ICANN Releases Draft For New TLDs 168
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.'"
Why ICANN? Why not ITU? (Score:2, Interesting)
One thing about the DNS system is that it is very hierarchical (if you want everyone using the same root servers at least). And when the organisation that controls it all is a corrupt organisation answerable to the US government (not the most pristine government in the world), that's a problem.
So, my question is, why can't these functions be handed off to an international organisation dedicated to standards, that isn't a part of the US government and has got a history of not being corrupt? Perhaps the ITU [wikipedia.org] (official ITU website [itu.int])? (WIPO, who administer domain name disputes, is part of the UNO, and no one complains that they are run by China and Iran.)
As for expanding how many TLD's there are, I don't see why there should not be more. It would be nice if the prices were less of course.
And finally, imagine how many poorly written filters are going to break because they think that all TLD's are two or three chars.
Re:Why now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because ICANN is being driven by a profit motive. I'm sure that a number of people involved have pet-projects, grants, etc that ICANN pays out and which they profit by.
DNS is going to Fragment within a few years, all that has to happen is countries dictate that their custom DNS root services be referenced first. As soon as that happens ICANN will cease to have purpose. If I were China (as an example) this is exactly what I would do to implement proper Chinese DNS resolution.
Re:Might as well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Application Process (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
.sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
One could make a mint off a ".sucks" TLD, no?
What's really funny is all the Fortune 500 companies that would have to buy their names and their product names as defensive registrations.
exxon.sucks
aig.sucks
Vote with your feet and check out OpenNIC (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenNIC [opennicproject.org] 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?
.here might be useful (Score:5, Interesting)
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/ [jukebox.here] could control a jukebox for that location.
And http://about.here/ [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/ [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 [watersprings.org]
http://www.circleid.com/posts/top_level_domains_for_addressing_by_physical_context/ [circleid.com]