Soviet Union TLD Owners Snub ICANN

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist has up a post about ICANN's latest decisions about country-code TLDs. The body is making an effort to tackle the problem of Yugoslavia's .yu outliving the country by over a decade but is far from getting its way with the Soviet Union's domain .su. Around 2,500 new .su sites are created every year despite ICANN ordering its retirement — the disgruntled .su registrars have announced an 80 per cent price cut in the price of .su domains in response. 'It makes the much-publicized wrangles over the ".xxx" domain seem tiny by comparison. And it convinces me of the need to reevaluate the existence of the US Dept of Commerce-backed non-profit organisation that is ICANN. The current squabbles are petty compared to the diplomatic arguments that TLDs could cause. An international body like the UN would be a more appropriate overseer, surely?'"

Comments

Cue the ISR queue

[Anonymous Coward]

Must Resist! Will fading! Must be strong. NNNRRRRR!!!! NOOOoooooo!!!

In Soviet Russia TLD discontinues YOU!

Re:Cue the ISR queue

[Archangel Michael]

"In Soviet Russia TLD discontinues .yu"

Fixed!

Re:I'm so sorry...

[Tackhead]

> In Soviet Union, ICANN snub TLD Owners!

*forcechoke*

"In Soviet Union, you accepted apology."

Sure!

[Otter]

An international body like the UN would be a more appropriate overseer, surely?

Absolutely! They'll be glad to crack the whip on registrars of non-countries like the Soviet Union and Taiwan.

Re:Sure!

[HuguesT]

You mean, as soon as someone is criticizing Israel, suddenly it's antisemitism ?

The problem of sharing a forum with all the nations like the UN, is that until world peace is achieved, necessarily you will find nations there that are not friendly to each other.

The alternative is no forum, no talks and almost certainly more wars. The trouble with cheapshot armchair UN critics is that they never propose anything constructive or useful as a replacement.

Yes Syria is a nation with a poor record over many issues, too bad it's on the IAEA, but so what. It's not running the thing. Come to think of it, there are very few nations with a clean record on just about anything. AFAIK Israel got its nukes on the sly as well, and the USA is the only nation who has ever used them in anger, killing tens of thousands instantly and to this day.

Sweep your own front door, as some say.

Re:Sure!

[Otter]

The problem of sharing a forum with all the nations like the UN, is that until world peace is achieved, necessarily you will find nations there that are not friendly to each other.

The reason I mentioned Taiwan and not Israel (besides the fact that bringing up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict never does anything but stir up a mindless flamefest) is that the country that makes pretty much everything inside your computer and much of what connects it to my computer does *not* share a "forum with all the nations". It's excluded from the ITU and would be similarly excluded from any UN-run Internet bodies and structures.

Re:Sure!

[Hatta]

You mean, as soon as someone is criticizing Israel, suddenly it's antisemitism ?

Sure why not? I mean if you criticize the US, you get called anti-American.

Re:Sure!

[ScrewMaster]

and the USA is the only nation who has ever used them in anger

Not in anger. In a declared war. There's a difference. We didn't hate the Japanese, didn't question their right to exist, would much rather not have dropped Fatman and Littleboy. We just wanted them to stop, and the fire raids (which caused more total destruction than both atom bombs combined) weren't enough.

Most people seem to forget that, and believe that we skipped conventional warfare and went straight to nukes because, well, we just couldn't wait to murder thousands of innocent Japanese. As it happens, an absolutely incredible amount of firebombing was done before we even considered nuclear weapons, and if you read about how much devastation that caused you wouldn't be slamming the U.S. because it used a couple of 20 kiloton nuclear devicess (had a modern weapon been used Japan would have ceased to exist.) I'd also like to point out that we haven't used another atomic weapon against any enemy, declared or otherwise, to this very day. Neither did the Soviets, although one has to wonder if they'd have behaved themselves without M.A.D. and the various associated treaties. Hard to know what would have happened, but either way I'd say we swept our front door pretty well, and the rest of the world's too, once the nuclear cat was out of the bag.

Regardless, look past any distaste you may have for the United States or the Bush Misadministration and ask yourself these questions: a. has U.S. management of the Internet (really, of DNS) been sufficiently inept that control should be removed on performance grounds alone, and b. do you really, in your heart of hearts, want the United Nations to run the show? I mean ... really? More to the point, do you have the slightest idea how meaningless, from a technological perspective, it is to say "control the Internet"?

