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

DNS?

[Poromenos1]

Bah, who needs DNS anyway? Real hackers memorize IP addresses! All you need to know is 216.239.57.99, really.

Re:DNS?

[SorcererX]

The scary thing is... I didn't even need to look up that ip to know it was google

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?

Artificial shortage, artificial problems

[ites]

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.

Wrong title

[presroi]

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.

The purpose of all the new TLDs

[wowbagger]

The purpose of all the new TLDs is "To allow domain registrars to make more money."

That is why every little movie simply must have its own .com domain, rather than having a virtual directory under the domain of the publisher - e.g. paramount.com/drecky_summer_movie/

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 .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!

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Excuse me, I had to replace the sarcasm fuse in my keyboard.

Well

[Cyn]

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!

The problem is they're not doing any checking, they're just opening up the .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.

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 .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.

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.

Re:really?

[TheRaven64]

The reason for a limited number of top level domains is that top level domain lookups require an access to the root DNS servers. There are a relatively small number of theses, and each DNS cache must know the IP addresses of them in order to function. With a small number of TLDs, most domain name lookups can cache the authoritative servers for them. When you look up a .com address, your DNS cache generally already knows where the authoritative server for .com domains is, and so it doesn't need to hit the root servers.

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).