Slashdot Mirror
ICANN Releases Draft For New TLDs
NdJ writes "Looks like a whole new domain name battle ground is about to open up. ICANN have just made available their How to Apply for a New Generic Top-Level Domain Draft Applicant Guidebook. It won't be cheap for the individual, but certainly achievable for many domain-name-pimps. 'The Evaluation Fee is designed to make the new gTLD program self-funding only. This was a recommendation of the Generic names Supporting Organization. A detailed costing methodology — including historical program development costs, and predictable and uncertain costs associated with processing new gTLD applications through to delegation in the root zone — estimates a per applicant fee of $US185,000. This is the estimated cost per evaluation in the first application round.'"
I always assumed the reason behind .org, .net, .com and country TLDs was to keep things organized and consistent. Why have they decided to do what appears to me as simply going back on themselves?
...".spam"?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
ICANN has all the moneys?
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
I disagree. Google has assloads of money, so they register the TLD "google". Then they can provide "groups.google," "search.google," "gmail.google," "maps.google," et cetera. Same for companies like McDonald's, Microsoft, Chase Bank, et cetera. Every big company that can afford it will use the TLD as their domain name, and ICANN will get solid gold Ferraris from the money they rake in.
Meanwhile, do you think Ubuntu will be able to pony up the money for "get.ubuntu"? How will it look when "www.fedora.org" has to compete with "get.windows"?
The .com, .net, and .org TLDs will become the "subsidized housing" of the Net, where all those who can't pony up the cash have to stick their domains.
Of course, this means a company like McDonalds will now be forced to register "mcdonalds.[every possible alphanumeric string]" -- this ought to be interesting.
Does this mean ICANN has cheezburger?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
INDIVIDUAL: I'd liked to register a TLD please.
ICANN: Ok, what is it?
INDIVIDUAL: foo
ICANN: Ok... we'll have to do some extensive research on this.
ICANN: [Turns around, ruffles some papers, turns back around]
ICANN: Ok our extensive army of legal analysts deem "foo" to be acceptable. That will be $180,000 please!
What could possibly require a fee that high (I don't buy the "staff time" and "investment" line)? I mean... if you already resigned to polluting the name space with gimmicky TLDs, why should ".foo" cost more to register than "acme.com"? Is it just a barrier for entry?
Actually... $180,000 is for the luxury of filling out the application form... you aren't guaranteed to get the TLD. So lucky you, you get to pay up front before they say yea or nay.
As it is, ICANN has been falling flat on what they could be doing to curb the spam epidemic. But now if they start selling TLDs to any schmuck with enough money, they've just thrown what little clout they had, right out the window.
Previously, domain registrars were obligated to abide by the registrars terms set forth by ICANN/Internic as part of their terms for being a registrar in the ICANN-controlled TLDs. But if ICANN is going to sell new TLDs outright, they are handing over the keys entirely. Just wait until people start buying TLDs that are misspelled variants of viagra. Then we'll see spam floods from those and nobody will be accountable for the bogus pharmacies under those domains that are selling poison across the internet.
I agree, ICANN's time has come and gone. It should be replaced by an international organization with international allies for international goals and solving international problems. Anyone who thinks that the US can solve the spam problem just by passing new laws is a fool.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Meanwhile, do you think Ubuntu will be able to pony up the money for "get.ubuntu"? How will it look when "www.fedora.org" has to compete with "get.windows"?
It will look exactly the same, most of the people today don't type domain names, they just use a search engine and click on the first link. They won't even know what a domain name is or where to find it.
La vida no es una pastafrola.
OpenNIC has been around since 2000, offering free TLDs. We're still doing it, 8 years later, and it's still free. The only way altroots will flourish in the oppressive environment forced upon us by ICANN is if more people vote with their feet and migrate away from ICANN to alternate roots.
The alternative to ICANN is out there. When will people stop bitching about ICANN and actually do something about it through action rather than words?
a company like McDonalds will now be forced to register "mcdonalds.[every possible alphanumeric string]"
I suspect this will actually force them to register "*.mcdonalds" as a TLD. And likewise with other big companies.
Actually, the parent poster had a better point. What's to stop someone from registering "McDonalds.Hamburger", "McDonalds.Fries", or "McDonalds.restaurant", other than the cost.
A lot of generic domain keywords are often used to usurp specific names. It should would be confusing if you Googled "McDonalds" and you got the above domains along with "[whatever].McDonalds". Likely having to lead to major companies having to drop a lot on custom TLDs or fighting people infringing their trademark and diluting their brand.
As cool as the idea is, being a web dev. myself, I just see this becoming an even more chaotic mess than before. How much will the ".sex" TLD go for? What's a person going to do with a ".restaurant" or ".france" domain?
One thing is for certain... Google and all other search engines will have a heck of a time trying to devise new algorithms to return relevancy, especially if someone registered a ".restaurant" TLD and then uses it as a "restaurant networking site" (like a social networking site) and charges memberships to create "McDonalds.restaurant" or whatever?
Uph! Lots of work for the Search Engine folks, let alone new ways for SEO wizards to try and abuse and game the competition. And in the end, the internet "surfers" will be worse off unless some sort of standard comes about to keep it organized. But, perhaps not. It certainly doesn't look good on paper, to me.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Yes, but really, do we even need TLDs at all anymore, if they're going to allow anyone with enough cash to register a TLD, why not just do away with them altogether.
http://slashdot/
http://google/
http://microsoft/
etc.
Realistically this would be better than having them register "http://*.google/", "http://*.microsoft/", etc. and would basically achieve the same purpose, TLDs were originally made to keep things organised, clearly they no longer want that.
Of course this would probably cause problems if you have "foo.com" and "foo.org" fighting over "foo"
On the other hand it would allow for "foo.fighters"
I'm currently in the process of getting loans to register ".sucks", and ".lol".
I'll sell domains and make tons of money.
Many years ago I proposed .here as something like the DNS equivalent of RFC1918 IP addresses[1].
e.g. anyone can then use *.here for their own network (stuff like .local or .localnet would probably be for machine use - but AFAIK they are not formally reserved either).
So if you roam to a WiFi network within range, http://jukebox.here/ could control a jukebox for that location.
And http://about.here/ might actually tell you something useful. On most wifi networks this could say something like:
"Welcome to the default LinkSys WiFi homepage. The owner of this network has not set a usage policy yet. You should probably assume you're not supposed to use this network unless otherwise authorized. Please be nice :)".
But some might provide permission (maybe with some T&C).
Of course it would be safer if https was used, or the http redirected to a FQDN + https e.g. https://about.mydomain.com/.
But you'd get lots of grumbles about certs and all that...
Unfortunately I don't have millions of dollars spare to buy a TLD and then give it to the world to use.
[1] http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01.txt
http://www.circleid.com/posts/top_level_domains_for_addressing_by_physical_context/