I mean, DARPA started the ball rolling, and then we let it develop in a way that has worked out to the benefit of, well ... everybody, I guess. Much of Internet engineering is actually pretty international already, when you get right down to it. Everyone is so afraid of the United States doing terrible things to people through the Internet (as if we could) and is behaving in such a petty manner, e.g. "We need to 'wrest control' of the Internet away from the U.S." What the hell does that mean, anyway? We own our parts of it. Everyone else owns theirs. Cripes.

Wise up. It's in our best interests that the Internet continue to work well, and right now it is. We need it. So does everyone else. Besides, the only aspect of the network that the U.S. could be consider to "control" is the Domain Name System, and that's just a bunch of distributed servers that any nation could duplicate and run in parallel. Nobody has, because then they would lose the benefits of being part of the global community. This is all politics and posturing, there's no substance here. Sure, some day you may get your wish: the root servers may get confiscated and someone else will be in "control" of the Internet.

Just be careful what you wish for, though ... you just might get it.

Re:Sure!

[Vainglorious Coward]

That's disingenuous - Taiwan is not recognised as an independent country by anybody, including a large proportion of the Taiwanese themselves.

Re:Sure!

[Anonymous Coward]

Taiwan is recognized as a country by 25 different countries in the world, a number that has shrunk largely due to political pressure from its larger neighbor (often times flat out buying support from countries for hundreds of millions of dollars). It also is one of the top 15 trading nations in the world, has a population larger than 75% of the members of the UN and has the 3rd largest port in the world in Kaohsiung (it may have recently slipped to 4th I'm not sure).

Taiwan to do this day has complete sovereignty over its territories, which include the island of Taiwan and several other islands, including Jinmen, less than 1 mile from China's mainland at its closest point. It has on its own managed to create and establish a mature democracy with its own currency, stock market, universal health care system, the previously tallest building in the world, a strong education system, has a fairly powerful defensive standing army (with a lot of US hardware - by he way the US still sells hardware to Taiwan and still maintains military ties with them) etc. Not to mention it's also considered one of the economic tigers, is a developed nation, and oh yeah, used to have a seat not only on the UN, but held veto-power in the Security Council.

As an open and free democracy there is indeed considerable debate today regarding the issue of reunification with China or actually declaring independence (there are still some elements of the constitution which declare it the rightful government of China dating back to the civil war). Much of the concern with angering China relates to China having over 1000 short-range missiles, plus several hundred aircraft, sitting just across the Taiwan Straight pointed directly at Taiwan, and people are also very aware of their continuing diminished presence in the world due to political and economic pressure from China. They also often look at the rapid economic growth China is currently experiencing and feel left behind (in truth Taiwan already experienced almost identical growth and their economy is far ahead of China's), and point to the continued pseudo-independence Hong Kong still enjoys to suggest that Taiwan could still maintain its own independence but gain greater access to the world if they choose reunification with China. Many of the people who strongly support this are descendants of people who come over from China in 1949 after the civil war. In comparison, the aborigines living in Taiwan much more strongly identify themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese and strongly support independence (btw, Taiwan also has its own language, Taiwanese, although the official language is Mandarin Chinese). These two positions can be seen very clearly amongst the two major political parties in Taiwan (split between green and blue).

And to the point, if you took away the .tw domain, I guarantee you Taiwanese would universally be pissed off and support for independence would probably at least in the short-term increase pretty dramatically. Almost everyone in Taiwan has access to the internet, and the .tw domain is often a way of identifying a web site that uses Traditional Chinese characters, as opposed to the Simplified Chinese that China itself uses.

Re:Sure!

[ScrewMaster]

Sure. Bring a six-pack.

UN.. maybe.

[bigattichouse]

Generally the U.N. is pretty good with standards (english for pilots) and lists (like ISO country codes), and very ineffective, well - how about "tedious"... they can be effective if only slow, when politics or "national identity" are involved. This isn't the UN's fault so much as the fact that it is made of people. So.. As far as the lists go, UN would be great (say .xxx), but very sensitive to getting rid of "identities" like .su or .yu if it can be shown that the domains are offering some kind of cohesive bond between sites. my 0.02, or at least two cents worth of B.A. in international studies from 11 years ago. In this day and age, probably worthless.

The UN? Surely you jest...

[Nova Express]

An international body like the UN would be a more appropriate overseer, surely?

Yes, let's remove an organization whose competence is questioned and replace it with one whose corruption and incompetence is beyond question. That's like firing Kevin Kostner as a movie director and hiring Uwe Boll instead. Far better ICANN than the crooked, incompetent clowns at the UN. Hell, even the Mafia would be better; then at least the Internet would be run by competent criminals...

