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.'"
13 mil for a tld? (Score:3, Funny)
obvious get rich quick scheme is obvious.
Re:13 mil for a tld? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but really, do we even need TLDs at all anymore, if they're going to allow anyone with enough cash to register a TLD, why not just do away with them altogether.
http://slashdot/ [slashdot]
http://google/ [google]
http://microsoft/ [microsoft]
etc.
Realistically this would be better than having them register "http://*.google/", "http://*.microsoft/", etc. and would basically achieve the same purpose, TLDs were originally made to keep things organised, clearly they no longer want that.
Of course this would probably cause problems if you have "foo.com" and "foo.org" fighting over "foo"
Re:13 mil for a tld? (Score:5, Funny)
On the other hand it would allow for "foo.fighters"
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Christian, uh, forgot his last name, the guy in the BOFH and Usenet II discussions, set .DOT up in 94. It still works. You just can't see it. But that's your choice how you configure what servers you believe to tell you what tlds exist.
http://slash.dot/ [slash.dot] has worked just about forever. I've always found it amusing slashdotters never noticed, even when other poeople did.
.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]
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according to RFC2026 the following TLDs are officially reserved .test .example .invalid .localhost
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So they don't help with having a "RFC1918" style TLD. You can't do the equivalent of http://here/.
If you notice most people using WiFi at cafes and restaurants, just "go straight to the Internet/Web".
There is no real difference between one cafe and another, other than download speeds and latency.
However if people can go to stuff like http://
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Because they still have to run the TLD servers.
There is a structure to the domain name service that keeps it from having deadlocks and holes and (sometimes) spoofs and (usually) stale data.
The real problem is that they are vastly overpricing the application process, when it should take seconds for a cognizant individual to make a determination that a group of characters is suitable for addition to the system. For $100K I can write them a piece software to replace ICANN entirely.
They should have made the ap
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I wouldn't expect individual companies to register their own TLDs like that. However, I would expect various industry groups to register TLDs specific to their industry.
e.g. It would be a good idea for the film industry (or someone who wants to get in before them) to register a .mov and/or .film TLD, and offer them for around the same price range as .tv domains currently sell for, or more. A TLD like this would surely get a good Return on Investment selling them to the movie studios for each movie.
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I actually would like to see the .xxx become a TLD and people (hopefully) could volunteer to move the porn to that domain name. It would make it easier to filter.
The problem is that, well, people won't actually move to the .xxx domain (even if they give them incentives I'd imagine) and I'm not a fan of additional rules that would require moving sexual content to .xxx because one person's art is another person's pornography. I, personally, would hate to be the judge of what is and isn't required to move to a
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Im sure the Phishers are having a field day
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ICANN are just like every other corporate asshole, they like the smell of money too!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Greed
Re:Why now? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.com.tw pisses me off so much.
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My .net was just as expensive as my .com
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.
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Maybe that'll work for china and other countries which try to control thier citizens internet access, but I imagine it would be much harder to enforce elsewhere.
Also even in places like china will websites really want to cut themselves off from people who have an internet connection that doesn't use a chineese ISPs dns servers (say because they work for a foriegn company and all thier traffic goes through a VPN)?
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Cash rules everything around me. CREAM Get the money, dollar dollar bill y'all.
They just want money, and to hell with the consequences. It's not going to be pretty when any scammer can get their hands on www.citibank.con or www.citibank.corn
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I fully support this new .con TLD initiative for scammers and thieves.
Re:Why now? (Score:4, Funny)
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Golly. If only somebody could do it for under thirteen million. *cough* *choke*
Let me be the first to call bullshit. While there's no question vetting a new tld is a bit of work you have to keep in mind the number of alternative tlds grew from 0 to over one thousand, ten years ago, and nobody spent a dime. They just put their servers where their mouths were and just did it.
The cool thing about this issue popping up 10 years later (dormant that long because icann went and chased trademark issues for a decade
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I always assumed the reason behind .org, .net, .com and country TLDs was to keep things organized and consistent. Why have they decided to do what appears to me as simply going back on themselves?
