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The Internet Your Rights Online

.NAME at a Crossroads 293

Posted by michael from the name-of-the-beast dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the .NAME registry is at a crossroads. They say that things are going far from well, and so they have started their own registrar that is going to try to market .NAME domains to individuals, unlike all other registrars. If they don't manage, this will be the first gTLD to go bankrupt. I guess that will put a damper on any plans to introduce more new TLDs."
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.NAME at a Crossroads More

.NAME at a Crossroads

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  • Well,... (Score:2, Funny)

    by ksheka ( 189669 )
    ...what's in a name?

    (OK, someone had to say it. :-)

  • Selling to individuals is good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xadhoom ( 135241 ) <[moc.liamg] [ta] [inoelacnarbm]> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:06AM (#5287470)
    I've never taken my .name domain just because they don't sell directly to individuals. But now, I have a chanche. I think that's a good idea, but the news should be promoted *alot* .
    • There is not much incentive for individuals to get this. Broadband seems to be the fastest growing way to establish a full time internet connection. Most broadband suppliers do not want people running servers on their networks. What would be the point of buying your own name when you can't flaunt your vanity by actually using it!
      • Why can't you use it? It's e-mail forwarding and web forwarding to wherever you want.

        (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

  • Advertising! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:08AM (#5287477)

    Dang, I've never even *heard* of .NAME before. Just asked 2 coworkers, they haven't either.

    Well shucks, I just can't figure out what the problem is...

  • Does anyone have one? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by krony ( 213134 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:08AM (#5287480) Homepage
    Seriously, does anybody here actually have a .name TLD for their website? More specifically, do you have a .name without the corresponding .net, .com, or .org?
    • Try searching google for "site:name -dfgdfgadfgaagdfg", and you'll find lots of .name site. Nowhere near the other major TLD's, but growing at a reasonable rate.

      (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

  • I want this URL (Score:5, Funny)

    by addaboy ( 103441 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:09AM (#5287493)
    http://whats.my.name/bitch or http://say.my.name/bitch

  • I'm too late (Score:5, Insightful)

    by johnburton ( 21870 ) <johnb@jbmail.com> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:10AM (#5287497) Homepage
    My name has already gone so I couldn't have it even if I wanted it. There is no point having a variation of it either. I can't imagine how they expect this to succeed. There are far too many people with the same names, You need a proper hierarchy for this kind of thing.

    • Re:I'm too late (Score:5, Funny)

      by FearUncertaintyDoubt ( 578295 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:30AM (#5287658)
      My name has already gone so I couldn't have it even if I wanted it.

      I know how you feel. I got muscled out by that guy John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt. His .name is my .name too.

    • They do (sorta) (Score:3, Informative)

      by kikta ( 200092 )
      The current scheme appears to be that they aren't selling domains, per se. After visting the link (which gives you a list of registrars), I found that no one will sell me "kikta.name". However, all seem to let you buy something in the form of "jason.kikta.name" (which comes with an email address of "jason@kikta.name"). So they're not really selling personal domains, just "firstname.lastname.name". If anyone can find anything different, please say so, but I tried 5 of them before I gave up.

      FYI, "scream.my.name", "whats.my.name", and "say.my.name" are all taken already. ;-)

      • Re:They do (sorta) (Score:3, Informative)

        by vidarh ( 309115 )
        No second level names can be bought under .name from anyone. So yes, you do get a domain, but it will be on the third level, just as it is for for instance .co.uk, and in a lot of other cases. It's no less a domain name than something at the second level, and it is regulated by ICANN just as any second level .com.

        (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

        • Yes, sorry for the ambiguity. That's what I meant; no one can personally buy a second level domain. Which I understand the reasoning, but it's still a little disappointing. :-)

        • Re:They do (sorta) (Score:2, Interesting)

          by hucke ( 55628 )
          Does a person registering within .name get full control of an actual domain - with the ability to create usernames at will, change the nameservers, etc.?

          Someone buying "john@smith.name" owns only an email address within a domain he doesn't control. "john.smith.name" is a bit better - if this is actually a domain name that they'll have full control over. If it's just an "A" record in your server, it's not a good deal.

          These names have less value than any other domain. I initially registered "hucke.org", years ago, so I could have "matt @ hucke.org"; since then, I've given email addresses within that domain to my mother and brother, at no additional cost. I still pay only $13.50 a year for that domain, regardless of how many addresses or subdomains I create within it. Can john@smith.name do that?

