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The Beginnings of a TLD Free-For-All?
Mordok-DestroyerOfWo writes "According to the BBC, ICANN is considering opening up the wholesale creation of TLDs by private industry. While I'm sure this is done for the convenience of the companies and has nothing to do with the several thousand dollars they will be charging for each registration, I was curious what the tech community at large thought about this idea. It seems to me that this will simply open the doors for a never-ending stream of TLD squatters."
Now I can finally realize my dream and create the ".isgay" TLD.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Creation of new domains is like extortion. For example, Disney will have to pay for disney.fun, disney.kids, disney.parks, disney.film, etc. just to make sure that those don't turn into porn sites or worse.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
I still get to call dibs on XXX?
what is wrong with you people?!
If domain squatting, front running, and everything else of the like has taught us anything its that this is a bad bad bad! Idea.
Never mind the levels of confusion it would be creating.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
I like having only a (relatively) few TLDs. Typos would just get an error, instead of a squatter.
This could be dangerous. Things like ".gov" domains are trustworthy (well, as far as you can trust the government). Typos could be costly if the site is painted correctly.
I think I'll get www.irs.gob and retire early.
The TLDs, theoretically, categorize content (com for commercial, org for non-profits, etc.). Opening up the creation of new "categories" to anyone with a few thousand dollars will just lead to the .com rush all over again. Even a few thousand is no disincentive to multi-billion dollar companies.
First race: Which of MS, Yahoo or Google will snag ".search" or ".srch" first? It's not a matter of cost, since we know any of them could afford the price. It's just which one manages to phone it in first.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
If domains were expensive enough we wouldn't have squatters. Say you would have to pay 250$ to purchase a domain name. How many would a squatter be willing to buy?
It's OK if the TLDs are brands (not generic like com, net or org) and there is some factor which limits them to resale use (otherwise we just punt the .com problem up a level.)
The big mistake was having generics in the first place. Trademark law figured out hundreds of years ago you don't grant people monopoly ownership rights in generic terms. To get ownership rights in a term it must be non-generic, not have meaning other than the meaning you created in it. Thus nobody owns the word "Apple" with regards to fruits, but you can own it with regard to computers, or records. Even better are made-up terms like Xerox and Kodak.
Anyway, we goofed by selling things like drugstore.com. We should fix that where we can, and not make it worse. If names are for resale only (you can't have your own sites in a TLD you own except for nic.TLD) and the names can't have any meaning for you to get a monopoly, then it can work.
Things like .xxx and .mobi and there rest are bad because they have a meaning, and grant a monopoly in internet naming to that meaning.
Full details are at http://www.templetons.com/brad/dns/
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
As if their total lack of real control over domain registration wasn't bad enough already, now they want to sell TLDs? Come on, we're close enough to arbitrary mish-mash as it is.
.viagra and .pirate, so it would be easier to screen them.
The only good that could potentially come from this would be if the spammers found it worthwhile to start placing all their spamvertised domains under TLDs like
But we all know how likely that is..
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I can have .xom !
DNS as it was intended to be has failed. Nowadays we have a flat namespace where all names have a .com appended at the end. Nobody wants to use anything else (yeah, I realize there are uses for .net and .org but they just don't compare). I believe some new naming system needs to be devised; unfortunately, it cannot be centralized (or it will be somehow exploited by the running org) but it cannot be fragmentary either (or it won't be a naming system at all). Maybe we should realize that a world wide effort to name our network resources consistently and cooperatively is doomed to fail. Perhaps we should start using all kinds of weird suffixes, but then again who's going to collect the money for them? And if nobody does, what stops me from registering tens of thousands of them?
Does anyone have original, innovative thoughts and ideas on this issue?
Global warming is a cube.
I fail to see the point of allowing new TLDs... How many do we have now, yet unless you have a .com, .net, .org, or .edu (and even then, most people
stop at the first one or two of those), you may as well have a random
unpronounceable string of characters, because no one will find you
except via links.
.biz and .info email) without giving them a second thought.
This will have one and only one useful effect - It will add more TLDs we can safely block as spam sources (yeah, suuuure we see a lot of legit
http://first.post
Coz we'd go through all the IP addresses we currently have remaining in about 30 milliseconds once this was opened up.
