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The Internet Your Rights Online

ICANN And The Domain Game 49

Posted by michael from the insider-trading dept.
MSNBC has a nice summary of the applications for new top-level domains recently filed with ICANN, which ICANN has just completed placing online. As you contemplate the applications, and perhaps consider commenting on them in ICANN's comment forum, this piece by Brock Meeks may come in handy for placing things in perspective. (Our last ICANN story explores this same topic.)
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ICANN and the Domain Game More

ICANN and the Domain Game

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  • We need to go beyond the current TLD system, but what ICANN has done won't cut it. Introducing new TLDs as a short term solution won't work any better in the long run than just maintaining the .com, .org, .net, .** system. We need a dynamic system to introduce new TLDs as they are needed. If, 2 months from now, Stoughton, Wisconsin were to sucede from the US, we would need a system that can establish a new National TLD for this miserable little City-State. This would benefit the people if we introduced some security measures. For instance, a certain number of people must send in requests for the creation of a new TLD before it will be admitted. This would allow large organizations, or even large cities, to maintain their own TLD. I think this would be great.
  • I don't think they should let .web into the pool of domains. For one thing all of the people that have "pre-reged" l33t domain names should not get them. Also there are at least 3 registrars that have been taking "pre-regs" for .web. I say let the people that spent the money to pay for something that isn't even out yet get screwed for trying to make a quick buck and get beat everyone to .web.. But if they must put .web's into the pool.. please toss out all "pre-regs". I think this might be the plan if you read the PR from ICANN that I will link to:

    The registration of names in new TLDs will be done on a fair basis, and the practice of pre-registration should not be encouraged [icann.org]

    Aren't .com .net .org enough?
  • We need a .prick domain, especially to cope with Slashdotters.

  • I would greatly appreciate someone explaining why .tld's can't be placed in the open domain.

    Seriously, what's to stop me deciding that NSI/ICANN et al suck, setting up my own virtual (non-connected) .TLD DNS server, and having all my geek friends use *it* as a source?

    Done properly there's no reason why this can't be integrated with the existing DNS structure - GeekFriendly ISP just tells it's DNS servers to use GeekSource A as primary DNS, and NSI et al as Secondary. That way, GeekFriendly ISP (and everyone downstream) resolves both .geek/.nerd *and* .com/.net/.org etc etc etc.

    By the process of natural selection you'd see .tld's come and go, geek-providers thrive and dye just as in every other open project but as long as even one survives in an open mode it's got to be good for competition.. at least with regards to keeping ICANN open and fair.

    I see reference to this happening before. Would anyone please explain to me the flaw in this thinking? Thanks.

  • Mr Meeks is obviously very hostile towards ICANN for some reason, so I have to take his views with a pinch of salt. He also seems to have no idea who CORE are. Finally, he ignores the idea of opening up *all* top level domains. Could someone give me a concrete reason why this shouldn't be done?

  • Lobby for the support of BIND maintainers... (Score:3)

    by Ami Ganguli ( 921 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @02:26AM (#678120) Homepage

    I don't really know who maintains BIND nowadays, but whoever it has has the power to fix all this.

    Just start an alternative domain name system and incorporate it into new versions of BIND. Most admins will leave the alternative in their install (why not?) and voila - instant acceptance.

  • The funny stuff is that this article about a monopolistic position, business pressure over competitors and bad business practices is published on a web site running on a Windows server, optimised for Microsoft products.

    How paradoxal life can be sometimes...
  • Sorry, that should have read: CORE [corenic.org].
  • I like the idea, but I would feel nervous about it for the following reasons:

    Say that I set up DNS servers that serve the TLD .infara to everyone downstream. A company sets up joetastic.infara for some god forsaken business idea. Then another ISP sets up servers that serve the TLD .infara. We now have two .infara TLDs with possible conflicts.

    Even beyond that, the content delivered by that specialized TLD would be limited to those people who use that DNS. There would not be as much universality as there is with the current set up.
  • If you ask how I posted this, it's via telnet. Otherwise I use Netscape for posting from my non-troll account, and Opera solely for trolling [*very* convenient this].
  • With his cute jibe, in the last paragraph, about how "that argument flies with the all the grace of a penguin."
    `ø,,ø`ø,,ø!

  • DNS is misused (Score:3)

    by knuffelbeer ( 235189 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @02:44AM (#678126)
    The current problems with toplevel domains are nog problems of DNS. DNS was meant to be used to give organisations a name on a global network. The problem with domain names today is that they are used to label content of a specific service on a network, namely HTTP.