          "John Smith" may have a slightly better chance of getting john@smith.name than he would johnsmith.org - but that remains true only as long as .name remains unpopular. If .name domains ever did become popular, you'd suffer from the same unavailability of names as anywhere else.

          And john@smith.name still can't add an address for his wife or mother without having to pay an additional fee.

          For $19.95 a year, you're delivering a product with *less* value than registrars in other TLDs.

          • Re:They do (sorta) (Score:3, Informative)

            by vidarh ( 309115 )
            Yes, you get full control over the third level domain, with the ability to create usernames at will and change the nameserver etc. Currently Personal Names Ltd. handle that functionality via e-mail to customer service, as most of our users prefer to just use the web forwarding we provide.

            You're right that someone buying john@smith.name doesn't get control over smith.name, but yes, you would own john.smith.name, just as you'd own johnsmith.com.

            As for adding additional addresses - you either need to do so under the third level name, or buy another e-mail forwarding. That's how .name is structured in order to give more people a chance at their lastname (try getting a common lastname under .com, for instance)

            As for less value, if you can get your firstname@.com, sure, go ahead. For most people, that is not an option, as their lastname was registered years ago. We're giving people another chance at that a reasonable address. If they don't think it's worth it, then that is obviously their right. So far, however, our research indicate that people aren't particularly bothered about the price - either they want it and the price isn't an object, or they don't.

            (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names Ltd.)

    • Dave King, a very common name, but now that I have a modest blog I'm the number 2 Dave King [google.ca], any one who knows me would be able to add other terms that should make my blog #1, so why would I need daveking.name?
      -Peace
      Dave
  • maybe it's just me, but i saw a bunch of marketing from my registrar (register.com [register.com]) for the .name tld.

    so much, in fact, that i went ahead and registered mine... and haven't done a thing with it since (it's been probably almost 2 years now maybe). this is mainly due to the fact that i'm lazy and not sure what to do with it... but still seems to be the norm for the .name tld.
    • You fool! (and I mean this in a nice, constructive way) maybe it's just me, but i saw a bunch of marketing from my registrar (register.com) for the .name tld.

      so much, in fact, that i went ahead and registered mine.

      You know you're not to give in to spam, it just perpetuates it! Here I have to wade through piles of it, like I'm in hell, up to my neck in feces. Thanks.

      BTW, mine is probably one of the 100 most common name combinations in the USA & Britain & Australia & New Zeeland & The Falklands & Gibraltar & Canada , so mine was probably taken on the first day by (a) someone with the same name OR (b) some speculator. I lose no sleep over it. Besides, if I had a fairly unique name, which could be found on 411, I'd probably want to keep my anonymity. I'm not fond of my phone ringing with calls from strangers.

      On another note:

      I guess that will put a damper on any plans to introduce more new TLDs."

      I guess this means .pr0n is dead.

  • We then need a new gTLD (Score:5, Funny)

    by spacefight ( 577141 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:12AM (#5287508)
    .bankrupt

    nuff said

  • Who wants anything but .com? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mike Rucker ( 639143 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:14AM (#5287524)
    I guess .net and .org are ok too but only if you also have the corresponding .com. If you get anything other than a .com then everytime people try to go to your website they are going to type it in wrong until they remember your strange extension.

    • Re:Who wants anything but .com? (Score:4, Informative)

      by LordWoody ( 187919 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:30AM (#5287652) Homepage
      Me. Some of us still follow the distinction that the original tlds had (.edu for schools, .com for commercial, .net for networks, ISPs, etc..., .org for organizations such as community orgs, non-profits, etc..., and so forth).

      While I think the whole tld was a terrible idea applied in an even worse fashion, I still register my domains based on what general tld they best fit. I have no interest in leading people to believe that our LUG is a commercial interest or that my business is some community group or non-profit. Although I am not above availing myself of the .us tld if that is the only non-misleading tld left for a given name.

      With the advent of search engines like Google, the whole "what cool FQDN is your site?" is becoming irrelevant anyway.
    • .com is a stupid extension based on the faulty concept that the world can fit in a flat namespace. It cannot.

      Meaningful TLDs are necessary. Unfortunately, ICANN labors under the belief that namespaces are static concepts that should be regulated from high. That is just as stupid as believing in a flat namespace.

