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InterNIC Redesign
Jeff Knox writes
"The internic has apparently redesigned it webpage. All
request to internic.net are not automatically forwarded to
www.networksolutions.com.
That means there no longer is the cgi-bin/whois? request, etc..
Everything is now on their blatant self promoting fancy gui website.
" Anyone use the new stuff? Better? Worse? Intersting
way to protect their business after they lose their monopoly
status. But "The Dot Com People"? What terrible slogan.
Can we be "The Dot Dot People"?
I've noticed the changes that Network Solutions have been moving into place, and I can't say I mind terribly-- I do all of my Domain Name registration via email. If you want to bring attention to a really deceptive practice, have a look at www.internic.com, where the unsuspecting can enjoy a 200% markup for domain name registration!
What it is going to come down to is advertising and pricing. By giving someone (that doesn't know any more than to follow the URL listed in a magazine advertisement) a way to:
- secure the domain
- reserve a web service (that $119 thing)
- get merchandising and banner revenue right away
they will be setting the standard that all the other registrars will have to have. These marketing relationships and infrastructure do not happen overnight. InterNIC is just raising the stakes a little more for the others playing in the same vertical market.http://fudge.org
I noticed today that the /cgi-bin/whois doesn't work anymore, and they also disabled the telnet whois service. Bad internic. *wham* *wham* *wham*. Bad Internic.
There was a time when .org and .net had specific implications. (Yeah, I know, it's never been enforced much... the Seattle Mariners have been a .org since 1994, and they sure as hell are a profit-making entity... but still.) I find it really annoying that people are being *encouraged* to grab up .org, .net AND .com just to prevent anyone else from having a similar name.
.xxx domain name, just to prevent anyone else from getting it. :)
Trademark law doesn't prevent other businesses from having similar names, or from having similar addresses.
This is just stupid. We need more TLDs to make room for all these different companies with similar names but different products, but instead, when we actually have 30 or 40 different TLDs, you're probably going to see companies told to grab all 40 of 'em, just in case someone with a similar name gets one! ARGH. And then we're back to square one.
(Just imagine -- Disney or someone like that gets an
I may not be a lawyer, but I have been through a trademark/domain dispute so I (unfortunately) have been through some of this. I used to have slumberland.com, now I have slumberland.org and
slumberland.seattle.wa.us. It was a fight to get this result, believe me.
//
Was the encouragement to "Protect your internet brand. Consider securing your dot net and dot org web addresses as well". I.e. Triple our profits, and cut the total name space by two thirds!
.net for network service providers?
/.
Is it just me, or isn't ".org" supposed to be for non-profit organization and personal sites, and
Then again there is
I'd say that no one entity should have control over more than one TLD.
--
Does anyone besides me feel a slight pang of pain when InterNIC^H^H^H^H^H^H^H... er Network Solutions advocates the commercial use of the org top-level domain? Didn't it used to be a requirement that you be a not-for-profit organization or a non-profit organization to obtain a subdomain in the org domain?
*Sigh* I may work for an ISP, but a pox upon the mass overcommercialization of the Internet. I guess I keep hoping that the little guys will win. My company doesn't allow for-profit orgs to register subdomains in the org TLD through it, and it makes me sick that InterNIC does.
Any hobbyists out there want to help me recreate the Internet again? It would be nice to start all over, leasing lines, etc. (funds permitting, of course... I run almost all my hobbies on junked hardware) to recreate the Internet that we have lost. Does anyone else remember when information sharing chewed up more bandwidth than spam & glitz?
I'd give up my USR v.Everything and go back to an old courier 2400 if we could go back and prevent the commerical overtaking of this great resource. I mean, let's be honest here. ESR has even griped about this. Back then, you could pull down more information over a 2400bps shell account than you usually can over a 28.8K PPP connection because there's so much crap now.
While I'm ranting, to hell with META tags, too. When's the last time you tried to look up something pertaining so some technical amusement and got 800+ porn ads? META should die, even before BLINK and MARQUEE
Maybe I'm just an old fart (As far as the 'net goes... I've been on for a while, but I'm not that -old-), but I long for the days when gopher, archie, and usenet returned information, humor, and insight instead of crap, porn, marketroid glitz, and animated GIFs.
The following sentence is true.
The previous sentence is false.
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
Why else would they be diversifying their range of worthless product lines so much? Consultancy? Auto search-engine adding? Um, T Shirts???
And email hosting? This is great -- if you're too cheap to get your own leased line to host your domain, and too cheap to have someone else host it for you, you can have NS host your email. Then you can pretend you are on the Net while competition (er, in theory) can actually maintain their own updated site.
Admittedly, it's not NS's fault that "Dot Com" have become the holy words of every net-ophyte that's come along in the past 2-3 years, but I guess some of us hoped that the veteran net orgs (like them) could have kept things a little better under control....
[Snip extra rant about educating the stupid.]
Regards,
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.