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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."
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.
Say you would have to pay 250$ to purchase a domain name. How many would a squatter be willing to buy?
Of course, that would limit domain names to basically the corporate-only world, since how many private individuals would pay that much just to have their blog or family website at its own name?
You want to get rid of squatters? Simple:
1) Elimintate "tasting" completely.
2) Require an actual site (not just a page of ads) go live at any give address within 30 days.
That would, however, reduce the registrars' profits, so you'll never see them happen.
You missed
3) Prohibit exchange of domain names. Don't want one? Let it expire and it goes back into the pool. No, you can't sell it, any more than you can sell your telephone number.
But again, this wouldn't benefit the registrars, so it won't happen.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I agree with you. What you suggest is similar to what is required outside of "cyberspace".
However, the 30 days part is a little short. Perhaps even 6 months would be short. It seems you want a real substantive site, and sometimes getting the domain name first is an integral part of the business plan. Getting funding can take even longer, which is sometimes required to get a functional site online.
Requiring that the DNS is not parked, and is in use by an actual server which gives up a page describing your site with contact information and a construction link might be enough.
However, Web sites are not the only services which are used by a domain name either. I actually have plenty of domain names that are only used for email and other services too.
So I like your idea, but you would have to carefully consider what are the requirements of a domain being considered "live".
They can buy them and have them resolve to nothing, or they can let someone else buy them and have them resolve to hardcore pornography.
Not buying them is a lot more embarrassing.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Never mind the levels of confusion it would be creating.
Especially when I start registering common file extensions, like .exe, .bat, .jpg, .txt...
It makes sense for small companies, but then large ones, who actually do operate all over the world, would have to but 75 different domain names to cover each country they operate in.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Generally it is true that it wouldn't be an issue if two companies with the same name are in different industries. However, in this case it would be a problem, because of Disney's widespread brand recognition.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 2000 sued the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and successfully forced them to change their name. They had an agreement in which the wrestling federation could use the initials, but it was determined there was some violation of that agreement.
And the last time I checked the World Wildlife Fund hasn't gotten into professional wrestling.
Sure, but when google.search redirects to msn.search (especially in a sneaky, but not trademark infringy way), people will start to use it more and more. And as custom TLD's become more and more commonplace, less people will think of .com or .co.[country code] as the standard. .com's will become much like .net's or .org's.
What ICANN really messed up with was the TLD concept reading backwards. It should be tld.domain.www, or com.google.mail, com.google.search, com.google.etc. It confuses a lot of people to have the order the other way. And now, if TLD's spread like this, suddenly there are tons of people with .mail etc. that can all look more realistic than mail.google.com.
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