  • They aren't doing it right. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by z_gringo ( 452163 ) <z_gringo@h o t m a i l . com> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:20AM (#5287567)
    Either that or I don't understand. (It works out the same for me in the end).

    I went to register my .name, just for kicks, I entered Z for my First name, and Gringo for my last name, and I was provided with the very helpful message:

    Your own, impressive .name addresses
    z@gringo.name; and
    www.z.gringo.name
    may be available right now.

    Which isn't really what I would want at all, IF I did want a .name. I would want zGringo.name

    Their version of "whois" isn't really what I'm used to.. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to work, but then, that also probably what I'm not really interested in a .name.

    And, what's up with their response: www.z.gringo.name
    may be available right now    ?? Is it available or not? It was a yes or no question..

    argh..

    • From what I remember, .name was supposed to be a method of grouping lots of people with the same surname, so the correct format would be:

      www.firstname.surname.name

      Personally, I think it sucks because it's too restrictive. For example, how many John Smiths are there reading Slashdot?

    • the .name service should all be put to death (in a texas department of corrections sense of the word) for their crimes against the internet community.

      Really, what they have done is squat on tens of thousands of names, in the hopes of extorting a few services from the masses. They don't offer traditional DNS services, where someone types in a name and the resolver returns the IP address of your name server, they are offering only email and web redirecting services. Nothing else.

      I want anticypher.name to point to my name server, but they won't do that. They will give me a heavily spammed anti@cypher.name email forwarding service, or a web redirector with WWW tacked on the front. I know a few people who stupidly signed up for these services, and got a torrent of spam afterwards because they are then marked as gullible, naive idiots, the scammers choice of easy victims.

      The whole service should die, the sooner the better.

      the AC

      • Re:They aren't doing it right. (Score:4, Informative)

        by FTL ( 112112 ) <slashdot&neil,fraser,name> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @01:12PM (#5289041) Homepage
        > They don't offer traditional DNS services, where someone types in a name and the resolver returns the IP address of your name server, they are offering only email and web redirecting services. Nothing else.

        I'm sorry, but Slashdot really needs a '-1 Wrong' mod point.

        The .name TLD will sell you any third-level domain that you want. Just like *.co.uk or *.ny.us does. The DNS lookups are perfectly normal. The email is perfectly normal. What more can I say ... what you stated is completely untrue.

        And yes, I do know what I'm talking about. I'm a sysadmin, and owner of my own .name website [fraser.name]. Go ping it.

  • A Whois Lookup for the .NAME domain can be found here [whois.name]. Apparently common names like john.name aren't even taken.

  • Free the namespace! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ashurbanipal ( 578639 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:21AM (#5287577)
    If they don't manage, this will be the first gTLD to go bankrupt. I guess that will put a damper on any plans to introduce more new TLDs.
    Hopefully it will only put a damper on plans to introduce stupid TLDs that perpetuate the expensive stranglehold on naming that ICANN enjoys.

    TLDs should be available to anyone who can run a secure, reliable root - this connects profit to performance, so we don't have to rely on the innate goodness of the root nameserver operators. The first thing that'd happen would be that pepsi.com, pepsi.net, and pepsi.org would be obsolete since .pepsi would be run by PepsiCo.

    With the widespread popularity of search engines, nobody would have any trouble finding anything even if some temporary chaos were engendered.

    Spare me the FUD about nameservices not scaling for this; I believe DNS and BIND are quite capable of it.
    • The first thing that'd happen would be that pepsi.com, pepsi.net, and pepsi.org would be obsolete since .pepsi would be run by PepsiCo.

      Forgetting the issue of whether or not your plan could work, the last thing your plan would do is free the namespace because PepsiCo is never going to feel their domain is obsolete because there always exists the possibility that some guy is going to go to pepsi.com. You really think pepsi would ever give up the .com, .net, or .org ?

    • Re:Free the namespace! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Fastolfe ( 1470 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:48AM (#5288250)
      The DNS software isn't the problem here. What you're recommending is basically a flat DNS namespace, where 90% or more of the present-day DNS traffic is moved directly to the root servers. You're going to need to beef up those root servers several orders of magnitude in order for this scheme to work. This has another order of magnitude impact on the survivability of DNS in the event of network problems. You've just increased your reliance on the root servers significantly, since it's unlikely your local caching DNS server will have names cached for every DNS request you make.