Re:The UN? Surely you jest...

[damburger]

Yes, let's remove an organization whose competence is questioned and replace it with one whose corruption and incompetence is beyond question.

Refusing to rubber-stamp US wars of aggression doesn't make them corrupt or incompetent. Sure, they are impotent to stop these imperialistic rampages - but that is the the fault of their members, not the organisation itself

Re:The UN? Surely you jest...

[HuguesT]

Hello Mr Righteous, I'll assume your from the USA :

1- Yes the UN costs money, what a surprise. Nearly all the nations pay for it, though. The US likes not to.

2- Have you never heard of US soldiers raping local women ?

3- China, Cuba, etc on UN councils. Learn how they work, representative from every country get to be in them in turns. That doesn't mean they run them. At the UN, you are bound to find people from nations you disagree with in various commissions. The #1 rule of diplomacy is that you keep talking to these people anyway.

4- The UN suck, have never done anything good, etc. The UN weapons inspectors in Iraq got rid of all the WMDs. You are aware the US troops have found none left, are you? Speak of the devil, this particular engagement really showcases the skill and competence the USA shows in dealing with world matters when unhindered by useless international bodies, doesn't it ?

Given a choice of labeling you hypocrite or ignorant, I'm afraid I'll have to go with the former.

Re:The UN? Surely you jest...

[StealthyRoid]

Aww, look guys! It's a EuroTroll! Or at least a CoolCollegeLeftistTroll! Alright kid, I'll play.

Hello Mr Righteous, I'll assume your from the USA

Nope. I'm from Texas. And down here in the Republic, we know how to use apostrophes.

Yes the UN costs money, what a surprise. Nearly all the nations pay for it, though. The US likes not to.

I don't think I bitched about the UN costing money, I bitched about the fact that so much of that money gets siphoned off into someone else's pockets. See, for example, Kofi Annan and his son Kojo, or the people involved in the Food for Oil program, or the people who manage the "Palestinian" aid program, or . I'm glad that the US doesn't pay its UN bill. It's one less thing I have to be pissed about my tax money being spent on.

2- Have you never heard of US soldiers raping local women ?

You know, I'll bet when you wrote that, you were thinking all "Oh man, I am so nailing this fucking Yank. He's going to try to defend the US military and then I'll have him because I am just so fucking clever." Too bad that's not going to work out today. Yes, US soldiers rape teh shit out of people to. How the fuck does that make the UN non-corrupt? When did I _ever_ argue that the US _wasn't_ corrupt? When did I endorse US actions _anywhere_? I hate the United States government the same way I hate all governments, because they're bodies that exist only through thuggery and violence. Fucking stunning. There's no such thing as a good government, and there's no such thing as a good military. Every military has a shitload of raping, murdering, brutal fucking assholes who are only in the military because it gives them an outlet to rape and kill without getting into too much trouble over it. Way to be on point here, chief. You totally fucking nailed me on this one.

3- China, Cuba, etc on UN councils. Learn how they work, representative from every country get to be in them in turns. That doesn't mean they run them. At the UN, you are bound to find people from nations you disagree with in various commissions. The #1 rule of diplomacy is that you keep talking to these people anyway.

Yes, I know how the fucking UN councils work, shitbreather. I don't know if that "Look how smart I am and how dumb you are" bullshit works in Mrs. Kensington's 6th grade english class, but maybe you should fucking make a valid argument before you start claiming that I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Most of the UN councils rotate on a regional basis, so that a European nation will have a seat, as will a South American, as will an Asian, as will a Middle Eastern. The problem is, these are fucking POLICY MAKING boards for the United Nations, and having Cuba/China/Sudan on the HR council is like having a bunch of fucking rapists run a victims outreach program.

And we aren't talking about goddamn policy disagreements. Sudan allows and promotes SLAVERY AND FEMALE FUCKING GENITAL MUTILATION. Not the nice kind that they do in some other Muslim countries, where there's some anesthesia at least, the kind where they take a little girl, forcibly hold her down, dive into her vagina with a sharp piece of glass or a rusty piece of metal, gouge out her clit, and then sew up the fucking gully hole. That's _fucked_, to the point where, if you do it, you should not be allowed to sit on a board whose job it is to dictate Human Fucking Rights Policy to the rest of the fucking world. "#1 rule of diplomacy", suck my fucking cock. What the fuck is the point of it when these nations are NEVER sanctioned or even given a stern talking to? Christ, what are you, 7 fucking years old? "Maybe if we all hold hands and sing, the Sudanese will stop shredding little girl cunt to ribbons". Fuck you.