I always assumed the reason behind .org, .net, .com and country TLDs was to keep things organized and consistent. Why have they decided to do what appears to me as simply going back on themselves?
it looks like they could not resist the cash call of going from a tidy, organised vertical hierarchy to a flat, horizontal fuck-up of a system, devolving control and allowing any old pleb to set up a tld at the right price. So where does this stop? 10 tld, 100ltd. TLD for ALL !!!1
Re:Why now? (Score:5, Informative)
"I always assumed the reason behind .org, .net, .com and country TLDs was to keep things organized and consistent. Why have they decided to do what appears to me as simply going back on themselves?"
It's documented. Look at the "msggroup" archives from the era, it's the first mailing list at a time when there was only one mailing list. They say this is how it went down. The network was young, maybe 1000 nodes or so, and totally arbitrary hostnames were about to be phased out in favour of hierarchical DNS names. This would eliminate the problem of the host table getting huge, and the bigger it got the more often it needed updating.
DNS names were decentralized. Nameservers point to other nameservers which point to nameservers, thus the whole name database management problem went away as the data was decentralized.
But about the only thing poeple agreed on was "." or dot. Remember at the time the network was being used by military and aerospace contractors and universites. That's pretty much it.
So there was .mil, .nato, .arpa and then .com and .net for "commercial networks" (not that any existed then) and .net for "network infrastructure" - it was supposed to be for routers and stuff. >org was for "anything else" and wasn't "for non profits" as the icann bozos now claim. Check the rfc.
Nobdoy really like the names, they argued about it for about a month, then Jon Postel just decided, and that was that.
Steve Wolff is the guy that took the network out of the hands of the US government and freed it so anybody could do anything. But in moving administration of the network he *forgot* about the domain system so it stays in the hands of the US government. Where of course it was immediatly taken over by special interest groups where it's been ever since.
Don't expect any ratinal name schemes out of thesde clowns. If you look at the 2000 Marina Del Rey ICANN conference video where they picked the .museum and .coop winners you'll hear Darth Cerf say "I don't like the way that plays on the ear" and that was that, for $50K application for a tld that's how much thought you got, made only more ironic by the fact Cerf is deaf.
For $50K a deaf guy says it doesn't sound right to him.
I'm dying to see what the $185K test is although I suspect it involved telepathy, midgets and a sausage.
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Yeah, but .gov, .mil and .edu has always contradicted any such order. (.edu was originally meant to be for the whole world, but ended up being USA only). .mil.us, .gov.us and .edu.us if they were interested in any order.
They should be renamed to
Might as well... (Score:4, Insightful)
The .com, .net, and .org domains have meant absolutely jack-squat for years now. May as well open up the field.
Of course, this means a company like McDonalds will now be forced to register "mcdonalds.[every possible alphanumeric string]" -- this ought to be interesting.
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Re:Might as well... (Score:4, Funny)
a company like McDonalds will now be forced to register "mcdonalds.[every possible alphanumeric string]"
I suspect this will actually force them to register "*.mcdonalds" as a TLD. And likewise with other big companies.
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Yeah, I was being sarcastic -- I actually made that very point below. Big companies will get vanity TLDs. Smaller companies (not to mention open-source organizations) will be stuck with .com/.net/.org.
Re:Might as well... (Score:5, Insightful)
a company like McDonalds will now be forced to register "mcdonalds.[every possible alphanumeric string]"
I suspect this will actually force them to register "*.mcdonalds" as a TLD. And likewise with other big companies.
Actually, the parent poster had a better point. What's to stop someone from registering "McDonalds.Hamburger", "McDonalds.Fries", or "McDonalds.restaurant", other than the cost.
A lot of generic domain keywords are often used to usurp specific names. It should would be confusing if you Googled "McDonalds" and you got the above domains along with "[whatever].McDonalds". Likely having to lead to major companies having to drop a lot on custom TLDs or fighting people infringing their trademark and diluting their brand.
As cool as the idea is, being a web dev. myself, I just see this becoming an even more chaotic mess than before. How much will the ".sex" TLD go for? What's a person going to do with a ".restaurant" or ".france" domain?
One thing is for certain... Google and all other search engines will have a heck of a time trying to devise new algorithms to return relevancy, especially if someone registered a ".restaurant" TLD and then uses it as a "restaurant networking site" (like a social networking site) and charges memberships to create "McDonalds.restaurant" or whatever?