      DNS is hierarchial for a reason, and the number of TLD's was small for a reason. The root servers should just need to be probed for a limited set of names, and from that set, it delegates to another set of servers, which delegates to yet another set.

      Changing this primarily hierarchial arrangement to a primarily flat one (with some hierarchial vestiges left over, since you'll probably want www.pepsi to work "just in case") would require a fundamental restructuring of DNS and would impact reliability and performance in a very noticable fashion.

      A more extensible, future-friendly option might be to put DNS back the way it was 10 years ago and build another distributed database designed to map real-world names to Internet domains.

      I should be able to use this database to look up the name "Pepsi" in a business context, and have it return "pepsico.com" or something. A DNS SRV lookup on pepsico.com for the 'http' service might return "www12.web-farm.public-facing.pepsico.com" or some other company-specific hostname representing their web servers (it doesn't have to be a vanity "www.pepsi.com" since users don't need to see this anymore). My browser would then connect and I'd get "Pepsi"'s home page, not the home page of "pepsi.com". We need to start breaking this huge reliance on DNS names as a locator service and put DNS back to work at what it was designed to do: to put an alphanumeric label on Internet hosts.
  • Is the reason that the gTLD .name root provider went 'bust' was because of insanely bad business decisions? like $123131312Million in Venture Capital spent on B*shit (advertising/Executive Salaries/skybox at the %local_pro_stadium%)?

    Because a few MBA dunderheads cant manage to make themselves filthy rich with a gTLD shouldnt restrict the creation of TLDs in the future.

    What was the budget of the .ca or .au ccTLD until recently -- wasnt the *whole* of the .au managed until just (months?) recently by *one person*?

    Yet another reason why the DoC and ICANN are a goddamn farce.

  • Anonymous.Coward.name (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fulkkari ( 603331 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:25AM (#5287615)

    No one seem to have registered Anonymous Coward, even though Slashdots seems to be full of people with this name. How is this possible? You would think that at least one of these several hundred Cowards would register with their name. Things must be going really bad for .name...

  • Is that surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by t_hunger ( 449259 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:26AM (#5287618)
    Well, it does not surprise me... having a own domain is cool, I know. But john.doe.name just sounds stupid. And the more common names should be taken allready anyway. How they they handle that? john.smith294.name? Definitly uncool:-(

    The registrar claims it is for indivuduals to register their name. I just tried "www.john.smith.name" und ended at www.smith.com, some company website. Doesen't that spoil the purpose?

    Finally the website of that registrar claims that john smith "may be available right now." It's not, or it wouldn't redirect me to that company website. Why doesen't the registrar say so? What good is that query field if it cannot even figure out names that even my DNS server knows to be taken?

    Now instead of this ridiculous ".name" they should have introduced ".sex" and forced all those sex-companies into that TLD. That could have helped parents to make sure their children do not get exposed to lots of the smut on the net and I'd be happy with just blocking all mails from "*.sex" and have way less spam in my inbox. Of course that wouldn't have worked out completly -- someone is bound to try to offer adult content under other TLDs -- but I'm sure it would have helped.

    • Re:Is that surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by raju1kabir ( 251972 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:41AM (#5288199) Homepage
      Now instead of this ridiculous ".name" they should have introduced ".sex" and forced all those sex-companies into that TLD. That could have helped parents to make sure their children do not get exposed to lots of the smut on the net and I'd be happy with just blocking all mails from "*.sex" and have way less spam in my inbox. Of course that wouldn't have worked out completly -- someone is bound to try to offer adult content under other TLDs -- but I'm sure it would have helped.

      No, it's very stupid and it wouldn't help at all. I don't say this to be insulting, but because this supposed panacea is constantly being brought up by people who can't or won't think things through.

      People selling smut want to get it under the noses of as wide a potential audience as possible. Hence the existence of things like www.whitehouse.com [whitehouse.com]. You will not be able to stop them or even put a dent in their operations unless you manage to outlaw porn in general worldwide, which is (A) bad policy, and (B) highly unlikely. If you create a .sex domain, then the porn operators will register in both - it costs them $10 and gets them more exposure.

      If you want to provide a child-friendly environment, you can create a domain called .kids or whatever. Require organizations registering in it to either provide references from established child-friendly outfits (school system, CTW, etc.) or to post a large cash "smut bond". Anyone found with porn on a site reachable via a .kids URL (whether it's because they ran an open web proxy, or because they willingly put it up) forfeits their bond and loses their domain.