4- The UN suck, have never done anything good, etc. The UN weapons inspectors in Iraq got rid of all the WMDs. You are aware the US troops hav

Re:The UN? Surely you jest...

[nuzak]

> Yes, let's remove an organization whose competence is questioned and replace it with one whose corruption and incompetence is beyond question.

The US Government?

Re:The UN? Surely you jest...

[janrinok]

Hello Mr Righteous, I'll assume your from the USA

Nope. I'm from Texas. And down here in the Republic, we know how to use apostrophes.

The apostrophe in the line you quoted is correct - it is an abbreviation of 'I will'. To the vast majority of the world, Texas is only a part of the USA. You might think it a magical place with its own important standing in the world - but to everyone else, it isn't so.

Now, could you try to rewrite your piece without using expletives?/p>

I think that the post that you responded to made some very good points. He didn't say that there was not corruption in the UN. But, as you quite rightly pointed out, there is also corruption in your own government so there is little point in following this particular argument. You criticised other countries for their soldiers' involvement with rape - it was then pointed out that US soldiers (in much the same way as armies from anywhere for that matter) also break the law on occasion, including the offence of rape. You have acknowledged that fact but it doesn't do much to help convince me that your view of the UN is correct because some soldiers wearing the blue beret have committed offences. I'll bet some Texans have broken the law on occasion, but it doesn't seem to have changed your view of your own state so why should anyone think of the UN any differently? We all understand the details of the mutilation that takes place and going into graphic detail does not change the argument. I could probably describe the rape of a young child conducted by someone from , say, Texas in similar graphic detail to show how bad you are. It would be a pointless argument however, which is why I won't use it and why I think that it didn't help your case. UN monitors made it difficult for Saddam to achieve what we wanted to do easily. They did a good job under difficult conditions but didn't achieve everything that they wanted to do because of political interference from both Iraq and some others. It doesn't change the fact that they were one of a series of measures that were used.

Judging by the way that you flew of the handle and returned to the argument with a series of invectives and insults I would say that you are clearly losing this argument. I've been told that everything in Texas is bigger than similar things elsewhere. I might venture to suggest that the claim would also appear to apply to your mouth.

What about .tv?

[trolltalk.com]

And what are they going to do when Tuvalu goes under water? Will they discontinue .tv? All its going to take is a foot or so rise in sea level and tuvalu goes glug glug glug ...

Re:What about .tv?

[Anonymous Coward]

If sea levels rise, broadcasting giants will protect Tuvalu with dikes to save their domains.

Re:What about .tv?

[TeknoHog]

And what are they going to do when Tuvalu goes under water? Will they discontinue .tv? All its going to take is a foot or so rise in sea level and tuvalu goes glug glug glug ...

Apparently, .su is not discontinued even if the country has gone gulag gulag gulag ...

Why ever retire TLDs?

[iamacat]

Doing so can disrupt hundreds of thousands of businesses and personal domains. Let both .su and .yu remain. Most new sites will probably register under names of present day countries to highlight their local ties anyway.

Re:Why ever retire TLDs?

[thebear05]

That makes sense allow domain holders to keep their domains, but close the domain to new registrations.

Re:Why ever retire TLDs?

[Murmer]

That makes sense allow domain holders to keep their domains, but close the domain to new registrations.

None of that makes any sense. A domain name system is nothing more than a way of turning a string humans can read into an address a machine can use. There's already lots of alternatives that have sprung up because the TLD situation is an entirely manufactured problem; it's not like there's a critical shortage of letter sequences in the world. Show me the legitimate technical problem with letting some guy off the street register screw.yu or dollarsfordonuts.su, or whatever. It is a relic, a holdover from the dark ages. It is legacy architecture.

But, hey, if we admitted that, we'd admit that there's probably no need for ICANN, full stop.

Why does creating lame new TLDs have to be a protracted, painful process? Why can't they just be made up on the fly? As far as I can tell, the answer is "because if could do that, we wouldn't need ICANN", and there's nothing more important to a typical organization than justifying its own existence.

oh please let this become the next overdone meme

[thegnu]

my 0.02

US or Canadian?

unreasonable editorial remark

[drmerope]

The current squabbles are petty compared to the diplomatic arguments that TLDs could cause. An international body like the UN would be a more appropriate overseer, surely?