I sure wish I had a job where I could print money, like the ICANN does. Can you *imagine* the kind of money they'll get if this goes through? Ferraris for everyone.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I've had it with this hugely confusing system of names and TLDs, so here's my proposal:
We drop DNS completely and establish a completely numerical system of finding things on the internet. Each machine will just get a simple number. No more wondering what everything is called - just type in the number and presto - you're there! No fighting, no trademarks, no registrations, just "Here's your number pal, have fun."
Should work fine - right?
Who wants the.internet.is.for.porn -?
How about www.gmail -? "gmail" TLD up for grabs! Anyone?
How about investors.NYSE ?
What could possibly go wrong?
yet, .8==D wouldn't be a troll...
rewriting history since 2109
.fuck, .blow and everything else about sex, you know.
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
Even ICANN is not this stupid. This will not happen.
There are two systems I'd consider good:
1. Every country in the world has one TLD each, and then one or a very limited number of international ones (.com - is there any reason why we even need .net or .org?). Or something similar. People who take a country code TLD and sell domains on it to everyone (.nu, .tv, .tk, etc) would be spanked. Only very few TLD:s that are very general purpose.
2. Everyone can create any TLD they choose. ICANN would be free to make demands in terms of cash, purpose, or whatever - that's fine - but if I wanted a .geek TLD, I could in theory create it.
The current system, however, is that ICANN act like a kind of high priests that have the power to create as general or specific TLD:s they choose (.museum, .mobi, and all that junk), but won't allow anyone else to. This sounds unfair to me.
I instinctively believe that my first ideal system would be better than my second, but since ICANN seem to be moving away from that system, I guess my second ideal system is still better than the current one.
For every new TLD that gets created it just adds that many more TLDs that company has to buy to cover their trademark, company name whatever.
This is just ridiculous.
www.compaq.xyz has zero value. I never even understood why .net was created either. I can understand .ORG, and maybe even .INFO, but not .NET.
This only creates whole new markets for domain squatters. Who gives a crap about .MOBI? I certainly don't. I don't see any major wireless carriers using it on a regular basis. The mobile blackberry website I go to is still a .COM
This is made all the more ridiculous by the fact the most people have a hard time differentiating between TLDs as it is. Even I have problems sometimes and put a .COM when it should be a .NET. The fact that those 2 websites are wholly different entities is just crazy.
This is all about money going into the pockets of some people, and nothing about adding value to the Internet.
There are only two, and will forever be only two, TLDs which have any value associated with them whatsoever.... .COM and .ORG. That's it. Everything else is reserved anyways, and you can substitute a country TLD for .COM and .ORG when appropriate.
For those that would argue that point, ask yourselves honestly.... when you think of a domain name which TLD do you think of putting after it first?
All I'm saying is I would not want to be a DNS admin if this goes through. DNS zones (and DNS queries I might add) would increase exponentially and DNS standard practice would fragment even more.
This sort of thing would be a godsend for spammers & phishers. It'd make it so much easier for them to forge websites to try to scam people. Just imagine creating a TLD that's something like "comm" instead of "com" or "C0M" (zero instead of oh), etc. It'll create a security nightmare out of what is already a major pain in the @ss.
-1 didntgetit
Come-on people lets use the full words at least once and not just jump into acranyms. "New for nerds" Not all nerds work on networking at that level. They may know what a Top Level Domain is however they don't work with them in a way where they use the Acranym "TLD". IHASMTBDTISTSHUTA
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That said - if this is implemented as written I also foresee a rush towards all short words of the English language and a subsequent loss of all mnemonic devices I use to remember websites:
Now: "Hey, I want to go to Amazon. That's amazon.com, right?"
Then: "I want to go to Newbookstore. That's newbookstore.books - no, wait, newbookstore.cheapbooks - or newbookstore.bestbookstore? Newbookstore.isgreat? Newbookstore.all? Newbookstore.shopping? Newbookstore.AAA?"
Granted, the current TLD system kinda sucks, but opening up all kinds of words as possible TLDs will certainly bring no improvement (one thing I like to do when I browse for a product's availability here in Germany is enter the search term into google with the added restriction "site:.de". When German online presences will end in dozens if not hundreds of different words this easy way to identify them will be lost...).
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Does anyone really look strings up in DNS? People look up strings in Google, "Awesome bar" and Quicksilver.
