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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."

5 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. So wrong ... by Kope · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The point of domain name hierarchy, as ICANN has forgotten, was to organize information into identifyable categories to make it easier for people to find what they want.

    Now, I will grant that with the advent of search engines, this is far less of an issue than it was 20 years ago.

    Still, the domain name conventions are NOT about corporations "extending their branding." It's about organizing the ip space into human-readable and human-understandable segments. Single letter domain names do nothing to further that purpose.

    It's a bad idea not because of any technical limitations but merely because it is bowing to corporate pressures in the governance of the last arena in the world where people have more power than the companies.

  2. A new record? by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Two **Beatles-Beatles stories on the front page at once? You guys might wnat to consider hiring him, he's clearly a journalistic power house. (Assuming he isn't already on the payroll, that is)

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.
    1. Re:A new record? by hackstraw · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Two **Beatles-Beatles stories on the front page at once? You guys might wnat to consider hiring him, he's clearly a journalistic power house. (Assuming he isn't already on the payroll, that is)

      Actually, its 3 in 24 hours. Take a looke here: http://slashdot.org/~*%20*%20Beatles-Beatles

      Its also nuts that this guy has already gotten his karma bumped up. I don't know how much accepted stories raises your karma, but this guy is brand new and has only posted a handful of comments.

      Plus the George Harrison site that he is pumping really looks like it sucks. I've heard that he is a search engine optimizer or something. Don't really know what is going on here.

  3. Don't think you're going to get any of these by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 4, Interesting
    If you think, "Hey, take a chance in the lottery and sell it for six figures aftewards," forget it now. The big companies are beating out the small guy and the Internet ideal of First Come, First Served -- FIFO in Geek terms -- of rewarding the agile thinker doesn't exist any more. Corporate sluggishness and immense political contributions have squashed it.

    How have they beaten you to the punch? For example, Yahoo has already trademarked "Y.COM". Even if you get www.y.com, they simply take it away for you for free as the "trademark owner," and brand you as a criminal cyber-squatter in the process.

    Oh, and btw, have a nice day!

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  4. BURN ALL TLD's by Wellspring · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Blech!

    Personally, I think we don't need TLD's anymore. The idea that an independent system should be vetting the .org-ness of an institution (especially in places or countries where the divisions of non-profits, government, and corporate are either non-existent or irrelevant) is to me unnecessary. The internet isn't about "defending the people" or picking winners and losers, it's about an open, largely unregulated system for connecting networks. The moment you go down the road of choosing policies and standards based on protecting or fostering one group over another, you'll never stop.

    Ultimately, I think that if I could alter the domain name system, I'd burn all TLD's. Most groups register the .com / .org / .net equivalents anyway. Is slashdot a .org or a .com? Just for example. Why not go to http://cocacola/ and be done with it?

    However, I can see the logic of reserving 2 letter codes for countries. After all, they have the guns and decide the laws. I don't know what 1 letter domains could be used for, but I'd prefer that they not be allocated yet either (for future use, perhaps). Selling 26*n (where n == number of TLDs at any moment) domain names isn't really worth the headache of changing the rules, and they could come in handy later.

    Of course, then the job of the registrar becomes much more administrative. So odds of ICANN actually doing this are slim --> none.