The little bit of editorializing in this submission is a little bit too much. I fail to see how making countries directly responsible will depoliticize the process. ICANN, is a flawed organization, but it is an effort to make management of the domain name system independent of governments and technically driven.

The IEEE is not a UN body; Its voting membership, and its activities are a combination of academics and engineers employed by major technology companies. Given this, I find it hard to see how the "surely" remark in the story summary can even be regarded as reasonable.

I for one would prefer a more technical, more independent ICANN--not a less technical, more political ICANN such as is embodied by the sluggish and highly politicized ITU.

Re:oh please let this become the next overdone mem

[fo0bar]

my 0.02 US or Canadian? Today? It doesn't matter.

.sue?

[tholomyes]

If only these domain owners had some legal recourse...

So .su me.

[rbanffy]

So .su me.

Re:So .su me.

[Matt_R]

sudo make me a sandwich

UN? Don't make me laugh!

[jmorris42]

> An international body like the UN would be a more appropriate overseer, surely?

What idiot would write such a thing in 2007? A century ago such naive faith in International organizations to settle disputes was commonplace, fifty years ago diehards still believed the inherent contradiction inherent in such organizations could be handwaved away. But now? Now that we have seen each and every International organization fall into disrepute, chaos, corruption or outright evil?

Even previously unquestioned organizations like ISO are proving to be all too easily corrupted. Others, like the UN you wish to hand the greatest achievement of Western Civilization over to, were so flawed in their design they became failed instituitions before the ink was dry on their charters.

Seriously, this isn't a troll or flamebait. Name three achivements of the UN since it's founding. Ok, you in the back that remembered the Korean War being fought under UN auspices. Yea, because the Soviets were off in a sulk for a brief period the UN managed to allow the US (with our usual allies of the UK and the Aussies along with token support from the usual suspects) to fight to a tie, but under no circumstances actually win. And we are STILL mired down there to this day.

Same for the first Gulf War, the UN grudgingly allowed the US to lead our usual allies to solve a problem for everyone else. But I don't seem to recall the UN spearheading either of those efforts, only being convinced to get the hell out of the way.

Just how many more mass graves do we need before you misty eyed 'citizens of the world' realize the US is the leading cause of mass death today. Ask the survivers in Rwanda or Darfur if they believe the UN is a capable fo being a force for good.

No, the UN is a Parliment of Tyrants. Because it was DESIGNED that way. Shocked the new UN "Human Rights" body is as corrupt as the old one? I'm not. Because Tyrants have more votes in both the General Assembly and Security Council, all works of the UN are going to be geared to aid tyranny. Hand the Internet over to China, Cuba, Iran and their ilk? Are you barking mad?

Puerto Rico (.pr) TLD

[prxp]

Puerto Rico has its own TLD (.PR) since 1989. The funny thing is that Puerto Rico was never a country, it used to be a Spanish Colony way back in history and it's been a US territory for the last half century. Why do they bother so much about other non-country's TLDs?

Re:Puerto Rico (.pr) TLD

[athakur999]

Puerto Rico, though not a country, is still an currently existing political entity. Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union do not exist in any fashion except in history books.

Re:Puerto Rico (.pr) TLD

[Daimanta]

Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union do not exist in any fashion except in history books. Don't forget that they also exist in Soviet Russia jokes.

In soviet russia, domain snubs you!

Re:Puerto Rico (.pr) TLD

[charlieo88]

Kentucky has a constitution AND a bigger population... and if you ever talked to a native, its own culture and language. Are they getting a TDL?

Looking for "Soviet Russia" jokes?

[PoopDaddy]

Find them all at the brand new http://www.slashdot.su/ !!!

Finally, the best of /.'s "In Soviet Russia..." comments all in one place.

Re:Looking for "Soviet Russia" jokes?

[DavidD_CA]

.. where jokes write you!

Pretty Funny Article

[the eric conspiracy]

This is the organization that could not handle an international vaccine program without falling flat on it's face due to internal politics. I can't imagine that it would be any better in handling external politics.

There are some perfectly valid reasons to be suspicious of any one country administering the TLD list. Retiring zombie TLDs isn't one of them. Just set up a grace period. After 3 years don't process any more new domain applications. After 5 years no domain renewals. After 15 years no TLD.

Very few domains will have a lifetime longer than that, and if they do chances are they are run by clueful people who will have aliases set up long before the tits up date.

A better group? my two cents worth...

[CodeShark]

How about a well defined group within the W3C itself?