They're nuts. Let there be a *bit* of contention for the limited number of TLDs so that finding the relevant domain is more likely rather than the thousands of squatted variations, and so that a company or person has a decent chance of affording the limited number of variations that are possible to derive from their name.
There's plenty of domain-space "land" out there if so much of it wasn't bought up and occupied so cheaply by so many speculators. Put those guys out of business by enacting some effective rules and prices that will discourage squatting and front running, and the relatively limited current namespace problem will solve itself. Otherwise it's going to be the biggest namespace grab in internet history, to nobody's benefit but perhaps the registrars.
Let each country manage its own servers.
Does anyone in the USofA really care if Britain allows sitename.xxx.uk ?
Does anyone in Germany care that there is a sitename.mobile.us ?
All the .com and .org and .net and ... were okay when the Internet was tiny and mostly USofA only. But it showed a complete lack of forward planning. Decentralize the names. Let each country work it out. Particularly for the countries using alphabets that don't match 100% with USofA English.
Why don't we ditch TLDs entirely and say that a valid domain is a string of alphanumeric characters that are seperated internally by dots/underscores/dashes/etc and delimited by //
I read the summary 5 times wondering why the hell a ICANN was messing with TLDs. Ya, oh... the "other" tld... right. um.. moving along now...
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
We've been clamoring for .head for a long time. AdamDada.head will show everyone that my family's origin is India.
Eight equals D?
I thought D equaled 13...
Ignore this signature. By order.
Anybody thought about using a co-opted naming system such as used for Newsgroups ?
Think about it....
I wouldn't be surprised if ICANN made the rule that your 2nd level name aliases the TLD. So Disney.com would also own *.disney.
TLDs would no longer be categories, they'd just be the site name. http://ilovecats http://cnn http://teslamotors
Makes sense to me.
is it considered blasphemy to register .heaven? And if not, what about www.god.heaven?
That's it! I'm gonna sell letters of indulgence!
If this passes, I'm SOOOO registering that.
I gots dibs on mcgrew.wtf
You guys can have the rest of the .wtf domains.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
There's this thing called the Internet; you can use it to search for information! A quick search here would have revealed that it stands for Top Level Domain, like ".com", ".us", or ".jfgi".
This is where the serious fun begins.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They should simply make it a reflection of .com. If you own abcde.com you, and only you, are entitled to abcde TLD. There are couple hiccups with other tlds... but that could be resovlved:
So if you have dotcom, and leaving .com off won't conflict with an existing TLD, you can pay another X$ fee and get it as a TLD. If you don't pay the fee, you don't get it, but nobody else can get it either.
No massive influx of squatter problems, trademark problems, spammer problems etc. PennyArcade.com and only pennyarcade.com can get the PennyArcade TLD, CocaCola.com can get cocacola, microsoft.com can get microsoft... intel.com can get intel, ibm.com can get ibm.
And ca.com, us.com, com.com can't get ca, us, and com respectively. They'll live.
The idea of organizational TLDs was a mistake from the get-go. If we could just get rid of them entirely I'd advocate that. But due to conflicts between legitimate .net / .org / .com sites that's not really practical.
So lets just do second best, and give the vast majority of .com's the option of leaving off the .com.
No
I like the idea of taking my domain name and making it my tld but my fear is what would happen to control of TLDs. What if some enterprising individual bought *.shopping. Every retailer in the world would want their domain at .shopping which is fine until its owner begins holding it for ransome. You can only use the .shopping suffix if you pay me to provide DNs for this tld. This would effectively create a tiered namespace landscape where pronouncable generic names are owned by huge corporations and access is expensive. I will end up with mydomain.254kdwNot cool. Or maybe the current maintainers of the other TLDs will also be responsible for any new tlds created. Although I fail to see how this could only hurt performance alongside the current naming system.
TLD is a TLA.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Firstly, the interviewer started under the misapprehension that domain names were running out, which Dr. Twomey corrected, and said the problem was with IPv4 addresses. The following comments then followed, which concern the introduction of IPv6:
Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of Icann, told BBC News that the proposals would result in the biggest change to the way the internet worked in decades. "The impact of this will be different in different parts of the world. But it will allow groups, communities and business to express their identities online. "Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have. "It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet." This is included in TFA, where it is implied that he was referring to domain names.The comments he actually made about DNS and TLDs were much tamer, mainly relating to internationalization and the use of unicode URLs.
