The Beginnings of a TLD Free-For-All?

Mordok-DestroyerOfWo writes "According to the BBC, ICANN is considering opening up the wholesale creation of TLDs by private industry. While I'm sure this is done for the convenience of the companies and has nothing to do with the several thousand dollars they will be charging for each registration, I was curious what the tech community at large thought about this idea. It seems to me that this will simply open the doors for a never-ending stream of TLD squatters."

Re:Worst idea ever

[lilomar]

When was the last time a multi-million dollar corporation was embarrassed about anything?

Corporations are just like people, except, you know, completely different.

Re:Worst idea ever

[Rinisari]

They should visit film.disney.com, kids.disney.com, and fun.disney.com. The DNS works backwards, and people should learn that just as they learn how an email address works and how to work web forms.

Re:Wait - I've got a MUCH better idea...

[klubar]

This system worked for nearly 100 years with phone numbers. People got used to dialing just digits--and they published directories for those who didn't know the digits. With only 10 digits, nearly every family and business in the US could have there very own, private 10-digit number.

There were a could of crazy schemes to add letters to the phone dial pad--but could you image how complex and confusing that would be! If you're older than 35, when you were growing up do you remember anyone looking for the letters on the dial.

And in my day, we had real dials on the phone--none this fancy DTMF stuff for us.

Oh no.

[PontifexPrimus]

The openness of the new system could pave the way for a .xxx domain name, after more than half a decade of wrangling between its backers and Icann.

Yeah, and it will surely work now... Look, guys, moving all the "smut" into an isolated corner of the internet will not work because a) nothing is isolated on the internet (if it exists, I can link to it) and b) no one will be able to define "smut" in any meaningful way. Oh, and I smell "think of the children" arguments approaching...

That said - if this is implemented as written I also foresee a rush towards all short words of the English language and a subsequent loss of all mnemonic devices I use to remember websites:
Now: "Hey, I want to go to Amazon. That's amazon.com, right?"
Then: "I want to go to Newbookstore. That's newbookstore.books - no, wait, newbookstore.cheapbooks - or newbookstore.bestbookstore? Newbookstore.isgreat? Newbookstore.all? Newbookstore.shopping? Newbookstore.AAA?"
Granted, the current TLD system kinda sucks, but opening up all kinds of words as possible TLDs will certainly bring no improvement (one thing I like to do when I browse for a product's availability here in Germany is enter the search term into google with the added restriction "site:.de". When German online presences will end in dozens if not hundreds of different words this easy way to identify them will be lost...).

Re:Worthless

[zifferent]

Uhmm, I use a .NET

I use it to point to my home NETWORK. While I would like to have .COM it was already taken by a COMPANY. Go figure.

Re:Wait - I've got a MUCH better idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am 45 and yes The letters were used all the time

Remember Pennsylvania 6 5000 that is an actual phone number.

Growing up my phone number was Olympia 7-#### otherwise known as OL7- #### it wasn't until I was much older that we started using 657-#### so people used the letters on the keypad all the time.

Re:Worthless

[Varitek]

I never even understood why .net was created either. I can understand .ORG, and maybe even .INFO, but not .NET

.net was originally for organisations that provided Internet infrastructure (backbones, ISPs, etc).

Re:Worst idea ever

[Random Destruction]

that sucks.

http://www.regular-expressions.info/ [regular-expressions.info] is actually quite a useful site.

Re:Worst idea ever

[gabebear]

Famous trademarks have more protection. Look at Trademark dillution [wikipedia.org]

Re:3rd post &

[Kifoth]

I still get to call dibs on XXX?

xXx © Copyright 2002. Revolution Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Re:Worthless

[EdIII]

I disagree with the harmless part. This could be used for phishing and spamming.

Imagine "[e-mail]". If the TLDs are truly opened up then paypal.comm will actually be real.

Of course you already have this problem with domain typos and deliberate obfuscation, but this will exacerbate the problem. So it is not completely harmless, and in some instances not completely opt-in either.

I can see your point about businesses not having to buy these new TLDs, but think about this from a business perspective. If you have even more than a couple hundred thousand dollars in sales per year, what is an extra $200-$300 dollars to grab the most popular TLD's to lock up your domain name?

Misquoted by the BBC

[Myrddin Wyllt]

I actually listened to the original interview on Radio 5 Live (lunchtime today), and Dr Twomey's comments seem to have been taken out of context.

