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ICANN Board Approves Wide Expansion of TLDs
penciling_in writes "The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the relaxation of the rules for the introduction of new Top-Level Domains — a move that could drastically change the Internet. 'We are opening up a new world and I think this cannot be underestimated,' said Roberto Gaetano, an ICANN board member. The future outcome of this decision was discussed on Slashdot a few days ago. It also seems, based on this post on CircleID from last month, that ICANN was already in preparation mode of mass TLD introductions. The new decision will allow companies to register their brands as generic top-level domain names (TLDs). For instance, Microsoft could apply to have a TLD such as '.msn', Apple apply for '.mac', and Google for '.goog'... The decision was taken unanimously on Thursday, June 26, 2008 at the 32nd ICANN Meeting in Paris."
I sincerely hope that this doesn't become too commonplace, and that .com, .net, and .org don't just get thrown out the window. Call me lazy, but I love being able to ctrl+enter, shift+enter, and ctrl+shift+enter to auto-complete .com/.net/.org respectively. Typing "www.search.google" is just more tedious than typing, "google [ctrl][enter]"
http://slash.dot?
Let's say Apple registers .apple or .ipod. Do they automatically get ALL of the possible domains within that TLD? If not, who controls the TLD? If .apple is a TLD, can I go to GoDaddy and register porcupine.apple? If they do control it, do they have to pay to register domains within their own TLD? Or does this deal come with free unlimited domains?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Talk about printing your own money.
This is like paying the city to give your driveway a name, so you can brag about what a blue blood you are for having your own street.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Hmmm..let's open up the TLD's so that DNS servers will become overcrowded with useless DNS information that will quickly go out of date and throw the usability and simplicity of the current schema right out the window.
Additionally, of course, common folk will have more trouble getting a domain name for that personal website/application because the fees are going to increase exponetially.
Cash-in for ICANN - and end users lose.
This will only cause more confusion, especially to the average person.
But they get more $ out of the extra registrations, so we know why it *really* happened.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Then don't. Vote with your fingers and ummm... go somewhere else.
But http://slashdot.dot/ leads to an equal number of slashes and dots (not to mention maximizing the number of slashes and dots with out making the URL tedious). Surely this is a good thing?
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
"As if the internet didn't have enough arbitrary hodge-podge already."
It does - just look at Slashdot. It's hardly an 'organization' (.org), especially now that it's owned by a commercial entity (.com). Heck, it started out as somebody's personal little site.. happened to be an american (.us).
Tons more examples of current sites being on domains that they 'shouldn`t' be in, and also a lot of examples of where that is the case simply because sites change over time.
So if all of it is pretty much arbitrary anyway, then why not do away with it?
Heck, some people already have... *entirely*
For example: http://bi/
( disregard any re-direction by browser to www.bi.com ; open a shell, go ping 'bi'. If you're on windows, go ping 'bi.' or it will look for a local host)
I understand the many technical, psychological, financial, etc. reasons against this. But in terms of organization - we don't have any anyway.
persontal i want to try and get .local
just so i can fuck with all the small biz NT/AD domain installs out there that doen't use a fully qualified name
as soon as .local is resolvable soooo many people are going to have a bad day
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Instead of letting people own/register a TLD, they should have just let people register domains in *any* TLD.
And so it comes full circle. The ancient flat hosts file that the ARPAnet used way back in it's early days, the one that was abandoned in favor of hierarchical DNS because it wasn't possible to manage a flat namespace when the net was a few thousand machines, returns. What, you think the companies that insist on registering every variation of their name in every domain in existence won't insist on having their own TLD too? And we'll be back to hostnames being of the form "ford". And "fordfocus". And "focus". And "myfocus". And "myford". All belonging to Ford Motors. And the inevitable fights when Focus Magazine (a fine-art photography magazine) also wants "focus" and has the trademark to justify getting it just as much as Ford.
Siiiiiigh...
I don't know about you, but none of my router tables have DNS names in them.
They feared the study that shows that 90% of all traffic that's not torrents relating to copyrighted material points to the red light district.
The problem I have is with the dispute resolution system. According to Paul Twomey of ICANN (as quoted by the BBC), "[i]f there is a dispute, we will try and get the parties together to work it out. But if that fails there will be an auction and the domain will go to the highest bidder."
So, I pick a name, and McDeepPockets comes along and thinks, hey, that's a great idea - I'll just take that, thank-you. They "dispute" it, and ICANN's response is... well, if you really can't settle your differences, high bidder gets it. Wow... that's going to make for a pretty mercenary internet.
I am more interested in seeing a list of the immediatly blocked list.
.local - this is very common in Active Directory structures to differentiate the LAN/WAN environments.
.local and started to be able to randomly answer requests from around the world of millions of potential queries?
One thing they would want to block is the
Imagine if some company bought the
This brings up a good point, if you want to look at where this can be exploited, simply look at the dropped and invalid query records of the current root servers. I just hope they have some common sense... oh wait...
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.