I listened to this while driving, so I may have misunderstood slightly, but there was definitely no sense of "OMG TLD free-for-all" in the interview as broadcast.
[ ]Half Empty [ ]Half Full [x]Twice as big as it needs to be
Wait for 'slashdot.dotslash'...
OH yeah...
or...'verizon.wherethehellismyFIOSbitch'...
About time, I'll finally be able to join the rush to register trashbat.cock !
Sorry, only hypens are allowed. .B----D
While many good points have been raised so far about how this will play out commercially, I'm surprised to see a key technical issue overlooked - TLD's require changes to the root nameservers. In my view, opening this up to the whims of the teeming masses will undoubtedly put a strain on those 12 servers which will eventually lead to irreparable degradation of the DNS system as a whole. Unless the zone transfers for the root servers are on Internet2, and then, only if all of that bandwidth is reserved for those transfers.
----
Not to be confused with Col.
The big "value" in domain names comes from their scarcity... at least scarcity of good, concise names. If you let every half-bred marketroid buy their own TLD, the value of actual domain names will quickly plummet to zero. Who cares whether sex.com is taken (and expensive), if you can buy sex.yourmom for $50, and the next genius can buy sex.oprah for $25... Everyone's name is now worth zero.
I really hope they don't actually do this. I'll have to make it horribly simple on myself and blacklist all mail from vanity TLDs, because I frankly cannot see how this will help anyone worth helping. If your idea is so tired that the .com, .net, .org and .cx are already taken, I really don't care what you have to sell because I've seen it all before.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
my bank can get www.clownpenis.fart.
Hey, I was all about opening up the TLDs back in the '80s, I worked on getting one of the first open TLDs (.dot) running under The Internet Namespace Cooperative (TINC). But it doesn't matter any more.
Because "COM" is "the" top level. Who the hell cares about "name" or "per" or the rest of the "we are not COM, but..." domains? It's too late, it's a done deal, "COM" is the top level, everything else is parochial.
So don't fight over who's going to be ".sex", people will still pay more for "sex.com", and when you say your email address is "you@yourname" you better make sure that "you@yourname.com" works as well.
Of course, it's probably too late now; ".com" is so ingrained into the brain of every fool-with-a-creditcard already, so you'll have to hold onto that, and all the other old .tlds, AND get a new one.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Seems to me that the current holders of legacy names in the flat namespace of UUCP Mailnet, who have retained their legacyname.tld counterparts in .com, .edu, .net, or .gov, should be able to get them as TLDs, and free of charge, as a continuation of the legacy.
Failing that they should have first refusal.
These names in this flat namespace predate the ICANN. They were also transferred intact into the electronic mail routing during the conversion to domain-style addressing. (Indeed, at some sites you can still get mail to them by addressing it to user@legacyname, and at many more by addressing it to legacyname!user.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
what the F**k is Google?
http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/search.pl?query=TLD
Sure, there'll be squatting. There'll be extortion. There'll be namespace grabbing. But, it's what should have been done from the very get-go. The idea that you could impose an arbitrary structure on the world (and face it, ".com", ".net", ".org", et. al. is almost completely arbitrary) was doomed to fail from the get-go.
The growing pains will be worth it in the end. Just think, no more TCWWW, no more DotCom. Just go to "CNN" or "Slashdot" or "Google" or "Wikipedia".
Doesn't that make more sense?
I wonder how big a rush there would be if anyone with trademark rights could embargo any non-trademark-holders or post-embargo-acquired-trademark-holders from using ALL related domain-names without paying more than a one-time cost-of-paperwork fee. This fee shouldn't be more than a few dollars a year.
Once an embargo was filed, you'd have to prove you had an enforceable trademark before the date of the embargo to get any 2nd-level-domain covered by the embargo.
Existing companies with common names would still be able to get a useful domain-name, but if Mr. Smith wanted to start Smith, Inc. after the embargo on "Smith" went into effect, he would have to pick a different domain name, such as "SmithsWonderfulWidgetsOfSelmaAlabamaOnMainStreet.sometld" or something equally unique.
The poor registrars would find most of their good names were un-sale-able: The trademark owners wouldn't pay out extortion fees to keep the names out of the hands of squatters, and thanks to the embargo nobody but the trademark-holders could buy them.
