China Drops In Domain Registrations From #2 To #4

darthcamaro writes "A year ago, it looked like the .cn country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) for China was growing so fast that it would displace .com. In 2010 that's no longer the case, as .cn has dropped from being the number two global domain by registrations to number four. And yes, .com is still number one. According to VeriSign, the top 10 list of TLDs in the first quarter was: .com, .de, .net, .cn, .uk, .org, .info, .nl, .eu and .ru. So why did .cn decline? Spammers. 'Many of these are low-priced promotional names that have now come up for renewal at a higher price,' said Pat Kane, vice president of naming services at VeriSign. 'The .cn registration decline was also based on the CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) registry's implementation of the real names directive from the Chinese government primarily around verifiable "whois" data.'"

.nl?

[KDR_11k]

What's .nl doing there? I doubt it has to do with a high number of internet users in the Netherlands so why areall these registrations happening?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

extreme porn

Re:.nl?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it does, our little country has one of the highest rates of internet usage. That is, not only connections, but active usage of it's facilities.

Re:

[TranceThrust]

Actually, The Netherlands really do have one of the highest percentage of population who use internet on a daily basis.

Re:

[Nick Fel]

10 years ago when I was using chat rooms a lot I recall there being a disproportionate number of Dutch users about.They all had DSL connections too, at a time when ISDN was still considered a bit posh in the UK. Still, big LOLs for whoever tagged that as funny.

Re:

[misexistentialist]

Judging by all the DVD rips with Dutch subtitles, Dutch is basically the official language of the internet.

Re:

[MrMr]

Probably partly because it's the oldest ccTLD. It also has a good standing for (local) business use, as it has been around and used in radio ads since the 80's.

Re:

[xaxa]

Wikipedia claims it's the oldest [citation needed] with a date in 1986, but says that .uk was around in 1985.

(Per capita .uk is presumably less popular than .nl, since .com is very often used in the UK.)

Re:

[xaxa]

GB is the ISO country code for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but UK was used instead (probably because Great Britain -- by itself -- doesn't include Northern Ireland, so we say UK when we mean the whole UK, and GB if we just mean the 'mainland').

There was meant to be a transition to .gb, but it never happened.

That doesn't mean anything

[damn_registrars]

The claim of

China Drops In Domain Registrations

Is not supported by the data in the summary. While the .cn domain is for China, there is no restriction against people from any country registering in .com.

.com central role in the future?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article has this quote:
".com has been a platform for Internet innovation over the past 25 years, and we expect .com will continue to play a central role for the innovators, entrepreneurs and companies who will shape the Internet over the next 25 years"

Interesting comment, since it has become virtually impossible to register any catchy names these days. Try imagining a name for a company or service. Make up somethng random. Chances are, it will not be available.
Sure .com will continue to play an importan

VeriSign misunderstands...

[Anonymous Coward]

The newly implement CNNIC policy no longer allows individuals to register .cn domains. To qualify, you must show your business license, business seal, and personal ID to the registrar. All existing domains can be audited retroactively. Some additional background can be found at http://lastwatchdog.com/china-noteworthy-steps-improve-cybersecurity/

Re:

[maxwell demon]

We have to be #1 at everything dont we?

I didn't see .us in the top ten list.

Capt. Obvious reporting for duty

[paiute]

'Many of these are low-priced promotional names that have now come up for renewal at a higher price,' said Pat Kane, vice president of naming services at VeriSign.

(Adam Savage voice on)
Well, there's your problem right there.
(Adam Savage voice off)

Re:One thing China is doing right

[DaMattster]

I like my ability to be anonymous when I want. If spam is your problem, cutting down on it is pretty darned easy to the point where it is almost made redundant. I simply use OpenBSD's spamd solution which, within one week, rid me of nearly 100% of my spam without resource intensive filtering. I simply use the data gathered from UAlberta's trap list and run in a purely blacklisting environment. It took me all of half an hour to setup and saved me boat loads of aggravation. Plus spamd is an offensive solution rather the defensive. Any email coming from an IP that matches an entry in the traplist gets allowed to transmit at only 1 byte per second choking and potentially crashing the machine trying to do the sending with absolutely no effect on the recieving end. If the transmitter is brazen enough, it can wait the full 5 minutes just to transmit the first header. Some of the spam spewers tried multiple times, all meeting with the same fate. Within a week and half, I began to see less and less attempts at sending from the same IP address which could mean that my domain is being removed from databases. Even if you require truthful domain registration, it is very hard to fight a spammer through legel means! It is much easier and cheaper to use spamd and get some matter of satisfaction by parsing your logs and seeing how much of the spammer's time you have wasted. I still have my spamd box running after four years, I seldom get attemps so I get excited to see a new idiot.

Re:

[djluo]

The majority reason why Chinese gov. doing this is just want to make sure those websites won't contain any bad things.

If you do have bad things on your website........then gov. gotcha

Re:

[sjwest]

China telecom and shell companies still loves hosting spammers websites, instead of .cn its currently .ru

Don't mistake 'progress' for actual progress.

.net?

[michaelmalak]

Why is .net so popular? It was originally intended only for ISPs, and the ISP industry has since consolidated. Then it became an alternative to .com when the desired .com name was taken. I would have thought .org would have been more popular than .net.

Re:

[KarlIsNotMyName]

Well, if it's not a commercial site, and you're not an organization, what's left?

Re:

[maxwell demon]

Well, if it's not a commercial site, and you're not an organization, what's left?

• .us (or another country domain, if you are from another country)
• .name (if you want to use your real name)
• .info (you certainly plan to put some information there, right?)

Re:

[nullchar]

You have to think about Joe Sixpack (or the equivalent of a recent Internet user) first typing in _____.com, then .net, then .org (or perhaps even .org over .net). Unfortunately for domain owners, the other top level domains will not be tried; instead the user will attempt a search.