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ICANN Considers Single Letter Domains

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the everybody-wants-to-be-a-vowel dept.

* * Beatles-Beatles writes "...as the Internet's key oversight agency considers lifting restrictions on the simplest of names. In response to requests by companies seeking to extend their brands, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will chart a course for single-letter Web addresses as early as this weekend, when the ICANN board meets in Vancouver, British Columbia. Those names could start to appear next year."

6 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Re:But they already exist by mysqlrocks · · Score: 4, Informative
    FTA:

    Six single-letter names already claimed at the time _ "q.com," "x.com, "z.com," "i.net," "q.net," and "x.org" _ were allowed to keep their names for the time being.

    --
    Bradley Holt
  2. Re:Only 26 by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 3, Informative

    no, there are 26 letters, times the major .whatevers There's .com, .net, .org, .info, then the ones that go by country, like .co.uk or .de That makes for a lot more than 26 possibilities, but you are correct that relative to the internet as a whole, it's not a lot of domains.

  3. For those that didn't bother to read the article.. by SecureTheNet · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...this does not open up top level domains, like .a or .b This is a proposal to open up something like a.com or b.com.

    Yes, I realize there are a few out there, www.X.org comes to mind. Most of the single letter domains are registered to:

    [whois.iana.org]

    IANA Whois Service
    Domain: c.com
    Name: IANA_RESERVED

    The article also states that IANA started reserving these in 1993, but the whois record for x.org shows it was created in 1997.

    --
    SecureThe.Net - Practical Resources for Securing Systems
  4. Re:Heh... **Beatles!!! by TubeSteak · · Score: 3, Informative
    I'm recycling a comment from another AC in another Scuttlemonkey/**Beatles-Beatles post. This guy's getting worse than Roland Picklepail:

    Am I the only person who has noticed the numerous stories that get posted by *--Beatles-Beatles? Am I also the only person who has noticed that the link used in is name is a constantly changing URL (depending on the story) with pointers to various scammy sites? Is it not obvious what he's doing? He's using the awesome PageRank of slashdot do promote his sites based on searches that have the word Beatles in them.

    It's a small price to pay for free advertising. Find a story, summarize it in 5 minutes, post to slashdot, and get a pagerank boost that advertisers would pay hundreds (or maybe thousands) for. (Text links on high-ranking sites is big business - just ask oreilly).

    Slashdot should at least put a ref=nofollow in the links to submitters (or better yet, only link the submitter's name to his/her user page).

    In closing, a quick bit of WHOIS shows that all the sites linked by **B-B are registered to Carl Fogle. Carl, cut this crap out.

    My followup:
    if you care so much why don't you give Carl a call @ (718) 996-7672.

    If you have a GSM phone, dial #31# before the number and it'll show up as "private" or "protected" on the recipient's caller ID. Everyone else, use *67

    "Hello, please leave a message after the tone"
    BEEP

    Googling for his phone number brings up a lot of information. Apparently he's in the search engine optimization business and has been spamming for a long time.

    His website: hxxp://search-engines-web.com
    Another website: hxxp://5url.com/
    More website: hxxp://google-yahoo.com/
    Old e-mail address: aa1a@yahoo.com
    His Guestbook: http://server.scripthost.com/guestbook?harrison
    Google Phonebook: C Aab
    stwnewspress.com: Contact Name = A. Seo*
    5url.subportal.com: Contact Name = A. Aab

    Feel free to send him e-mail url55@hotmail.com

    *A. Seo = A Search Engine Optimizer
    very fucking clever
    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  5. How to Advertise on Slashdot by nagora · · Score: 5, Informative
    Beatles-Beatles, AKA Carl Fogle, is using /. to boost his search-engine jigging company. By hosting gerorge-harrison.info and then getting /. to link to it, and therefore lots of other sites to mirror that link, he is boosting that domain's search ranking (he's up to #10 on Google for "George Harrison"). He can then point his prospective clients to this success when pitching to them for their business.

    TWW

    --
    "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
  6. Re:Only 26 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually it's less than you might think....

    gTLDs - .com .edu .gov .int .mil .net and .org

    Of those, only the .com, .net and .org are 'open' for registration so that gives you 3 x 26 = 78

    Then you've got the new TLDs; .biz .info .name .pro .aero .coop and .museum

    Of those 3 are sponsored (.aero .coop and .museum) so the policies regarding registration are at the discretion of the sponsor. That leaves 4 more TLDs under the control of ICANN as far as policies go. We're up to 7 x 26 = 182

    Then there are the ccTLDs; .ac .ad .ae .af .ag. .ai .al .an ......... .za .zm .zw

    But the ccTLDs are under the control of a delegated agent in the country involved and the policies are once again at the discretion of the delegated agent. You've just lost the 240 x 26 which would have really bulked out those numbers.

    Oh, and then you have to take away the 6 existing one letter domain names which leaves us with a grand total of new 'approved by ICANN' one letter domains of;

    (7 x 26) - 6 = 176

    So it's not that many....