Generic names like dictionary words would still be mostly up for grabs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
IP address only. Works fine, and you have near limitless combinations. Thank you, and have a wonderfully confusing afternoon.
This will just make it such a mess as to be unusable.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Memory sucks, but muscle memory is amazing. My CTRL key recently broke (spilled some booze on it, waiting a week on the replacement keyboard), and it has slowed me right the fuck down when it comes to doing anything on the computer. When I think 'open new tab', my fingers go to "CTRL+T". You know why so many people were pissed off about the FF3 awesome bar? Because it requires thinking about your automatic movements. For me, when I want to go to /., I don't type in "slashdot.org", I hit "sl down enter". Usually with a CTRL+T in front of it.
The point is, for popular websites, you'll quickly train yourself to hit certain numbers to get to the page. And of course, with bookmarks (and the Awesome Bar), most people don't even need to worry about that. Plus there will quickly be an online phone book, located at 0, 411, and other common directory assistance numbers. Then you just do a look up. Besides, the good ol' series of tubes used to work by phone numbers. BBS anyone? The point is it is doable. Not to mention the fact that someone will just create an "are you feeling lucky" type system for entering words into the address bar.
This is a workable solution, but it will be unpopular and hence never get off the ground. Shame that.
Cynical Idealist
This is one of the DUMBEST ideas I've ever heard... Allowing a for-profit business to determine the web addressing scheme of the people's Internet. I thought ICANN was supposed to protect the integrity of the web? What is ICANN thinking????!?!?!?
Sorry.
That's not the correct Carlin List of Seven.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Good one!
Though I think we should let Dave Barry have that one.
The CAPTCHA for this post is "sensuous". I find that quite disturbing on many levels.
wtf.FTW!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
on .wtf!
How is this offtopic... it's actually pretty .funny
My Sig says it all for what I'd get for a TLD :-)
...in bed
You missed what just happened, the GP let slip his encryption technique... ROT31.
ICAAN released a final draft for public comment today, June 22, 2008.
Public comment closes June 23, 2008.
.ftw is mine, mine I tell you!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhackhackwheezecough...
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
The TLD system currently serves no real purpose: Large companies in all countries have .coms. CC TLDs can't be trusted because they're used for vanity as much as to indicate what country a site is in/about. CC TLDs indicate where the site was ostensibly registered, but not necessarily where it's hosted, which is what counts (along with what country you're in) from a legal perspective. Not to mention that most of the time people just don't care.
As for "TLD squatting", it shouldn't be nearly as bad as normal domain squatting if the TLDs cost "several thousand dollars"; provided there aren't any stupid loopholes -- which is never guaranteed when you're dealing with ICANN. Otherwise you'll just handle it like a regular domain dispute. While the process isn't perfect, it's already well-defined.
It will (I guess?) increase the strain on the root name servers, but hopefully the folks proposing this have thought that much through and it's not an issue.
Game... blouses.
OMG. Anyone can create any second level domain they want! Think of the chaos!!! Oh, wait, you said TLD. OMFG Think of the chaos!!! Extortion! Porn! Actually nothing bad will happen. Settle down 14 year old slashdot readers.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/22/business/net23.php?page=2
first.post?
So expect the registrars to get behind this quickly and completely. It'll make their cash registers ring, as typosquatters try to register variants of well-known domains and sell them to phishers, and legitimate domain owners race to beat them to it. In the end, a large amount of money will flow to registrars, every TLD except a few gTLDs and the ccTLDs will be blacklisted by default, and lots of people will own worthless domains that nobody really wants.
And ICANN will congratulate itself on a job well done.
Typo squatting would be the real danger. Imagine if I registered ebay.copm, google.copm, amazon.copm, etc., thereby capturing all the traffic from perhaps the world's most common typo.
What we need is /fewer/ TLD's, not more, you greedy ICANT bastards. I say we eliminate everything but .com, .gov, and .edu, and implement stricter controls to ensure only true government and education institutions can register in the later two. We could still allow the country-specific domain names for nations recognized by the UN, but here in the US, we should eliminate .us.
Existing registrations to other domains would be grandfathered in for 10 years before being phased out.