    HTTP uses hostnames as a basis to describe infomation and are now allmost part of the content. This sceme does not scale very well since you cannot possibly determin by a hostname what content may be on it or vice versa. The problem is not with DNS, it still works for the purpose intended. It is with URL's. They are based on hostnames and that is showing it's limitations. A scheme used in NNTP (news) is better (but by no means perfect).

    New toplevel domains will not fix this problem, because the problem is not DNS, it is HTTP and that is what should be fixed.
  • Reading the .web proposal application, I see there's a bit about watching out for copyright infringement, etc..... What I would love to see is a sort of a ".not" TLD, where copyright laws simply don't apply. A pipe dream, to be sure, but it would nice to be a place where the government would guarantee the right to parody, mock, implicate, and point out the faults of various corporations, etc. Insure our "fair use" policies, essentially. And, hey, apparently there haven't been any submissions for .not to ICANN (not that anme, anyway). Any lawyers out there want to take up the charge?
  • Actually, I was paying close attention during the CORE debate, and Mr. Meeks' comments are quite accurate.


    ...phil
  • There's no need to modify BIND: all that is needed is to modify the data on the root name servers. The problem is that ICANN won't allow new TLDs to be added to the root name servers. There are two possible solutions to this:
    1. The US government forces ICANN to accept new root server entries from anybody with a specified level of support (I wouldn't want JethroBillyBob's Internet and Oil Change to be able to create a new TLD, unless Jethro has several big servers).
    2. Somebody creates a new set of root name servers, and people start pointing their name servers at them instead.

    The former offends my Libertarian views, the latter has been tried with some success. However, as Metcalf's law states, the value of a network varies as the square of the number of nodes in the network: as second heirarchy of name servers is useful only if it has a significant number of users. Perhaps if a consortium of the larger ISPs got together, and made it their default, it might work.

    However, do we wish to trade ICANN for AOL/UUNet/Qwest/Microsoft?
  • And the domain name system would start looking like usenet. Not that there's anything wrong with usenet.
  • It's very simple -- if you have an ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code element, you get the equivalent ccTLD, and may manage it however your polity wants.

    That keeps ICANN/IANA out of international politics; they don't decide what qualifies as a country, and they don't interfere with the decisions of governments over how they manage their ccTLDs.

  • Re:Evolution (Score:3)

    by Tet ( 2721 ) <slashdot@astradyn e . c o .uk> on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @03:14AM (#678132) Homepage Journal
    Introducing new TLDs as a short term solution won't work any better in the long run than just maintaining the .com, .org, .net, .** system.

    Indeed. All it will do is force companies to register more domains to supposedly protect their trademarks. What's needed is stricter enforcement of domain allocations, like the system in the UK. You cannot register a .net.uk domain unless you can prove an entitlement to it (i.e., you're company/organisation is related to network infrastructure), and you can't register a .ac.uk domain unless you can prove you're part of the academic community. As it stands, too many people grab .com, .org and .net just because they can. If this practice was forcibly stopped, we'd all be better off.

  • when I registered linu.cx [microsoft.com]

  • .xxx? (Score:1)

    by sykik ( 87357 )
    After a quick browse through, I'm surprised that there's not a ".xxx", ".sex", ".pr0n" or similar in the list. With all of the filter discussions going on, having a separate tld for pr0n would make the filters a little more effective. And we won't mention the new pr0n-only search engines.
  • Who else notices that all the applications seem to reverse the current top-level DNS system? For example: www.company.com becoming company.www ?? This would really make it more difficult to find anything you want to look for. Is it under .org (seems there are many abuses of this TLD), .com, .net ?? Its pretty easy when you want to get to the government (.gov) or military (.mil) but anything else is up for grabs. Also, what happens when you are a non-profit organization with np.org, and some other company registers np.web np.net np.com np.www np.whatever ?? Should you only be allowed to register one domain name? Hmmm.
  • I guess I just don't get it. They only new tld that i feel is absolutely necessary is .xxx or .sex because it allows the filtering of porn for the corp and home world. Everything else just seems like adding to the already chaotic system. People complain up and down about domain naming and squatting and copyright infringement and other effluvia, and then in the next breath say that they want more tlds to add to the barrel of monkeys. The answer to the inevitable question of "why not new tlds?" is that the current system does not handle registration and arbitration well now, so it can only get worse with more options. Who the fsck is going to remember a domain name when there are 7693 tlds?
  • Why couldn't US let the U.N. (or some other global organization) handle it? Or even better, let it handle ALL Internet-related things?

    / The Arrow
  • Ths next step in this marketing stupidity will be when we will create countries and carefully choose their name to get a cool TLD.
    I'll create a country named South Eastern Xanadu and get a .sex TLD to become a zillionaire!