      This works, because you have a finite number of domains to monitor, and you have specific disincentives to leverage. Trying to keep pornographic content out of the "rest of the internet" is an impossible task and only an idiot (or someone with a fat non-outcome-based contract) would attempt it.

      • No offense, but I don't think you really understand the "adult" industry on the web.

        Not all of us want to spam you with our website.
        Not all of us want to trick you into visiting, or deluge you with popups should you ever commit the horror of trying to leave the site.
        Not all of us have a blatant disregard for wanting to keep kids out of our sites.

        Personally, I'd love to transfer EVERY domain we have over to a ".xxx" or ".adult" or ".sex" or whatever TLD. Existing *.com domains we'd setup to redirect to the *.xxx version.

        Yes, something like this would be voulentary, and yes there would be people out there who wouldn't do it. However, I'd love there to be a way that we could easily segregate our adult sites away from the rest of the internet, so that those who DO want to block such things can do with a reasonable accuracy.

        It really could go either way. With a *.xxx policy, you'd have very few false positives (who would register and use their .xxx domain, knowing that many people would block it?), but a decent number of false negatives until it caught on.

        With a *.kids policy, you knot only have to have someone very STRICTLY controlling its use (or it becomes useless), you'd be forced to limit browsers use to just *.kids if you wanted to play it safe. That's not going to leave much of the internet left until it had a real critical mass going.

        You'd also have to deal with the sticky subject of what exactly IS .kids material? What's okay for 15 year olds isn't okay for 7 year olds. Whose idea of what's acceptable do you use?

        99.99% of the adult webmasters out there would LOVE a way to keep kids out of the sites. We would love a simple check box that every ultra-conservative letter-writing crusader could check that would make sure they never saw our sites. Yes, we use ICRA [icra.org] style tags that are meant as content advisories to browsers, but every attempt at making THOSE known to users have failed.

        I can understand some of the reasons people have for not wanting an "adult only" tld, but I think its use would have a much greater public good than... oh, say... .aero [satirewire.com]?

  • Now I have to pay attention to TLDS - agggh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jj_johny ( 626460 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:26AM (#5287619)
    The fundemental problem that .NAME faces along with the rest of the internet is no garbage collection. These new TLD are pretty useless when you have to make sure that people remember the ext. When it once was default that if you worked for a company, your email was some variation of your name, the at sign and some variation of the company name and then you assumed the .com. If you worked for the gov or an organization, it was pretty clear what its end was. (At least in the US.) But now you have all these bloody domain names that everyones significant email and web address is now 4 or 5 characters longer.

    Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.

    • Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.

      And what exactly would be so wrong about domain names in non-ASCII character sets? If you can't read the language, then there won't be anything there for you, so why do you care? If you can read the language, then isn't it a good thing to be able to have a domain name in your own language, without having to transliterate it into a foreign character set?

      The web was supposed to facilitate communication, not force everyone into a single character encoding for no better reason than the country that developed it used that one.
      • And what exactly would be so wrong about domain names in non-ASCII character sets?
        You are then vulnerable to homograph attacks [technion.ac.il] as was discussed on Slashdot [slashdot.org]. You can also read DNS Chaos Feared on Account of Multilingual Domains [heise.de].
      • There are two schools of thought here.

        The first advocates a "lowest common denominator", where hostnames are explicitly restricted to a subset of the world's scripts. Some will have little or no problems with this (e.g. Americas and most of Europe) while others may have to transliterate significantly.

        The second advocates a full internationalization of DNS, allowing hostnames to be represented in any and every script imaginable. Nobody would need to adapt to any lowest common denominator, since they can just use names in their native scripts.

        The first approach encourages interoperability at the expense of those furthest away from the standard (e.g. asian scripts). The second approach encourages expanding language barriers into the area of Internet hostnames.

        With multiple scripts in DNS hostnames, it's now difficult for me to correspond with an abuse contact at a provider in an asian nation, because I can't type their e-mail address. This is a very bad thing.

        I might not have a problem with this approach if the world didn't have this immense reliance on DNS hostnames. If we had another directory sitting atop DNS, mapping real-world names to DNS domains, and a more integrated database of contacts and Internet resources, I shouldn't have to type or cut-and-paste much of anything in the future, and this wouldn't be much of a problem. By the same token, however, users will be abstracted away from DNS hostnames for the large part, reducing this perceived need for hostnames in multiple scripts. We can then go back to technically-oriented reasons for why this is or is not a good approach, and these seem to strongly favor interoperability, which, at the moment, favors a lowest-common-denominator approach.
    • Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.