Uph! Lots of work for the Search Engine folks, let alone new ways for SEO wizards to try and abuse and game the competition. And in the end, the internet "surfers" will be worse off unless some sort of standard comes about to keep it organized. But, perhaps not. It certainly doesn't look good on paper, to me.
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The fact that they'll be sued into oblivion for trademark infringement?
Re:Might as well... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm currently in the process of getting loans to register ".sucks", and ".lol".
I'll sell domains and make tons of money.
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And why would anyone WANT to? What possible use could they be put to? If they did find some way to commercialise them, McDonalds' lawyers simply sue them for trademark violation and the domain is handed over.
Maybe you can imagine some nefarious phishing site, but that's already possible with all kinds of typo-variations of names
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No they won't. Search engines long ago stopped giving much if any weight to the name of a site, or even the metadata that was supposed to describe it, as the SEO assholes had done such a thorough job of overloadng them with their crap. You can't trust the description of a site supplied by its owner. Useful searc
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Re:Might as well... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, this means a company like McDonalds will now be forced to register "mcdonalds.[every possible alphanumeric string]" -- this ought to be interesting.
Does this mean ICANN has cheezburger?
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So did you come up with that on your own or did you read it here first? http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=596435&cid=23953419 [slashdot.org]
Actually, I thought up that one on my own a while back (can't remember why), and out of curiosity did a search to see if anyone else had already thought up the idea- turned out they had.
:)
But I think the fact that I came up with it independently entitles me to use it at least once
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Re:Might as well... (Score:4, Informative)
So who is going to register... (Score:5, Funny)
...".spam"?
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If you take it, I'll buy bakedbeansand.spam ...
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Re:So who is going to register... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll just end this here and take LobsterThermidorACrevetteWithAMornaySauceServedInAProvencaleManner-
WithShallotsAndAuberginesGarnishedWithTrufflePateBrandyAndWithAFriedEggOnTopAnd.spam
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Re:So who is going to register... (Score:4, Funny)
That's not got much spam in it.
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Re:So who is going to register... (Score:4, Funny)
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But I don't like spam!
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Let the Confusion Begin (Score:4, Insightful)
As if things weren't dificult enough to your average Joe Internet User. Most people have a hard enough time understanding that not all websites end in .com as it is.
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Re:Let the Confusion Begin (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it IS everyone's problem if technology is too hard to understand. People don't want to know how all this crap works and they're right.
Also, even if you do understand technology but others don't, it's still your problem (see: SPAM and botnets/Windows PC zombies).
Here is the mandatory car analogy:
I'm not a mechanic yet I can still drive my car.
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While I can't help but agree with you, I also can't help but feel that you might have missed the GP's point. You're right that stupid people are wont to inflict their stupidity on everyone else, and that makes it everyone else's problem. But the GP didn't say that it wasn't everyone else's problem, he said that it wasn't technology's problem, i.e. the problem is not of technology's causing. The implication being that the introduction of new TLDs won't cause any new problems, and any difficulty that does ari
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But my point still remains, IMO. We shouldn't put complicated technology in the hands of Joe Street.
We shouldn't be moving toward more TLDs, we should be cutting back and removing some of them. I agree with the country-based domains (with the requirement of being located in said country or have offices there, i.e. apple.us, apple.ca, apple.au, etc), anything else doesn't really mean anything anymore (com vs org vs net, i.e. anyone can register any of these, I myself have a .net for my personnal website, it
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> It isn't technology's problem if stupid people can't understand it.
No, it is the problem of companies trying to use it to reach mass audiences. That's why AOL may not make use of '.aol' though they may register it.
ICHC for the internet (Score:5, Funny)
ICANN has all the moneys?
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] (
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Yeah, something like ISO. They're entirely impartial and have never been swayed from what's best for everyone (cough).
ICANN is like ISO, not ITU (Score:3, Funny)
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> Not, we are talking about a body that is subordinated to "the people" here.
Then we surely are not talking about the ITU: it's a UN agency.
