New ICANN TLDs May Cause Internet Land Rush 443
wiryd writes "A new ICANN proposal would allow applications for almost any TLD. From the article: 'Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop. "Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for," says Paul Levins, ICANN's vice president of corporate affairs. "It could translate into one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history."'"
Re:Alternative viewpoint: (Score:5, Interesting)
The age of the domain name is over in my opinion. People find information by going through search engines, I would guess a very small population still types www.whatiwant.com when surfing. They would have learned their lesson a long time ago that that's not a smart idea.
Just get a domain name that's slightly relevant to your topic or service, and you're fine. Google magic will do the rest.
Should have been done differently from the start (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Epic Security Problem in My Opinion (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly. Wasn't the whole point of DNS to make websites easier to find? With this change, it might just be easier to remember the ip address.
Can we stop it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Where do we sign up to have this not happen?
check your inbox (Score:3, Interesting)
a novel technical use for an entire TLD
There already is one, its called spam. Whoever buys a TLD gets to set the rules for selling domains within said TLD, and manage those sales. Just wait till domains like .pillz, .softwarez, and the like are sold. That will be the death of meaningful WHOIS data and spam will go through the roof in volume.
Time to ditch DNS (Score:2, Interesting)
When you give people power, and they abuse you in response, it's time for a new approach. All DNS does is key/value mapping. The look-ups are distributed among the nodes in a hierarchy which puts control at the top, managed by ICANN.
What we need is a completely decentralized key/value lookup system that scales and is trustworthy. No entity should be vested with so much control over essential infrastructure services.
So marked for Corporations. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would I use:
www.microsoft.com
www.coke.com
www.amazon.com
when you *could* just type in:
microsoft
coke
amazon
Yes! You can actually visit top level domains! Shocking but true!!
Stand back and watch the fireworks.
Re:Epic Security Problem in My Opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
No, not really.
The internet works through a stack of protocols laid on top of each other, and different protocols require different levels of detail in identifying nodes of the network. For example, IP addresses have a network/subnetwork hierarchical structure that is used by routers to send packets to their destination. That sort of detail about how to route packets, however, is irrelevant to higher-level applications to HTML, where it is better to identify nodes in the network with symbolic names that aren't tied directly to packet routing.
Hence, the point of DNS is to allow us to change the low-level layout of the network (and hence, the IP addresses of hosts) without breaking high-level applications that just don't care about routing detail. The easiest example: to change your hosting provider without breaking links to your sites.
The other important thing to understand about DNS is that domain names are hierarchical because DNS is designed as a way of hierarchically delegating the authority to establish the mapping between names and IP addresses.
If we want to make websites easier to find, there are much better solutions such as portals, search engines and web directories. The fact that DNS names have become so important is because early browsers had an address bar that shows the URL and allows users to enter DNS addresses. This UI has become fossilized as a method for end users to reach content. But this can quite easily be replaced to use something other than DNS, and hopefully, it will be done.
Re:One I'm SURE no one's thought up... (Score:5, Interesting)
.xxx and .sex were rejected and "banned" ages ago.
I suspect this will take either of the two extremes:
Rubber-stamp everything and try to rake in money.
Keep that asshole shut tight and reject most applications.
Is ICANN a bunch of moron? Are they corrupt? Do they like money? Are sensationalist news articles fed to the media in order to get people to "BUY NOW!!! EVERYONE'S BUYING NOW!!! HURRY BEFORE THEY'RE GONE!!!"?
ICANN can go suck a top level dick.
Re:One I'm SURE no one's thought up... (Score:4, Interesting)
You forgot the third option. They'll likely bypass the normal pricing for their new gTLD crap and have a special auction for the .xxx and .sex ones. The easiest way to predict their next move is to think "What would I do if I could make up arbitrary rules regarding domains, charge whatever I like for it, and no one out there is likely to step in and stop me?"
Re:One I'm SURE no one's thought up... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sadly, that makes me think of usenet more than the web...
Did they ever make an alt.microsoft.developers.developers.developers ?
Or Slashdot.Slashdot.Slashdot