The working groups in the W3C seem to do a good job defining standards we can all live with, why not make them the custodians of the standards as well. That way TLDs have some semblance of order and a deprecated TLD can be selectively migrated, etc. with technically competent standards as opposed to politically appointed or "corporate overlorded" individuals as in the current processes.

?? Thoughts ??

Time for a .CSA TLD

[Anonymous Coward]

I think those of us remaining in the deep South should start a .CSA top level domain. If it has now become politically correct to create and or maintain domains for countries that are in effect no longer in existence, it should not be a problem to start a .CSA domain in honor of our blessed South and those who fought for her.

Re:UN? Don't make me laugh!

[jmorris42]

> Just how many more mass graves do we need before you misty eyed 'citizens of the world' realize the US
> is the leading cause of mass death today. Ask the survivers in Rwanda or Darfur if they believe the UN
> is a capable fo being a force for good.

And I even previewed once.... sigh. Of course that should be UN at the end of both lines but with the slashkos crowd it is probably best to make it clear.... especially in light of 25 Democrat Party Senators voting to endorse Move On's notion of the US military this afternoon.

Re: UN absolutely?

[bornwaysouth]

The UN is somewhat corrupt, but that is not why I'd oppose them running it. Nor because they are political at heart. Look up the Whaling Commission on Wikipedia as an example. The key problem is they are country oriented.

Top level domains should be about routing traffic competently. I do not care if the USSR or Yugoslavia or Aland or the Faroe Islands or Antarctica are countries or not. You have to balance traffic routing as engineering efficiency and some ability to legally control the activities of the users of that domain. If say Tonga (with its nice .to ending) cannot control its users, then it has no function. It is too small to have any traffic relevance.

I'd back engineers any day over the UN.

Re:UN? Don't make me laugh!

[bjourne]

Here is a list of good things that the UN has done. Just because the UN hasn't won any wars doesn't mean that they have not accomplished a lot of good.

The Palestinian Occupied Territories /have/ a TLD

[Vainglorious Coward]

Don't forget ending .il and replacing it with whatever the 'Palestinians want to call the place.

Pardon me for interrupting your rant, but Palestine was allocated the .ps country code in October 1999.

It might be worthwhile to keep .su active

[DaveWick79]

The way things are going over in the current Russia, it might not be a bad idea to hang onto the .su domains. In a couple of years it might be current again.

The overall problem of who is really in control of these things is a curious one. Does a registrar have the ability to sell anything they want once they get on the train as a registrar. What's to keep a registrar from selling domains with any .?? extension and then propagating them over DNS servers worldwide? Is it up to the ISP to determine whether they will allow a DNS request to a certain top level domain, or is this something ICANN has some authority over?

Re:Get Rid of TLDs

[Todd Knarr]

Because we tried that, and it didn't work. When ARPANet was starting, the namespace was flat. Every host had a name, there wasn't any hierarchical organization. When the network was less than 0.01% the size it is today, it was already too hard to handle name conflicts in that flat namespace. The hierarchical namespace with dot seperators that we use in DNS today was introduced to solve the problem, segregating the namespace so you only had to worry about conflicts between names in a single domain and not with names in everyone else's domain. And once you have a hierarchy, you have to have a top level to it. If you remove the current top level, then what used to be the second level becomes the top level. And you have to resolve all the conflicts when two different organizations own the same second-level name.

In Soviet Russia...

[geekmansworld]

In Soviet Russia, domain resolves you!

Re:UN? Don't make me laugh!

[rrkap]

Here's another, more complete, list of the useful things the UN has achieved

I'll go back to my armchair in my cave now...

REsponse from .yu on page f..k.yu

[kubusja]

ICANN request can be found on the page:

listen.to.us

Response to ICANN from .yu domain registar can be found on page:

f..k.yu

From .su registar on page:

try.and.su

What do you mean, non-countries?!?

[Chemisor]

> crack the whip on registrars of non-countries like the Soviet Union

As someone who is still officially a citizen of the Soviet Union, I must vehemently disagree with your classification!

UN found some iraqi WMDs

[kad77]

"Show me one piece of evidence indicating that UN weapons inspectors dismantled ONE piece of weapons making technology between 1991 and 2003."

They couldn't find their ass with both hands. They had iraqi-made phosgene laying about for the janitor to find in the UN building. Last month.

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2007/08/wmd-phosgene-fr.html - has a summary of many of the reports

They dismantled enough to hold onto a piece of those WMDs that "never existed".

The UN

[OrangeTide]

An international body like the UN would be a more appropriate overseer, surely?