You'll always find bob in the shadows. (Score:2)
I actually suggested ISO a decade ago as it seemed safe then - at least safer than anything else. The ITU was the worst possible choice it's been concerned with prolonging monopolies for decades and was desparatly seeking relevance in a post telophony internet era; the WTO was a more logical choice for the kind of "just do it" internet anarchy, as they'd been promoting breaking down trade barries for ages but they were undergong bad press at the time from anti-globalization demonstrations. Tony Rutkowski wa
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Well, I agree that ITU isn't the best option. My vote would go for some powerless cross-government organization, like the one for civil aviation.
My point was just that comparing ITu with ISO is stupid.
Makes some sense... (Score:2)
Domain naming is going to need to grow to be more versatile and expressive. Right now a URL becomes foobarhelloworld.com and there are problems when sites with similar names squat on each other. With IPv6 this only stands to become more confusing. Domain naming is going to have to get better. I think we might see more details and a larger character set added to DNS.
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Punycode is the preferred IDN system at this time, as does not require making major changes to virtually every running DNS server. The vast majority of the Unicode character set is encode-able using it, so adding a larger character set does not seem to be necessary.
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No. A thousand zillion times no. If you make the Internet a place where people can isolate themselves, then it's no longer an Internet. That's what private networks are for.
The Internet works because it is all based on standards. Standard naming, standard language (English like it or not), standard protocols.
Once you make concessions for non-standard this and that, you encourage segmentation and segregation.
Am I the only person left who thinks that .com, .org, .net, .gov, .mil, and .edu are the only TLD
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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.
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ICANN found a way to make things worse! (Score:5, Insightful)
Previously, domain registrars were obligated to abide by the registrars terms set forth by ICANN/Internic as part of their terms for being a registrar in the ICANN-controlled TLDs. But if ICANN is going to sell new TLDs outright, they are handing over the keys entirely. Just wait until people start buying TLDs that are misspelled variants of viagra. Then we'll see spam floods from those and nobody will be accountable for the bogus pharmacies under those domains that are selling poison across the internet.
I agree, ICANN's time has come and gone. It should be replaced by an international organization with international allies for international goals and solving international problems. Anyone who thinks that the US can solve the spam problem just by passing new laws is a fool.
And how much will dot sex go for? (Score:2)
I hope they have a bidding war for it... they could use the money.
.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?
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Just as soon as they start voting for third party candidates in presidential elections.
Re:Vote with your feet and check out OpenNIC (Score:5, Informative)
Hey guys. Fancy seeing you here.
People have to understand that ICANN has this power because people choose to point their nameservers at the legacy root servers. Take them out of the loop and poeple, not governments make the decision about what tlds are "legitimate".
We'll see just how much "change" is really coming in America. Remember that icann was mandated by the USG to be a voting member oriented organization. From the get-go there was a coup d'etat by a bunch of old white guys whove held on to it since then, in the interest of big business.
Ten years ago when icann was formed it had two diectoives. Accomplishing these two goals was why icann was (on the face of it) formed. 1) make new tlds 2) do something about trademarks. In reality when icann was coopted by the old-white-guys their real mandate was to stall new tlds which they did for 10 years and now of course only big business can afford them.
But I get a snese it Lucy and Charlie Brown playing football here. Recall than in 1999 they accepted $50K applicaitons for new tlds and took about 20 or 30. Their vetting of the tld applications was so badly done that the day one of them went live a court tied them up with an injunction for running an illegal lottery. Something that had ben pointed out to them well in advance, but they knew better. Dumbshits.
So there are still a bunch of companies that paid $50K and got bugger all. They're supposed to pay another $185K for another spin of the wheel?
Keep in mind there is a backlog of tld applications lodged in varios root server consrtiums around the world, plus an IANA published list of TLD applications receievd from 12 years ago, per the instuctions on the ogiginal internic form inviting people to do so, in accodance with the provisions of the original internic contract.
If they can't figure out how to tell if a tld is bullshit for less than $185K they have no right being in this business - but we've known that all along. These are not the best and the brightest, these are the control freaks that got government jobs, and now that they're losing control, they're just freaks.
