Inside the Rise of the Domain Name System

Greg Huang writes "Looking back, it's almost impossible to believe that for most of the 1990s, a single company, Network Solutions, had a government-issued monopoly on registering domain names on the Internet. And considering how central the company was to the growth of the Web, it's surprising how little of the company's back story — how it got into the domain name business, or who owned it — has been told. Xconomy has an in-depth interview with two former executives from SAIC, the secretive San Diego defense contractor that bought Network Solutions in 1995 for $5 million and sold off the domain registration business in 2000 for billions of dollars."

Re:Single entity

[kwanbis]

I still remember the first time i had to call Network Solutions, for a domain issue. I was given this name, and they picked up the phone, and it was like i had called a person's house. Very unprofessional. And i thought, this must be a mistake, this is "international network", it can not be a private company. It was.

agreed

[circletimessquare]

for most industries (consumer electronics), it should be an unregulated or lightly regulated free-for-all. this maximizes consumer value

but there are certain industries where a regulated monopoly makes sense (electricity grids) and competition actually decreases consumer value

and then there is a third category: certain industries where a regulated OLIGOPOLY makes sense (cable) and competition beyond a select few actually decreases consumer value, and at the same time dominance by one player decreases consumer value as well

and i would say that domain names falls into the oligopoly category: there should only be a few domain registrars. choice should be maintained, with all the free market benefits that come with that, but not at the cost of a deluge of seedy anonymous players

Get rid of TLDs!

[qazwart]

Get rid of all the top level domains except for the country ones. No more .com, .net, .edu, .org, and all the stupid new ones recently concocted.

Instead, you just have the country level domains, and allow each country to control their domains the way they see fit. In most countries a domain name would be handled like any other trademark issue.

In the U.S., you'd eliminate domain name squatting since you must show some sort of actual activity to retain a trademark. Buying "Sporf.com" and sitting on it in hopes that a company called "Sporf" will have to buy the domain from you will no longer be a good business model.

Will greedy capitalist evil corporations steal your domain? All you have to do is show that you've actively used the domain (and not just merely have a parking page), and that you've registered your trademark with the correct authorities (something that could be done by the domain registrar where you bought your domain).

In the U.S., domains can be done on a local basis (memphis.tn.us), on a state basis (state.tn.us), or on a national basis (com.us). This way, two local shops called "The Flowerpot" -- one in chicago and one in memphis -- could have the same domain: flowerpot.memphis.tn.us and flowerpot.chicago.il.us. National companies like Apple and Microsoft could get their domains registered as apple.com.us and microsoft.com.us.

The .com domain could become a virtual domain. You type in a company name with a .com suffix, and your browser will search your local area, then the state, and then nationally for a company with that domain prefix. Thus if I live in Memphis and type in "Flowerpot.com", I get flowerpot.memphis.tn.us. If I lived in Chicago, I get flowerpot.chicago.il.us.

This would allow us to get rid of TDL sprawl (.name, .info, .biz, .mobi, etc.) that isn't benefiting anyone but GoDaddym It would eliminate all the sniping the the U.S. controls domains because they'll only control the .us domain. And, it would greatly simplify the whole domain registration process.