How does more bureaucracy solve the problem, it seems like it just creates more problems. What we need is a Philosopher-king of Top Level Domains. So far it has been ICANN, and they have not been doing a bad job.

If ICANN were actually doing a bad job, we could open up alternative root name servers without them. And with public and industry support supplant them. But the internationalization arguments against ICANN are just empty rhetoric. Nothing about the way DNS or the Internet is structures prevents us from running domain services in parallel to ICANN's, if the EU wanted they could invent their own bureaucratic organization to handle all TLDs, setup root servers and run with it. And users could choose to use the EU ones or ICANNs or both.

That hasn't happened, and I am arguing that there is no technical barrier. Therefor I assume the only barrier is that nobody is serious enough in their objections of ICANN to do so.

Re:I'm so sorry...

[byolinux]

In Soviet Russia, Domain Names You!

Re:A rose by any other name.

[rs79]

There are quite a few one and two letter domains that were grandfathered in before it quit being allowed. (hp.com and x.org for example)

I would very much like to know the story of how x.com goes to paypal.com ?"

Two letter domains were never an issue. They're all taken from aa to zz.

The single letter ones are a special case. It went like this:

Nobody ever registered one. At some point a few leaked out. q, s and x I think. At this time there were about 800,000 .com names and people had the same irrational fear of the "million name com zone" that some people had of Y2K.

So, Postel put a hold on single letter domains. They appear as "reserved by the IANA" (never mind IANA didn't actually exist then, that is it had no legal personality, it was just an acronym Postel liked to use).

The theory was, if the root or tld servers melted down under the load of a million com named then there were these 26 one letter domains that could rescue is. I'm sure yahoo woudn't mind changing everything to yahoo.y.com.

There are about 40 million or so names in the com zone now. Yet still the single letter domains are reserved by ICANN ("because they always have been and Jons dead and we don't really know what we're doing") and any tld string must be three or more letters.

x.com was a papypal competitor. It was actually the good one and I was pretty pissed when paypal bought or consumed x.com. x.com gave me a card and a check book. Paypal just gave me grief.

x.com bought the domain off the guy who registered it originally. q.net is probably still for sale.

Re: UN absolutely?

[fm6]

The UN is somewhat corrupt, but that is not why I'd oppose them running it. Nor because they are political at heart. Look up the Whaling Commission on Wikipedia as an example.

Ok, some pretty basic mistakes here. First, you should never take anything on Wikipedia as gospel. A Wikipedia article is only as credible, reliable, or objective as the last person to edit it.

Secondly, when you read this kind of info, you need to read stuff a little more carefully, regardless of the source. The article has some convoluted argument about the relationship between the IWC and the UN, but nowhere does it state that the IWC is part of the UN. And in fact, it's not.

I agree with the rest of your post though. The fact is, many TLDs are messed up, including the one you and I are using at this very moment: .org is supposed to be for non-profit organizations, which Slashdot hasn't been for a long time, if it ever was. But who cares? As you say, it's just a routing mechanism.

Particularly "misused" are the two-letter national TLDs, such as .md and .tv. I find it especially hard to get worked up about this because many of the countries that are selling domains to foreigners really need the money. Tuvalu, for example, only joined the UN after they were allocated the .tv domain, because before they got that revenue stream, they couldn't afford to send an ambassador to New York.

Anybody know where I can register an .su domain? I hope commierat.su isn't taken!

The Soviet Union Will Never Die!

[fm6]

United forever in friendship and labour,
Our mighty republics will ever endure.
The great Soviet Union will live through the ages.
The dream of a people their fortress secure.

Long live our Soviet Motherland, built by the people's mighty hand.
Long live our People, united and free.
Strong in our friendship tried by fire. Long may our crimson flag inspire,
Shining in glory for all men to see.

Music

Re:The Soviet Union Will Never Die!

[borat4president]

By the way, a few years ago Russia brought back the Soviet anthem's music and had the same person who wrote the words above adapt them for a new anthem.

Oh, come off it.

[Kadin2048]

That's a load of bull, and consistent only with the PRC's propaganda machine. Roughly 80 percent of the population of Taiwan supported the "two states policy," which would qualify as 'independence' to most unbiased external observers.

However, 'independence' in Taiwan is complicated, and means many things to many people: some Taiwanese reject 'independence' because they consider the ROC to be, if not the actual legitimate government of all China generally, at least its cultural heir. And others simply avoid 'independence' altogether and prefer the status quo for purely pragmatic reasons: the day-to-day situation is, for most intents and purposes, an independent Taiwan, and there is the strong possibility that if Taiwan declared independence from the PRC officially, the result would be the annihilation of everyone living there.

