First New Generic Top Level Domains Opening 198
umdenken points out that the first batch of generic Top Level Domains will go live within the next several days, including .bike, .guru, .clothing, .holdings, .singles, .plumbing, and .ventures. (Early access began Jan. 29th.) ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade says there is currently huge demand for ICANN to reopen their program to let companies run their own gTLD. He said, "Many, many brands and many, many communities didn't know about the GTLD program. I get significant amounts of questions about when can we open the next round, because certainly there is a bit of angst that if Canon [who applied for the .canon gTLD] uses this to do an incredible mass customization campaign to win users to their product, I'm sure the brand next to them will say "Why aren't we doing this?" So I do believe this will snowball. But many will find a .com or whatever they have now will be good enough, and I believe that one excludes the other." He also said the $185,000 price tag to do so is likely to drop.
Just saying... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a terrible idea for the internet but a great idea for the businesses (eg. custom marketing like the summary mentions) and ICANN (because who wouldn't love large wads of cash!)
Can anyone give a few points on how this is good for the general internet user?
captcha: complete
Generic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody knew about GTLD? Perhaps that's because .bike isn't really "generic", is it? And it's pretty Anglo-centric too.
Re:Just saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
The general internet user gets to be tracked, advertised-to, and generally fucked over as usual. But the address bar will look swag with that .bike in it, yo.
Re:why do we need generic top level domains anyway (Score:2, Insightful)
No one entity should get a monopoly on the name BOOKS.
If all TLDs were random six letter combinations, or local geographic regions, I'd see your point, but with the TLDs we have now, using your logic, ONE books.edu for all institutions of higher learning in the world is about as dumb as one books.
Either make a lot more of them, or get rid of them... doing nothing isn't solving your problem.
Or.. (Score:4, Insightful)
one word (Score:5, Insightful)
popcorn at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the end of a meaningful domain name system.
Yeah, I know they tried raping it before, but the world largely ignored .biz, .info, .aero and I even forgot what the others were. Or have you seen more than two domains in those TLDs in the recent years?
But brands, that was a gold mine. Advertisers are parasites and they will be happy to convince their marks^H^H^Hcustomers that they really, absolutely must have a fitting TLD now. And since in large corporations (that have the money), the people they talk to are also marketing dudes, it'll work.
It's a huge scam, but it'll rape the usefulness of the DNS hierarchy. Too bad we didn't put everyone within ICANN to the sword while there was still time.
Re:For all the USA haters on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
The root of the DNS zone is still handled by the US government. ICANN has a consultative role and suggests modifications, US can still veto any suggestion and can nuke a whole country out of DNS if they so chose.
"Inventing the Internet" gives you the same rights over the international Internet as "inventing the English language" gives over English speakers. If not for the DoD project, the computers of the world would have been connected using a descendant of Minitel, BBSes etc. It would have been completely different at the protocol level and completely similar at it's uses and porn availability.
Re:Just saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now you can make your domain name look like a USENET discussion forum:
alt.fashion.goth.clothing
comp.languages.cobol.programmer.guru
Re:Just saying... (Score:5, Insightful)
The presence of a custom TLD on a website is an instant indicator for me that the website is almost certainly a flash in the pan marketing project, not being taken very seriously by its owners, and probably not worth my time to click on the link.
Pluses all-round I'd say.
Re:Just saying... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I could think of a few reasons why Apple should not have .apple. One of them being that there's allegedly a fruit by that name that even allegedly has older rights to that name.
But in general, what good would it serve? So FINALLY, after all those years, the internet community learned that their company can be found at "www.company.com". What would we gain by getting ".company" now instead? Aside of having to reteach everyone? There is exactly zero net value to the internet users.
What? Oh, we could be certain that .company is actually $company? We already can if $company gives a shit about its domain name. It's trivial for $company to win the rights to "www.company.com" from the average domain squatter. And if they don't give a fuck, well, then .company won't save you from a scammer either because guess what, they can register that themselves. It's fairly trivial to open up $company in some country the name of which ends in -stan and claim the TLD. If nobody challenges it, who would keep you from doing so?
So what exactly do you expect from .company? Personally, I see exactly zero benefit. Well, aside of the benefit for the ICANN because everyone HAS to buy his .company TLD lest some scammer does.
This is just another round of the scam (Score:5, Insightful)
There WAS a time, as I'm sure some folks will remember, that "one entity-one domain" was the rule. That time is long gone, as it drastically restricts registrar profits. Now? It's not uncommon for single entities to control hundreds to hundreds of thousands of domains. I've been researching this issue, and have looked at about 60M domains so far: EASILY 90% of them are crap. They're owned by speculators, typosquatters, "landing page" operators, clickthrough scammers, and on and on and on. I suspect that as I expand my work, that percentage won't change much. In other words: we could delete 90% of the domains out there with no appreciable effect on the Internet.
This latest expansion is merely an attempt to continue the same game -- but with outrageously prices and profits.
Here is my recommendation: learn how to use DNS RPZ. As each one of these TLDs is introduced, add it to the list so that you effectively make it disappear from your view of the Internet. Encourage others to do the same. After all, you aren't required to resolve any domain or group of domains -- so don't. If enough of us do this, we will make these domains essentially worthless. (Why? Because without DNS resolution in place, end users won't be able to reach them with web browsers. MTAs that check for domain existence -- which they should -- will reject all mail to/from them. And so on.)
The Internet doesn't need this junk. YOU don't need this junk. So make it vanish.