      That's old [networksolutions.com] news [worldnames.net]. Incidentally, why just "some" of the cyrillic letters? You mean, like these: A B E M H O P T X ?

  • What I'd Like to See (Score:2, Interesting)

    by syr ( 647840 )
    The only second generation names I'd like to see would be .kids and .xxx. These two TLDs would solve more problems than they would create, imo. It wouldn't necessarily cause a policing effect on the Internet but it will help narrow potential searches for children and adults to sites that they were actually looking for in the first place.

    I'd hate to see what kind of *.xxx domains get picked, though. And for that matter I'd hate to see some of the scary things placed under .kids.


    Syr GameTab.com [gametab.com] - Game Reviews Database

    • I assume you're suggesting .kids should then be only for the US then, or are you suggesting an international organization merely to check which sites match the .kids domain or not. That would be a huge undertaking and there'd certainly become a grey zone as well. Personally, I think a search engine would do a much faster and more efficient job at that:

      http://www.dmoz.org/Kids_and_Teens/
      http://dire ctory.google.com/Top/Kids_and_Teens/

      Better that than getting a false "safety" that all .kids sites are actually for kids and, whoopsie, stumbling upon a kiddieporn site someone set up under a fake name. Then the .kids "police" would have to shut the site down and the story would repeat itself. The .kids domain would have to be more or less bullet proof and the majority of kid sites would have to get such a TLD, or much of the point would be lost. If only a "few" kid sites got such a TLD, we'd still have to let search engines do the job and check the site to be sure we came to the right place. Much like the problem with a spam filter that only works to 50%. We'd have to check lots of spam to make sure we didn't loose a legit mail just to be sure, which is exactly what we did without a filter.

  • Advertising? Technical issues? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:28AM (#5287638) Journal

    Until this article I had never even heard of a .name TLD. Perhaps if more people knew it existed? Most average people are still stuck on .com anyways. I tell them my website's address, 4am.kicks-ass.net (yay DynDNS), which ends in .net, and they call me up complaining it doesnt' work. Some of them put .com, some of them actually put .net.com, and still others put www.4am.kicks-ass.com. Point being, how many people are going to get bounced e-mails from frank@rizzo.com or frank@rizzo.name.com?

    Also, once I get this TLD I need to do something with it. After I pay for hosting or a mail server setup (which is what most people woudl probably want a .name for), this becomes a little more expensive than simply being "gt3trkj3p6@verizon.net"...
    • The reason we started the registrar was exactly that so few people know .name exists, because very few registrars promote it effectively.

      As for getting people to understand it, I personally use my .name a lot, and a few people do ask what it is, but most people have no problems.

      Anyway, as long as you have an existing mail address, that is all you need to get your .name address to work, and you can change which address it forwards to at any time.

      (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

      • I checked out the website and it is confusing me. If I type in my name in the box "Tim" "Darnit" it says that I can get Tim@darnit.name and tim.darnit.name. What does that get me? Do they delegate tim.darnit.name to me or darnit.name. Do I have to have the email forwarding? If I set up my own domain with tim.darnit.name then I would only be able to give out buelah@tim.darnit.name to my wife. To be Buelah@darnit.name she woiuld have to pay for her own stuff. Am I correct on this?

        This must be marketed to more mainstream net users and not people like me.
        • As it is now, to cater for ordinary users, tim.darnit.name's NS records would point to Personal Names nameservers, for the purpose of the web forwarding, however we would be happy to have to pointed to you directly if you choose to register (anyone can get that by mailing customer service for now). On .name no second levels are delegated.

          Personal Names doesn't sell domains separate from the e-mail forwarding, but other registrars do. You won't save much, though. And yes, you would have to pay for each third level. Some people choose to register "family.lastname.name" for that purpose.

          (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

  • No surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:28AM (#5287639) Journal
    I think this post [dnso.org] summarizes the outstanding problems well.

    Two points from that post:

    - .NAME is a TLD targetted for individuals, but priced for organizations, even if .NAME DNS requests should be far less common than .COM lookups.