    ____________________

  • .mus (Score:1)

    by Lozzer ( 141543 )

    Nice to see that Cary Karp(I'm sure there is an anagram in there somewhere) of Museum Domain Management Association really gets this DNS thing. He wants to register:

    .mus

    .muse

    .musea

    .museum

    .museums

  • That's why I suggested modifying bind, or more accurately, the default bind configuration.

    I don't think most system administrators would be opposed to an additional set of root servers and would leave them in the default config. The next wave of bind updates would magically introduce new TLDs.

  • As I understand it, the main point of introducing new TLDs is to relieve the relative paucity of existing short, meaningful domain names. But... do you really think that (to pick a hypothetical example) Coca-Cola will allow a coal mining company to have www.coke.web?

    Not, as far as I can tell, in the current climate, where big companies can force others to turn over domains that they want. It seems that this will just result in more domain names for big companies and nothing for the little guys. Honestly, can you see anyone other than Gates controlling www.microsoft.web? I don't think so either.

    I don't have a good solution to this problem, but does anyone else?
  • This is out of hand. I know removing TLDs sounds radical, but what about limiting them from the current set, to the current set including government extensions.

    As we have seen, with the exception of generic, i.e. "business.com", "travel.com", etc. Trademarks & Copyrights are protecting the business name anyway. Why should I need to be concerned with someone using mybusinessname.web or .zine or .fund or one of the soon to be 45+ variations.

    I own mybusinessname and international courts seem to agree. They even appear to be leaning towards me owning the derivations (mybusinessnamesucks) too. It seems this process only ensures we will continue to litigate the ownership rights to the "mybusinessname" part in 45 new ways (plus every country).

    TLDs served a purpose 15 years ago, when I wanted to know what type or who owned the site I was visiting. Back then it was an actual question, now it serves little purpose, as most browsers auto complete names anyway. TLDs should not be expanded at all and the process would be cleaned up considerably.

  • Did anyone else notice among the list of applicants there was one guy who applied for two TLDs?

    He (or she) wants .kids and .xxx

    Now does anyone else get slightly worried that those would be the two.

    hmmm
  • I haven't really heared a solution from anyone that will work in my eyes. Whenever they decide to open new TLDs every decent domain name will be once again exhausted by every little person trying to make a little money. Then I see mass amounts of lawsuits happening over domain name copyright problems.

    In the end it will just make finding the website you are looking for much harder. Will slashdot be at: slashdot.org, slashdot.com, slashdot.net, slashdot.web, slashdot.xxx, slashdot.thisisrediculous

    Does anybody have a solution that will make it easier to find the website you want and not some porn site?

    FoonDog

  • A recurring topic in the scot.general newsgroup is a top level domain for Scotland.

    If Scotland gained independence from the UK then it clear it would get a TLD. However there are substantial arguments for creating one now - it's a nation, separate legal & eductation systems, devolved government...

    Anyway, all (reasonable) possible combinations of the characters in 'Scotland' are already allocation by ISO. So '.sx' looks like a possable choice!

    It'd be a nice money spinner...

  • All ICANN has to do is close down the gTLD's and force people to use the ccTLD's. Every new gTLD is just an accident waiting for a lawyer to happen.

    .COM, .ORG etc shouls be closed to new registrations. I wouldn't take the current ones off people since that would cause confusion for users, but at the moment if I start a site I have to buy [name].com and [name].co.uk and, if I can, [name].net. I actually only want [name].co.uk but if I don't get the others I'm open to "thief" marketing or cybersquatting.

    TWW

  • On ICANN's TLD correspondence page [icann.org], there are two cases in particular that I find tragically hillarious. The first involves the folks that brib... er, bought the marketing rights to Belize's ccTLD, ".bz", which they have decided to market as "dot-biz." The second involves the company marketing (Western) Samoa's ccTLD, ".ws", which they are marketing as "dot-website" (though I swear I recall they were selling it as "dot-worldsite" -- whatever).

    Anyway, ICANN's response to both is that the ccTLDs are established to serve the geographical community they represent, and should never be taken to mean anything other than what their ISO definitions imply: in this case, Belize and (Western) Samoa.

    But what I found really interesting was that ccTLDs are assigned by IANA [iana.net] to be held in trustee by the particular country, and that discussions of "rights" are specifically "inappropriate" in regards to ccTLDs. In other words, the countries don't own their ccTLDs -- they are merely trustees acting on behalf of IANA -- and therefore they have no legal authority to transfer "rights" to said ccTLDs.

    And what is more, ICANN's repsonses point to several authoritative sources, including USPTO guidelines prohibiting assignment of trademark status to TLDs alone (i.e., ".com" cannot be a trademark, but "biz.com" can). They also link to a particularly interesting court decision [icann.org] that holds TLDs indicate the type of services (like "fast food") rather than the source of services (like "McDonald's"), and therefore cannot qualify for protection.