The figure usually quoted by PRC propaganda, arrived at by simply polling 'do you support Taiwanese independence,' is a loaded question and necessarily begets a skewed response. The people responding 'no' to that question do not necessarily have any love for the mainland, and certainly not for the PRC.

As it has become more and more apparent that 'reunification' would mean domination by Beijing (and not a restoration of the ROC government on the Mainland, or even an EU-like confederation), support for it in virtually all forms has disappeared from mainstream Taiwanese politics. Even "One Country, Two Systems" which is (from the PRC's perspective) a very lax 'reunification' stance, enjoys support from less than 10% of Taiwanese.

Re:A rose by any other edu or mil name.

[aqk]

Most... uhh, ALL universities in Canada have the .ca TLD, as opposed to those lucky USA "educational institutions" (snicker) such as "Brer-rabbit.edu" or "BoobyJones.edu"...
As well, I'd like to open up my own aqk.mil website. I have an axe to grind.

Wait! Perhaps Osama has first dibs: www.alqaeda.mil

Howcum only USA dorky institutions are allowed .mil or .edu TLDs?
OK, OK.. I know the answer: 'cuz you invented the Internet, etc...
Well, the cat's outa the bag; it's too late now. WE WANT IT!

Re: UN absolutely?

[WilliamX]

.org was NEVER intended to be restricted to non-profit organizations. It was actually the first catch-all TLD, intended for anything that didn't fit well under the other two, but was not restricted in any way to that rule either. There was NEVER any suggestion or rule that .org be restricted to non-profit use. Even when ICANN handed it to the PIR to manage, they specifically included in the contract that it remain a generic open registration TLD.

It is a common misconception among people who have never really been involved in the domain policy arena that .org was supposed to be for non-profits. That was not, and is not, the case.

ebay.su

[El-Wrongo]

I am going to register ebay.su! In communist Russia, ebay sells you.

Re:The Soviet Union exists no more

[rxmd]

the Soviet Union is gone and you can't be officially a citizen of that state. Who modded that informative?!

You are only half right. There are several ways that this can happen. For example, I have several friends in Uzbekistan (former Soviet republic) who don't have the Uzbek citizenship. This was because they moved, for example, from the newly independent republic of Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan in the early 1990s when the old Soviet passports were still valid (as you probably know, they didn't invalidate the old passports in 1991). Uzbekistan didn't give them Uzbek citizenship because they weren't born there, but immigrated after the independence of the country in 1991, and Kazakhstan didn't give them theirs because they didn't apply for it while they were living there, and now aren't living there anymore.

The Uzbek state issues them an "residence permit for persons without citizenship". In Russian it's called "vid na zhitelstvo". This is a little gray book that looks like a passport but isn't one. Regardless of the name, it has an entry called "citizenship", where it officially says "Citizen of the Soviet Union", because that's the last regular passport these persons happened to be holding.

Apatrides

[gr8dude]

Ok, I see your point. The status of such people is 'apatride' ('patriae' = country, and 'a-' is the prefix which acts like a '-less' suffix); i.e. "without a home-country". This is especially easy if you speak Romanian, because 'apatrid' is in the Romanian vocabulary, and it does not feel like a foreign word because 'patria' means 'country' [although it is closer to 'rodina' than it is to 'strana' or 'gosudarstvo'])

The fact that the 'nationality' field says "Soviet Union"... Well, it should be treated as a system in an undefined state, the variable was not initialized, so whatever was stored in the memory a while ago is the current value of the variable :-)

The problem is that such people, if in trouble, cannot go to "Soviet Union" and ask for shelter, or demand things from their government.

Re:Apatrides

[Chemisor]

> The problem is that such people, if in trouble, cannot go to "Soviet Union" and ask for shelter

That's not entirely true. Although I am a Soviet citizen, I am also eligible (by birth) for the Russian citizenship, so all I would have to do is go to the embassy and apply for it. The reason I haven't is that it costs a lot of money.

Re: UN absolutely?

[petermgreen]

Anybody know where I can register an .su domain?
http://www.nic.ru/en/

the fee is 3000 rubles (about $120) per year so it's a relatively expensive TLD to register in.

I hope commierat.su isn't taken!
It wasn't when I just checked but having posted your intention on /. you might have to move pretty quickly to get it.

Re:The Palestinian Occupied Territories /have/ a T

[JudgeFurious]

Well then they have a country code for a country that doesn't exist, has never existed, and at their present rate will never exist. Good on them!