    - .NAME in your e-mail let spammers easily detect individuals, merely by looking in a phone book and putting an @ between the forename and surname, and finally applying .NAME.

    • Re:No surprise? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by vidarh ( 309115 )
      Considering how spammers can easily autogenerate spam lists for most of the major ISPs by following easy to guess allocation patterns, I don't see why your name would be any easier.

      (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names)

  • I was under the impression that you could only get first.last.name (I have neil.sly.name - though I don't use it for anything.) This makes it a horribly long domain name - quite frankly I perfer my sly.us domain name and the accompanying neilslyus e-mail address. Of course, sly.com would of been better but it was already taken.

    -neil

  • How the heck.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )
    dot-coms go broke, but an entire TLD? How many point will that be worth on FuckedCompany.com [fuckedcompany.com]?
  • After a few more minutes of playing, I couldn't come up with a single .name that it told me was taken already!

    Here, Look:

    Your own, impressive .name addresses
    john@smith.name; and
    www.john.smith.name
    may be available right now.

    It says that for everything you enter...

  • Any TLD authority whose site doesn't work in Netscape 4 looks cheesy to me... (reach for IE) and the one that requires Flash definitely won't be on my list. Period.

  • Gee, why *IS* it failing? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Asprin ( 545477 ) <gsarnoldNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:49AM (#5287781) Homepage Journal

    It looks like they left off a reason why sales are slow: because it's a stupid idea!

    How many people really want a personalized email domain that maps directly to your real name, cannot be changed and therefore says "HEY, SPAMMERS, I'M OVER HERE AND I DON'T GET ENOUGH CRAP IN MY EMAIL!!!!!"

    I don't know what bothers me more - that they thought it was a good idea to begin with or that they think it just isn't being marketed well enough.

    BTW, I *fully* expect that before they cash out and go home, we'll hear that they tried to market their customer database to spammers, not realizing that a 1 line perl script could generate a list of valid addresses of the form 'john@smith.name'.

    What a bunch of maroons!

  • Like I really want to be known as John.Smith.name. It's like you're on the internet version of the Batmobile and you have a little placard labeling everything. See! That's my NAME! They might have done better thinking up a somewhat less moronic TLD, like .me (stupid, but cute), .home, or .family.

  • YRO? (Score:3)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:50AM (#5287790) Homepage
    Having .name is a right? I thought free speech was a right, at least according to the constitution.

    Bush, did you slip the .name registry in the constitution again? Bad bad president.

  • the.site.with.no.name (Score:5, Funny)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @10:56AM (#5287829) Homepage Journal
    the.site.with.no.name - be a good Spagetti Western homage site.

    theyve.given.me.a.number.and.taken.away.my.name - The Prisoner and Secret Agent Man homage site.

    went.through.the.desert.on.a.horse.with.no.name - fan site for the band America.

    a.policeman.knew.my.name - Site for The Who.

  • Not surprising (Score:2, Insightful)

    by artemis67 ( 93453 )
    It seems bizarre that anyone thinks they are going to make money with a new TLD, when ".org" and ".net" registrations COMBINED pale in comparison to ".com" registrations. Businesses are scared to register anything other than ".com", so they certainly aren't going to go with a TLD that most people haven't heard of.

    I would say that, in order for a new TLD to really make money, it would have to be issued by companies that are willing to manage the content. In this way, TLD's could be really useful by classifying websites; keep .com, .org, and .net for general content. For example, I know that the idea of using ".kids" for kid-friendly websites has been discussed; great idea, but who is going to ensure that ONLY kid-friendly websites use that TLD? Maybe if a coalition of kid-friendly companies (Disney, CTW, etc.) managed it; I could even see them being able to charge a premium price ($500?), because owning a ".kids" site would be a stamp of approval. Pricing it high would also dissuade jokesters from setting up ".kids" porn sites or hosting adult content.

    But, there's is NO FRICKEN WAY another TLD is going to make a dent in the market without adding some additional value in.
    • Disney is kid friendly?

      Maybe we would need to define "friendly"/
      • Yes, Disney is kid-friendly. I've watched countless hours of the Disney Channel with my kids, I've seen countless Disney movies, bought countless Disney toys, and visited several Disney theme parks. I have no problem declaring that anything marketed under the "Disney" brand is going to be kid-friendly.

