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ICANN Responds To gTLD Plan Comments
angry tapir writes "ICANN has delayed its plans to sell new generic top-level domains while responding to public comments about the controversial proposal. The organization has released a 154-page document detailing and analyzing the hundreds of comments (PDF) it has received about its gTLD plan. In response to several concerns brought up by the public and companies in the Internet industry, ICANN has moved out the projected timeline for taking applications for new gTLDs from September to December."
a 154-page document detailing and analyzing the hundreds of comments (PDF)
It's a trap!
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Further balkanization of gTLD's does nothing for the end user. It will be a great stream of new revenue for registrars though.
ICANN has become nothing more than a pawn of domain registrars. Read the meeting minutes and see for yourself.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
waste of money. our company won't dish out that much for a domain name. .com, .net, and .org works perfectly fine for us. Sorry Microsoft but .ms already is an anti-trusted domain name =P
I, for one, am for it. At the very least it will derail the slimy domain squatters that just sit on every-damn-word-in-the-dictionary-and-combination-thereof.com|net|org
And I don't want to hear the shit about companies protecting their brand name. It is just about impossible to give your company a name that has not already been used *somewhere* and/or registered as a domain name.
- Sick of it all
And I was so looking forward to registering ".1" so I could realize my dream of having an external URL at 127.0.0.1.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Now I don't know about you, but most "people" don't have that kind of money to throw at a domain name. The real thing to think about: How will this affect online shopping? Those big companies with money to blow will get their fancy gTLDs whereas small businesses and freshly started ones who don't have that kind of money will be stuck with what may eventually become the 'less appealing' .com/.org/etc that we already have. Will these small companies be pushed aside because they lack the appeal of having a fancy gTLD? Will people be more suspicious of them because it is easier for malicious people to set up a spoofed site with a .com than a .insert-big-corp-here?
Guess it means the .hascheezburguer domain will not be released.
In other words, ICANN not .hazcheezburguer. :(
I wonder if it's a canned response.
This is just a blatant money grab by ICANN. It does nothing for the end user, and nothing for domain owners. Will your life be made better with a .penis extension? It just adds another level of confusion and makes names more difficult to remember. We already have enough dumb TLDs, why do we need infinity more?
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
The best example of such a registry I can think of is the callsign of a radio station. These are globally unique (the first letter or two identified the country, and the rest is assigned by the radio regulatory authority of that country (in the US, the FCC). Thus, I could see adding a TLD .radio, which would be limited to callsigns as the second level domain. (e.g. wkrp.radio)
Other such global registries could include UPC or ISBN prefixes. PCI, USB or ethernet manufacturer IDs, or the like are also globally unique ID's and may be worth putting into DNS.
Obviously they have canned this idea - pardon the pun - most likely due to being inundanted by requests for domains like .cheezburger
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
So they took feedback, and then did what with it? They compiled (parts of) it into a PDF. Wow, I'm impressed. Now in response they have moved out the date by a few months; great.
.viagra and .software TLDs and self-administers the registrations within them as permitted by the ICANN plans. Once that happens we'll get spam from dirtcheap.viagra and superubercheap.software, which will be for domains that have no readable whois data and ICANN will just shrug their shoulders and say "talk to the registrar" (who themselves won't speak to us).
I can't wait until some shady group in another country buys the
Thanks ICANN. I guess the assumption was right, you don't give a damn about feedback after all. As long as you can make a few more bucks on new registrar accreditations (whatever that will mean when you start selling new gTLDs) you're happy, right? And thats really all that matters on the internet.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Just a thought experiment. Suppose you set up a TLD - .bob for instance. Users can set up domains for web sites, e-mail, FTP etc. within .bob just like any other domain, but the rules of using it are different from the rest of the web. Such as -
.bob account holders can access .bob sites. No one else can get in, not even google. .bob sites cannot be accessed anonymously, but .bob sites must guarantee privacy - your usage can't be shared with anyone else.
.bob e-mail addresses or chat names must be linked to an actual person. .bob users can only send/receive e-mails or IM to other .bob addresses. Nothing outside .bob is allowed in. .bob access
.bob account comes with a license with nearly all known media companies. (www.timewarner.bob, for instance.) For a monthly fee you can access any media they have digitized - books, news, film, music, games, software, etc. It's DRMed out the wazoo, of course. All usage is tracked. Violate the terms of use and you lose your .bob access.
.ftw might only allow services that are fully encrypted and anonymous, for example.
Web -
- Only other
-
E-mail and IM -
- No anonymous addresses or accounts.
-
- Spam is not allowed. At all. You spam, you lose your
Content -
- Your
In other words, a fully privatized portion of the internet. A nightmare to some, but to others - "Access to all media? No spam? $39.95 a month? Where do I sign?"
Other TLDs could set up other ecologies.
Is there anything that would prevent TLD owners from doing this?
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Even US trademark law does not scale well to the Internet. I can't imagine the disaster GTLDs would be for international trademark disputes. The IP lawyers must be licking their lips at the thought of GTLDs.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
A number of commenters urged ICANN not to move forward with the new gTLD program because of threats to DNS stability and security, and warned that the new program will create a new wave of malicious activity, including spam and phishing.
Phishing Hell if they don't do things right, for sure.
What's the point of this program anyway? Being able to register fancy urls? By paying $185,000 + yearly fees?