Firstly, the interviewer started under the misapprehension that domain names were running out, which Dr. Twomey corrected, and said the problem was with IPv4 addresses. The following comments then followed, which concern the introduction of IPv6:

Dr Paul Twomey, chief executive of Icann, told BBC News that the proposals would result in the biggest change to the way the internet worked in decades. "The impact of this will be different in different parts of the world. But it will allow groups, communities and business to express their identities online. "Like the United States in the 19th Century, we are in the process of opening up new real estate, new land, and people will go out and claim parts of that land and use it for various reasons they have. "It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet."

This is included in TFA, where it is implied that he was referring to domain names.

The comments he actually made about DNS and TLDs were much tamer, mainly relating to internationalization and the use of unicode URLs.

I listened to this while driving, so I may have misunderstood slightly, but there was definitely no sense of "OMG TLD free-for-all" in the interview as broadcast.

Re:DNS has failed anyway

[Haeleth]

Nowadays we have a flat namespace where all names have a .com appended at the end. Nobody wants to use anything else

Look up at the location bar of the browser window you are reading this comment in. Observe the lack of a ".com" in the URL. Observe how silly your claim now looks.

Public comment opens today, closes tomorrow.

[Animats]

ICAAN released a final draft for public comment today, June 22, 2008. [icann.org]

Public comment closes June 23, 2008.

Re:Worthless

[Noren]

Your logic that .com was so large to make .net pointless to create makes no sense considering they were created at the same time. (January 1985)

It took years for .com to take off, there are fewer than 100 currently registered .com domains that date back to the first two years of .com's existance. Both .com and .net were rare to see in the late 80s to early 90s anyhow- .edu was much more common on USENET, or IRC, or on internet games such as netrek. Hell, .mil seemed about as common as .com in the early days.

Re:Worst idea ever

[tehniobium]

The TLD's do have one use (some of them anyway) - they indicate the expected language of the page your about to see.

For many companies in denmark, for example, the NAME.dk domain is more important than the NAME.com...as .com is not what danish people type automatically. - also, for example, the danish newspaper "BT" would not be able to get the url bt.com (british telecoms) - but use bt.dk with success, and without breaking any IP laws.

Re:Worthless

[dissy]

www.compaq.xyz has zero value. I never even understood why .net was created either. I can understand .ORG, and maybe even .INFO, but not .NET.

.net was originally reserved only for backbone providers and ISPs. .com and .org you clearly know, as well as the two letter ISO country codes.

You forgot all about .edu .gov and .mil, all of which are TLDs actually run correctly (gasp, imagine that) and are limited like they all are supposed to be.

Back in the day it was intended that if you were not a registered business, you wouldnt be allowed to get a .com
That didn't work well, and they decided to make .com the 'default' and leave .org restricted.
They managed .org and .net fairly well for a time, as well as the country code cctlds.

Now its all about money.

Bet youll be shocked to learn, back around 1990 or so, domains were free!
It was i think some time around 1992 (give or take a couple years) when netsol first introduced $100 for 2 years, then later $70 for 2 years, finally allowing $35 for 1 year.
Then openSRS came along and changed everything (for the better) and we have more registrars then just netsol,

This is all about money going into the pockets of some people, and nothing about adding value to the Internet.

This has been true the day ICANN took control of the DNS away from the original creators of DNS.

There are only two, and will forever be only two, TLDs which have any value associated with them whatsoever.... .COM and .ORG. That's it. Everything else is reserved anyways, and you can substitute a country TLD for .COM and .ORG when appropriate.

Again, you forgot .mil .gov and .edu.
Just because more than .com exists confuses some people, doesnt mean the rest of us should suffer.
If you want to play the pain game, just stop using DNS and go back to memorizing IPs.

Clearly the only difference between a tld that works and serves an actual useful function, are those that are well defined for a specific purpose, and actually limited to that.

You MUST be a 4 year college to get an .edu
you must be a govt agency to get a .gov
and you must be a military institution to get a .mil

anyone and their dog can get a .com .org or .net.
Those are the three that need to stop existing, because their existence is pointless and means nothing.
If icann would actually restrict .org to only registered legal non-profit companies, and restrict .net for companys with at least two ASNs and multiple /20 or larger blocks, must have at least 4 backbone peers and at least as many downstream peers (customers) and you are allowed a .net and will officially be an ISP.
Then it would make sense to have a 'fall through' which would obviously remain .com

My point:
Don't get rid of the whole system for not working, when in fact it works perfectly if it is just used correctly.

Re:Sweet

[freedomonline08]

I'm actually attending the ICANN meeting this week in Paris. If you care to share your comments please, here's a couple of ways

1. IRC backchannel - irc://chat.icann.org#icann-general-discussion

2. Twitter feed - http://twitter.com/netfreedom [twitter.com]

3. At Large (user) advisory committee - http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org [icann.org]