    At any rate, the correspondence links provide an insightful read.

  • A new gnutella-like system of lookup could be defined that allowed *any* tld (except the ones ICANN already holds), and then modify BIND to hit that interconnected system for all non-ICANN sponsored TLDs. It would eliminate the name server issue by working around the problem. Eventually, enough people would be using the new BIND, that ICANN dominance wouldn't be an issue. :)

  • Well, they may have taken your TLDs, but
    they can never take your...

    FREEEDOOMMMMMM!!!

  • Wasn't Brock Meeks the coorupt detective
    who was decomposing under the old lady's
    back porch in
    LA Confidential? [imdb.com]...

    No, that was Buz Meeks.. nevermind...

  • Less is better. (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2000 @06:17AM (#678151)
    They shoudl go back to geographic. Period.
    Ditch ALL generic TLDs.

    Leave it regional.
  • While adding another set of root nameservers to the standard root.cache sounds like a good idea on its face (and should be technically feasible, unless I'm missing something in my memory of how BIND 8 deals with cache), it won't work.

    Why?

    A fair portion of the Internet doesn't use BIND. Even on Unix systems, there are BIND replacements [cr.yp.to], just as there are sendmail [postfix.org] replacements [cr.yp.to]. But even ignoring the Unix world, what about Windows 2k, etctera? I mean, sure, they're making plenty of modifications to what's Right on their own (domains segments beginning in "_", for instance), but the chances of Microsoft not going along with ICANN (especially if NSI shuffles some money behind MS stock) are awfully low.
  • .dot? Are these guys retarded?

    Hey, Bob, checkout slashdot dot dot
  • How about a .ftp domain for FTP servers - would make it REALLY easy to find FTP sites / promote them. Would be very catchy too!
  • What, "ftp://domain.tld" isn't simple enough?

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • Easy reasoning. This person(company) is interested in these two domains because they can effectivly be used for filtering.

    Filter away .xxx to remove xxx contents
    Filter everything but .kids for kid friendly material.

  • I *hate* saying that, but there needs to be some hard and fast rules for registrations.

    The first rule is that .com is a global URL and can only be used by global companies -- that is, companies with their business name registered in multiple countries.

    The second rule is that every other business must register by country code and subdomain (state/province). If you have a national company, you get the country code TLD. If your company is smaller, you have to prepend your province/state. This allows "Harry's Hamburgers" to be owned by two different companies, one in Saskatchewan and one in Ontario.

    The third rule is that companies can only register .com, .cc and .sub.cc domains. Get them the hell out of every other TLD.

    The fourth rule is that there are no other specified TLDs. Open the entire thing up: register whatever the hell you like.

    The DNS farms can deal with lookup perfectly easily: monitor TLD usage and organize the databases to provide the fastest lookups for the most-used TLDs.

    Let the system sort itself out. You register "billybobweb.aint.this.fun" and you can expect the DNS to take freaking forever finding out where the hell you are.

    Register "www.billybob.home", though, and chances are that it'd be looked up pretty quick, 'cause every @home cable subscriber and his dog will be setting up .home sites...

    I think that within a year, we'd have all pretty much settled down to a handful of common and *useful* domain descriptions, chosen by the users themselves.

    And then bitchslap WICO upside the head. Ain't no one gonna confuse "www.coke.sex" with the cola product!


    --
  • I suspect that at some point, DNS names will be as hidden from Joe User as numeric IP addresses are now. (Setting aside IPv6 for the moment...) With increasing use of dynamic IP addresses, as well as 192.168.*.* and NAT, the notion of mapping a single name to a single address gets muddier by the day.

    I think the next zillionaire will be whoever comes up with something that sits above the whole DNS fray, and presents the internet as a more logical namespace. Think of something in between AOL keywords and Novell's NDS, along with language and locale preferences. The zillionaire part comes when you get every browser/client/OS to understand it.

    If nothing like that ever happens, then we might as well turn DNS into a perfectly flat namespace, because there's a Second Law of TLD Thermodynamics that implies that all TLDs will lose their meaning over time.

  • You have to click on the link for
    "TLD Applications Lodged" to see
    all the TLDs applied for by each
    applicant. There the .xxx and .sex
    show up in the listing

  • .dot (Score:1)

    by JJC ( 96049 )
    Looks like Rob could finally get his .dot [icann.org] TLD.
  • You were on the web 15 years ago??? Somehow I seriously doubt it.
    -
  • Its not like .dot didn't exist for a while anyway. Those naughty people who inhabit the bofh.* usenet hierarchy were using it for ages before anyone noticed.

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