Jacking in from the razors edge,
rs79
I'm glad it's affordable for everyone (Score:2)
Spammers and criminals will be able to afford it so they can come up with a load of TLDs to try to confuse people, businesses will be able to have their own TLD and guess what the only person screwed is the small guy who may want to start his own business and attempt to have his own TLD but chances are any good TLD will have already been bought up by a spammer or business.
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There's still .com; and at $180k, most spammers won't be able to grab many, and it will be jokingly easy to block them.
I'd imagine these things will follow in the footsteps of .info, .biz, etc., which is to say "mostly nowhere". All corps will still try to grab the .com name.
Though I can see top level "google" (as in, search.google, mail.google, docs.google, etc.) becoming popular.
Cheaper to use Dispute Resolution (Score:2)
Awesome new CON! (Score:2)
I am going to start selling .con domains!
I love the double meaning.
Let's do the math (Score:4, Insightful)
$185k per TLD application
$ wc -l /usr/share/dict/words /usr/share/dict/words
479625
that makes
$ dc
185000
479625*p
88730625000
Eighty-eight billion, seven hundred thirty million, six hundred twenty-five thousand dollars.
And no sense.
DNS centralisation considered harmful (Score:2)
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Re:What individuals would apply? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. Google has assloads of money, so they register the TLD "google". Then they can provide "groups.google," "search.google," "gmail.google," "maps.google," et cetera. Same for companies like McDonald's, Microsoft, Chase Bank, et cetera. Every big company that can afford it will use the TLD as their domain name, and ICANN will get solid gold Ferraris from the money they rake in.
Meanwhile, do you think Ubuntu will be able to pony up the money for "get.ubuntu"? How will it look when "www.fedora.org" has to compete with "get.windows"?
The .com, .net, and .org TLDs will become the "subsidized housing" of the Net, where all those who can't pony up the cash have to stick their domains.
Re:What individuals would apply? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably. Mark Shuttleworth made nearly $600mil prior to setting up Canonical. :)
Re:What individuals would apply? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, do you think Ubuntu will be able to pony up the money for "get.ubuntu"? How will it look when "www.fedora.org" has to compete with "get.windows"?
It will look exactly the same, most of the people today don't type domain names, they just use a search engine and click on the first link. They won't even know what a domain name is or where to find it.
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Hmmm... that's a very good point. Somebody should mod you insightful.
I do hope they keep TLDs like ".test" and ".example" off-limits, though.
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That will work for Microsoft since they will make ".windows" the default. The others will just confuse the public, who are firmly convinced that all domain names end in ".com".
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But how many people actually type an address in the browser's address bar these days? Pretty much all of my browsing (to non-bookmarked sites) involves a search followed by clicking a link in the results list. in fact, I honestly can't recall the last time I typed an address in the address field as opposed to the search field.
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Are you kidding? How much do you think .ibm or .microsoft or .jennajameson is to the first person who gets it? Speculation on this will go nuts. It'll be a whole new bubble.
Re:What individuals would apply? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then IBM, Microsoft, and Jenna Jameson file complaints with ICANN, who use their Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy to automatically award the names to the trademark holders. And, of course, ICANN get even more money out of this, since it costs money to file the complaint.
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Then they'll set up some records so just typing "visa" resolves to a site. This is going to burn alot of people used to searching from the address bar.
This will open a whole new world of phishing and scamming techniques, that's why every user should care.
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Definitely not by doing anything sexually explicit.
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Can you imagine how much money there is to be made off of .sex?
Now I need to figure out how to raise the money and get it. Though I am sure there will be many fights over that one.
Its worse than that.
I pulled this from http://www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-draft-agreement-24oct08-en.pdf [icann.org]. Apparently they also charge a crazy QUARTERLY fee to keep it in existence. So much for my genius idea of creating a donation site and taking votes on the most inadvertently funny/abusive TLD to register.
"Section 6.1 Registry-Level Fees. Registry Operator shall pay ICANN a Registry-Level Fee equal to the greater of (i) the Registry Fixed Fee of US$18,750 per calendar quarter or (ii) the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Marc Hurst set this up in 96. It still works. You just can't see it. But that's your choice how you configure what servers you believe to tell you what tlds exist.
Re: (Score:2)
Joe Baptista set this up in 98. It still works. You just can't see it. But that's your choice how you configure what servers you believe to tell you what tlds exist.