'
So you can register whatever you want with my new tld... Say you want... hmmm "slashdotbitesass"
that'd be your new tld!
origin slashdotbitesass.
10.10.10.10 A www
woot!
Seriously, why the hell even go through all the trouble for new TLDs. With the possible exception of the utility of
when you say a domain name. Even if you say ".net" they try
It's sheer madness!
Well, this movie has had a TLD for years
This removes a single point of failure from the domain name system - every single root domain server can fail, and most people will only notice when they enter a TLD which doesn't exist (at which point they will get a DNS failure instead of an nonexistend domain error). Similarly, if the .com servers failed, then you would still be able to access .org domains (for example).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Too late to cry about that now. That went out the window the first time a non-commercial entity bought a .com domain...
...I was reviewing the server logs of one of our clients and people were searching in google/yahoo/msn/ask jeeves for the entire domain name, i.e. siteurl.com.
Even when people remember domain names some of them obviously don't know what to do with them (a stupidly large number of people I've met don't know what to do with the address bar and go to pages they regularly visit by typing the name in google, which is set as their homepage (somehow)).
I am NaN
Let's say you've got two individuals named John Dow. One's an IP lawyer, and one's a brain surgeon. Both of them have accrued enough fame in their circles that if you were to ask a lawyer and a brain surgeon who Jon Dow was, they'd both immediately have answers, but those answers were different.
However, only one of them could get "johndow.com", leaving the other out in the cold in terms of easy-to-remember domain names. If one were to have "johndow.md.pro" and the other were to have "johndow.law.pro", it would be fairly clear which site was for who, and the domains would be easy to remember.
I guess it simply never caught on.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Yes, but oldest.pro is still available :-)
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.
Ok, the way I understood the article was that you had to own foo.bar.pro before you could get foo.pro. This is operating under the assumption that the type of professional is "bar" and the user is "foo", hence foo.bar.pro. bar.pro is owned by the registrar and can't be bought by an individual, as it is the "class" of profession.
'Course, I could be totally of track. Most of what the ICANN does is so confusing and nonsensical that I'm surprised they even understand it (and I've yet to see proof that they do, so that's open to debate).
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 |
I'm waiting for .scam to come out so I know who NOT to trust...I mean, we have .biz for businesses we "trust" and .pro now for certified "professionals"...
Reading at high threshold levels is group-think.
maybe if it was .pron...
...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
Actually, I think I know what they are trying to say but it did take me a while to parse it...
.pro. Now they allow you to own 2nd level names that match your 3rd level name.
Originally you could only buy 3rd level names under
So, if you own JohnDoe.lawyer.pro you can also buy JohnDoe.pro. But you still can't buy lawyer.pro since that is a profession name and is controlled by the registrar.
The reason Joe's Garage needs www.joesgarage.com rather than joesgarage.ict.ks.us is because it seems more professional. It creates an illusion of size to the people that don't fully understand the way the system works; ie bob smith who is looking to have his car serviced.
.com TLD and were fairly large and I think that idea has stayed with us until now.
In the early days of the web, most of the websites worth looking at had a
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.