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. --Ben Franklin
...about how to best handle "colliding" gTLDs previously established by alternate roots? I don't see it anywhere in the linked PDF.
Oh, silly me...Vint Cerf has already waxed majestic about how alternate roots would be "disastrous" to the architecture of the Internet. So I suppose this means ICANN can (pun intended) conveniently ignore the entire issue of alternate roots, even though China has already established an alternate root, with no sign of the meltdown predicted by Dr. Cerf.
what may eventually become the 'less appealing' .com/.org/etc
.com
I don't see that happening for a long time. For most, the "web" is
Speaking of which, custom TLDs just sounds like a way to make squatters spend a whole lot more money. Sounds good to me.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Will it, really? I mean, if any organization can register a TLD and sell subdomains within it, that would drastically increase the supply of domain names. The prices of domains should go down, in that case, since if you can't get joe-blow.tld1 you could get joe-blow.tld2.
Of course, this is assuming that the domain registrars don't form a cartel. But the point is that generic TLDs aren't a big deal; a cartel of domain registrars is.
Are you adequate?
You're failing to ask a crucial question here: why do we insist in continuing to use domain names as an end-user content addressing mechanism? Why not use web directories, search engines, bookmarks and portals instead?
There are technical reasons for DNS as part of the low-level plumbing of the internet, certainly, but are there really any good reasons for a non-technical user to be aware of it?
Are you adequate?
But the point of DNS isn't to "organize" the content of the net. The point of DNS is to delegate and distribute authority for maintaining the records of a database of domain names to IP addresses, and answering queries about the records. If I have example.com, that means I can assign mappings within example.com, or delegate authority to assign mappings within a subdomain to some other party. That's all it is.
If we want to organize the content of the internet, we have better tools for doing so, like search engines or directories.
Are you adequate?
Further balkanization of gTLD's does nothing for the end user.
It has the potential to make domain names shorter, that's a good thing.
Every new motion picture has the domain now, SomeSillySobStoryTHEMOVIE.COM. This is silly.
SomeSillySobStory.movie would be much more sensible. How does that harm me? I rather like that what's left of Network Solutions will have less of a monopoly power.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It is a disgusting thing to do to the Internet, to remove the last semblance of hierarchy and structure in the naming system
What? This is adding more structure, if done right. Which imparts more structure, to group all animals in a flat bucket called 'animals' (.com) or to pull them out into 'sponges', 'worms', 'molluscs', 'insects', 'chordates', etc (new TLD's)?
Granted, it's not a multi-level hierarchy, but then again, when was the last time you used the old Yahoo! directory? Ontological organization has been voted off the Internet, for better or worse.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I fail to see how setting up a set of services with strictly enforced rules is any different from what we already have. What does the arrangement you describe have to do with new top-level domain names? There might be plenty of valid reasons to object to new TLDs but yours doesn't strike me as a reason to object to any new TLD.
Digital Citizen
Names should either be intuitive or short. "dot name" is neither, especially when it's "Selma Beefendorfer dot name". The brits were smart enough to use .co instead of .com in JANET.
"xxx" is an awesome TLD. Everyone would remember it.
With only a few gTLDs, you're right - there's no obvious difference between .com and .net. So everyone with a trademark wants to register their trademark in every gTLD, which only reinforces the lack of distinction between them. And so consumers don't really understand what a gTLD is; they think ".com" is part of the "noise" of the URL, like "http://www.". Which, again, becomes a self-fulfilling proposition.
I don't know if the right number of gTLDs is hundreds or thousands, but the right number is "more than most trademark holders are willing to pay for". In trademark law itself, there are categories of trademarks, and most don't rise to the level of what IIRC are called "famous marks" - trademarks that are protected no matter how they're used. (You could maybe sell a stuffed toy and call it the Caterpillar, but you couldn't call it the Google.)
We need to get gTLDs to that point, where most second-level domains (cisco.com) are unique only within the gTLD (.com), or a group of gTLDs (.com, .network, .wifi) and nobody cares about other gTLDs - because consumers wouldn't expect to see the trademark in that context (cisco.rap-music? No, you must be looking for sisqo.rap-music). It's self-reinforcing in both directions.
Think back to phone numbers, before 10-digit dialing. Companies tried to pick memorable phone numbers. Some companies that operated in multiple area codes reserved the same number in each area code - so you could always call 736-5000 and get a tow truck anywhere in New York, or whatever. Some brands were so strongly associated with their phone number that they were set up in EVERY area code - 936-3636 for dial-a-santa.
With ~200 area codes, and only a handful serving any one region, this was feasible. Once you went to a thousand area codes, with overlays and cell-phones confusing the mix, and ten-digit dialing, it became pointless. Now, the only "area-code-free" numbers are the x11 numbers.
gTLDs are like area codes.
For some, the web isn't even ".com," it's whatever name they type in the address bar sans TLD. I had a user complain that she couldn't access Google. She edited the URL already in the address bar to read "http://www.google" and didn't know why she was getting the 404. (I guess there's a browser which will append a ".com" without using a specific keystroke?)
With other users getting to Google from their Yahoo home page by searching for "google" and clicking on the first link, I wouldn't bet on gTLDs going too far with the user base. It will probably only be a cash cow for ICANN and the major search engines.