Under US law, parody isn't copyright infringement. So how about copying just about everything in *.com, doing a regex to replace certain words with obscenities, and reposting it as *.parody?
Then when you search, why shouldn't Google assume you're as likely looking for the parody as The Real Thing?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
It's worse. What they are proposing is nothing less than the total elimination of the current DNS and replacing it with AOL keywords. And raising the price a hundredfold while they are at it. And making sure it stays centralized under ICANN's control by cutting out the national registrars.
Within six months of going live .com will be but a memory as every entity with enough budget to buy bandwidth to actually run a server on buys their own TLD, or keyword. Ford.com becomes ford. google.com becomes google, mail.google.com probably becomes googlemail or mail.google, assuming they don't just outbid every other webmail company and just have 'email' or 'mail.' Just send to userid@email.
And domains will all be to the highest bidder with ICANN getting the money instead of domain squatters. Old legacy domains will be taken as a sign of a cheap bastard who can't afford a 'real' name.
Democrat delenda est
Creation of new domains is like extortion. For example, Disney will have to pay for disney.fun, disney.kids, disney.parks, disney.film, etc. just to make sure that those don't turn into porn sites or worse.
So, then keep increasing the number of TLD's until nobody is expected to own every .TLD.
A hundred thousand or so should do.
Why shouldn't Mike Disney be able to buy disney.plumbing?
Enough TLD's would stop all these stupid WIPO trademark disputes.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
> For example, Disney will have to pay for disney.fun
No they won't. They will buy disney and within six months traffic to .com, .org, .net, .anything will be darned near zero as usage of the AOL keyword version of the Internet becomes the new norm. Periods in URLS will be for losers who can't afford 'real' Internet names and nobody will think a Disney site would be on an old legacy domain as anything other than a redirector for someone using old ad copy.
Democrat delenda est
my law firm can register clownpenis.fart
No kitty, this is my pot pie!
I think the idea is for IBM to register only the www.us.ibm TLD instead of registering all the ibm.com ibm.fr ibm.es ibm.co.uk ibm.co.tw and so on.
Another side effect is to push out of the control loop all the international ICANN-like institudes managing .fr, .es, .co.tw ...
/me registers .localhost and .localdomain
jfgi
for all the russian reversals! btw, in soviet russia, TLDs register YOU!
Kibo's old posting about Happynet (everyone who knows they're a bozo gets a newsgroup named bozo.personal.* and everyone who doesn't think they're a bozo gets megabozo.personal.*) would work as well. See http://www.kibo.com/kibopost/happynet_98.html
I want .fucksyourmom
I don't even understand why TLDs survived, except that sleaze make money off of them. They provide about as much information as the http://www. at the beginning. Think of the children - I know, let's generalize the protocol for something almost no one does! OMFG the name servers will die if everyone uses them, caching is too complicated!
Why not just allow ad-hoc registrations of TLDs, cheap? Yes, it's punting the .com problem up a level -- but why do we care? The original point of .com, .net, .org, etc is pretty much gone.
The only point I see to TLDs now is .gov, and really, that can still be done. The government, just like any organization, could register a TLD, and spread the word that anything not under that TLD is not officially associated with them.
People tell me that there are technological reasons for this, but I don't get it. EVERYONE has a .com address, so why would it be that much more difficult if they had the same address without the .com?
I think it would actually reduce the problem where people buy every damn thing -- no need to buy .com, .net, .org, .mobi, .info, .tv, etc, just to make sure people end up at Widgets, Inc when they go to a widgets.* website -- just buy yourself a .widgets and be done with it.
Of course, that's probably not how this is going to work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I don't use DNS knowingly. Seriously, I don't - a server I administer is on an IP, it has a domain name, but it's actually quicker to type in the (decimal, not dotted decimal) IP than the domain name.
And for other DNS queries? Google - type it in the search bar, hit search. Or it's in a bookmark/del.icio.us link.
And before some wise-ass cracks, yes, my MSN client will probably contact a server using DNS to get it's IP, but that's cheating ;)
Apparently the same thing has happened in Japan...
As the title suggests.
I can only imagine that this will have no real benefit other than increasing the already alarming amount of sludge that clogs the intertube and giving spammers a bigger playground.
