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.'"

Comments

Why now?

[QJimbo]

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?

Re:Why now?

[denis-The-menace]

Greed

Re:Why now?

[rugatero]

Because consistency has long since evaporated. There are plenty of commercial sites running a .org and the .net tld is nowadays meaningless (unless the meaning is "I couldn't afford a .com"). Also, think of all the organisations that use another country's tld, rather than their own. (.tv anyone?)

Re:Why now?

[rs79]

"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?"

It's documented. Look at the "msggroup" archives from the era, it's the first mailing list at a time when there was only one mailing list. They say this is how it went down. The network was young, maybe 1000 nodes or so, and totally arbitrary hostnames were about to be phased out in favour of hierarchical DNS names. This would eliminate the problem of the host table getting huge, and the bigger it got the more often it needed updating.

DNS names were decentralized. Nameservers point to other nameservers which point to nameservers, thus the whole name database management problem went away as the data was decentralized.

But about the only thing poeple agreed on was "." or dot. Remember at the time the network was being used by military and aerospace contractors and universites. That's pretty much it.

So there was .mil, .nato, .arpa and then .com and .net for "commercial networks" (not that any existed then) and .net for "network infrastructure" - it was supposed to be for routers and stuff. >org was for "anything else" and wasn't "for non profits" as the icann bozos now claim. Check the rfc.

Nobdoy really like the names, they argued about it for about a month, then Jon Postel just decided, and that was that.

Steve Wolff is the guy that took the network out of the hands of the US government and freed it so anybody could do anything. But in moving administration of the network he *forgot* about the domain system so it stays in the hands of the US government. Where of course it was immediatly taken over by special interest groups where it's been ever since.

Don't expect any ratinal name schemes out of thesde clowns. If you look at the 2000 Marina Del Rey ICANN conference video where they picked the .museum and .coop winners you'll hear Darth Cerf say "I don't like the way that plays on the ear" and that was that, for $50K application for a tld that's how much thought you got, made only more ironic by the fact Cerf is deaf.

For $50K a deaf guy says it doesn't sound right to him.

I'm dying to see what the $185K test is although I suspect it involved telepathy, midgets and a sausage.

Re:What individuals would apply?

[glindsey]

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.

Re:Might as well...

[Dogtanian]

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?

Application Process

[Fezzick]

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.

Re:What individuals would apply?

[Espinas217]

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.

Vote with your feet and check out OpenNIC

[pongo000]

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?

Re:So who is going to register...

[a whoabot]

I'll just end this here and take LobsterThermidorACrevetteWithAMornaySauceServedInAProvencaleManner-
WithShallotsAndAuberginesGarnishedWithTrufflePateBrandyAndWithAFriedEggOnTopAnd.spam