Not to mention, that anyone with a registered domain name (about which they care) should be pretty upset by this, because it will dilute your brand uniqueness relative to the total number of domains, along with forcing you to purchase more domains if you're of the mind to prevent 'typo domains' from poaching valuable traffic and sending clueless visitors to unsavory websites.
@ICANN: This is just disappointing.
"If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting the results you've always gotten."
If you create an infinite supply of domain names with "disney" in them, their price naturally falls to 0. Disney would be unable to buy all domain names with "disney" in them, but squatters would be no more able to sell them or get paid for them, because it becomes a club anybody can join at any time. If you have disney.fun, disney.kids, disney.parks and disney.film, I can go and register disney.joy, disney.children, disney.resorts, disney.movies, disney.mickey, disney.niños, disney.parques, disney.fun-for-all-the-family, etc.
Disney would potentially need to pursue domain name registrations that violate its trademarks, but they already have to pursue such violations in non-domain-name cases anyway.
If you ask me, the TLD free-for-all idea can be pretty good. The TLD system was valuable in the early days of the net, before indexes and search engines, but it doesn't really add much value to the Internet anymore. If I can find any site I want through a search engine or internet directory site, then domain names can be anything whatsoever.
Are you adequate?
Wouldn't this kind of remove the point of going after .XXX? I know a large part of the reason that they wanted .XXX to open up is so that porn companies could buy it up and you could block the TLD, making it easier to filter "for the children" and things like that.
.XXX be worth if you could simply by my.porn.site? or mysite.porn or mysite.adultsonly?
With a TLD free-for-all, you now open up a can of worms that would be disgustingly awful.
What would
What about the spammers?
www.paypal.mybanking
www.paypal.ebay
www.paypal.banking
www.pay.pal
www.pay-pal.onlinebanks
Wow..just wow.
for some sort of people. atm you get sued for the part before .com, after you get sued for both. and a lot more people will get sued, because disney.sux and disney.myass and disney.isgay will all belong to different people. but it does not stop there, the funny man that owns .isgay will not have very much fun... nearly every subdomain will be a reason for suing. that is a problem every meaningful TLD will have. on the other hand, what is a company forced to do? yea, as some already mentioned, disney will not only (as it is now) be forced to buy .de, .uk and what not, it now will be forced to buy nearly every crap it can get.
;)
but i for one, i.dontcare.tbh
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
I want in on that. http://dot.dot/
I think you need to see a doctor.
Sorry, cut and paste mistake. Corrected.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
So don't use DNS to solve the Internet search problem, use search engines and specialized directories.
Hell, you can try it now. Turn off your browser's address bar, and navigate the web with nothing but bookmarks, search engines and browser history. It works pretty well. Most disadvantages you find will either have better solutions than the address bar, or, in the absolute worst case, are only disadvantages for users who are technically savvy enough that they could turn on an optional address bar.
Are you adequate?
No, DNS was good for the early days of the Internet, and succeeded at supporting that. It still also succeeds at providing an official layer of indirection between symbolic host names and IP addresses, to allow the relationship to change or be many-to-many.
We have better solutions nowadays to the "intent" you allude to: search engines and web directories. The real problem isn't that DNS has broken down, it's that we're still clinging on to it as the way to organize the Internet's content.
Try this experiment: turn off the address bar in your browser, and navigate the web with nothing more than your search engine of choice as your home page, and bookmarks to useful sites. That, and its future improvements, are what should "replace" DNS. (That doesn't mean that DNS and URLs go away, but rather, that they become low-level protocols invisible to most users.)
Are you adequate?
I bet that one would go over well.
Allowing custom TLDs is the worst idea ever, if they allow it without restrictions. Generic terms, such as ".kids", ".car", etc. for TLDs should remain in the exclusive realm of ICANN. Recognizable brand names though, after its determined that there is no trademark infringment globally (not an easy thing), could be made top-level TLDs for $50k or greater.
In other words - this idea works only if ICANN says that they have, and are responsible for exercising, veto authority on any proposed TLD that is not a recognized international trademark. All other TLDs would have to be proposed through the standard process and voted on, $50k fee or not.
My browser would no longer know what top-level domains to try when I type in "google" and hit enter. I would not know what top-level domain to use. The very idea is ridiculous, and would make WWW use much more difficult for everybody, in exchange for corporate profits!
No secret which way I would vote. Nay.
They should visit film.disney.com, kids.disney.com, and fun.disney.com. The DNS works backwards ...
Indeed. One of the oldtimers at a local and old ISP -- http://www.mv.com/ -- related the story about how they got their domain name. Originally, the thinking was that domain names were a scarce resource. So rather than having everybody register a 2LD themselves, they would get one from their local ISP. So my domain name would be dragonhawk.mv.com or something like that. Could you imagine the chaos that would ensue if everyone had to register their own domain name?
My, how times have changed.
...and people should learn that just as they learn how an email address works and how to work web forms.
I've found that any plan that depends on people learning is in trouble. ;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I've long thought that they should get rid of .com, .net, .org, .gov etc, and only have country domains at the top level. That would make it clear which legal system governs that site.
You could mirror the current TLDs into .us to begin with - that would sort itself out pretty quick. You could also make any domain name without a county code resolve to the domain in the country you're in.
This resolves all the issues about trademark law, etc. They just use the law of that country.
Pity it'll never happen...
If you've been to asia you would notice that they use search keywords in their advertisements. Also, if you've watched joe average computer user use a web browser they dont know the difference the address bar and a search box on their start page.
5 years, keyword search advertising will be all that you see/hear.
Imagine someone registers the ".c0m" TLD and starts to offer it for phishers, who set up "citibank.c0m" to hijack hapless users and trick them out of their money. Or the TLD could be "russianletterS-o-m" or "c-o-russianletterlowercaseT" or anything that looks visually similar to the genuine ".com".
This will be paradise for cybercriminals!
I think there is a wanton conspiracy here. Introcuding anarchism to the net will destroy it, just like 19th century anarchism of assasinations destroyed the tzarist Russia and eventually led to the rise of an even worse Stalinist-communist rule.
In a similar vein, online crime fuelled by the anarchist destruction of structures and rules of the net will lead to terrible lawlessness, eventually prompting national governments to carve out their countries' networks from the global mess. Those national level mini-internets will be closely monitored, authoratively secured and netizens will loose most of their traditional cyber-freedoms under big daddy oppression. Global electronic communication will cease and people will become information-deprived subjects who are easy to manipulate.
There is a cabal behind it, maybe the jews, maybe the freemasons or the bilderbergs, but we should definitely fight the future!
It is curious, but I thought that the real problem we all have with naming in the internet was not a short supply of names, but to the contrary, the ever growing number of fake names with slightly changed names (like http://slashdot.net/) used to catch click. I sometimes wonder if the guys at the ICANN ever use the internet of are still stuck with fax based communications!
Think of the poor root DNS servers?
This is insane. also "We are doing this on a cost recovery basis. We've already spent $10m on this" .... oh my, so its it settled then
I'm sure John Smith or Wala Wala Washington can't wait to get his very own unique TLD with his name! It's not like anyone else will be bidding for it or anything!
How will this affect private (aka bogus) domains for people running internal applications? For example, we had page.intranet in our old company and loads of the HR tools run on sites like hr.wwwin etc. This will cause total havoc at least to begin with!
Now there's one hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is!
'off topic if you want'.... this wasnt even closely related to the topic in hand
What about matching for such domains. Right now, when someone says something.com or writes it, you know that it has to do with the internet and that its something you can go to. But what happens when businesses have "their way" and just put "Go to Ford" in an advertisement. What does that mean? Go to Ford. You mean a live dealership?
Most forms of communication/contact, you can tell what it is because it has form to it. I can look at a phone number and tell that its a phone number. I can look at an address and tell its an address and so on.
Please don't do this ICANN, I think its a mistake.
My parents' first phone number was Oxbow 4 7188 which was simply OX4-7188 or 694-7188. They did not live in Oxbow (they lived in Hackensack).
Seems to me that there are big problems in store for TLD's that start issuing email like:
me@google
Many web-based email validations are based on a regex like: .*@.*\..*
Requiring a TLD and a "sub-domain" - so the above example will be denied in many, many web applications even though it will now be a valid and potentially common email address. Just one example, but I'd bet there are numerous other web form validations that will fail for new sites. For example will you be allowed to give your pingback blog as:
http://googlepages/
I think not. Not that it's not valid, but much of the web will not accept it.
new TLD and icanhascheezburger parody site...all in one:
http://www.icannhasnewtld.com/