        The advantage of having a company the size of Disney involved in the management of ".kids" is that 1) they're going to use it themselves, and 2) they'd actually put a little marketing muscle behind it so that maybe somebody will hear it exists (unlike ".name").
  • ..that it contains 4 letters instead of 3 or less for the other common TLDs.
    I have had my .name email address refused by several on-line purchasing systems, because some dumb programmers decided that an email address that had more than 3 characters after the last dot was invalid. So I have had to get an alternate address to be able to access these sites.

  • A BIG warning (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gudlyf ( 544445 ) <.gudlyf. .at. .realistek.com.> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:13AM (#5287975) Homepage Journal
    I signed up for a .NAME domain, stupidly through Network Solutions [networksolutions.com], for a fairly high price. This was because other registries such as Go Daddy [godaddy.com] weren't registering domains under .NAME at the time (I hear they do now). I was being all hasty about things, and decided to nab my .NAME ASAP with NetSol.

    The price NetSol charges, like with anything else, is outrageous, but that's not the worst of it. When I tried to have the domain transferred to Go Daddy (much, much cheaper), I found that I can't! In fact, what I believe happens is that once you apply for your .NAME domain (i.e., john.smith.name), NetSol takes ownership of "smith.name", and you're given the right to use the "john" subdomain -- it can't be transferred! (or, at least, they're not allowing it)

    NetSol also makes you purchase email hosting with the domain, and tries to tack on some web hosting. Simply put, DO NOT go through NetSol for this service. (I can hear the collective, "Well DUH!" now)

    This is why I'm letting my .NAME domain dry up and die, and will continue to handle my email the way I always have. There's no way in hell I'm paying NetSol's outrageous prices until I'm able to transfer to some other registry.

    • Re:A BIG warning (Score:4, Informative)

      by vidarh ( 309115 ) <vidar@hokstad.com> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:15AM (#5287987) Homepage Journal
      Luckily, you're wrong. The second level (smith.name) is NOT delegated from the registry. You have a right to transfer your name, unless your contract with Netsol says something else.

      I suggest you contact GNR (the registry) and talk to their customer service people to get help in getting it resolved.

      (Disclaimer: I work for Personal Names, the registrar mentioned, and we're a competitor to Network Solutions)

  • There was a reply to the letter mentioned in the lead story, which outlines many good reasons for the failure of .NAME, including the main one that prevented me from getting a .NAME account: cost.

    GNR's Claims invalid [dnso.org]

    I looked at the sales site that Global Name Registry Ltd started to try to sell .NAME, and it has basically the same problem (they want $20/yr for a .NAME registration), so I can only conclude that they are not listening. I predict they will fail. Whether or not they make it, I'm not spending $20/yr for a .NAME.

  • I use .name domain and e-mail... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Przepla ( 637674 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:21AM (#5288049)
    ...and I will be very unhappy if it disappear.
    First of all, I want my own domain and since I am not an ORGanization, not a COMmercial business, not a NETwork backbone .name suits me very well.

    I use it since beginning and I receive very little spam (while I post to USENET without even spamblocking my e-mail).

    If I would buy .com domain my personal data will be reavealed in Whois database, so I don't care if my name is put in e-mail itself or not.

    And finally now I can switch from different ISP without changing subscription addresses, my Bussiness Cards, and sending e-mail to all my friends about new e-mail.

    I can agree with one thing, it is not properly advertised. But did you hear about .museum, .coop or .aero domain?

    Note: English is not my native language, so please disregard any spelling or grammar mistakes.

  • This has been tried before (Score:4, Informative)

    by madstork2000 ( 143169 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @11:37AM (#5288170) Homepage
    I worked for a startup that was selling "third-level" domains to doctors under the .md domain. The company purchased severalthousand .md domains that represented "surnames". So we owned "smith.md", "wilson.md", etc.

    We provided web hosting (http://www.john.smith.md), email (john@smith.md), easy to use templates, for non tech savvy doctors.

    Several issues worked against us. First the company controlling the second level domains (i.e. the "surnames") that we had to purchase, charged too much for the business model (upwards of $300 /per year for a single second level .md domain).

    The other issue was we couldnever have all the names. so we could not do large "instatutional sales" effectively.

    these first two issues shouldnot effect .name, but the other issues we had problems with would:

    1. Name Overlap -names are not unique, we never achieved a large enough user base for this to be much of an issue, but it did come up occasionally.

    2. SPAM- the addresses are pretty easy to guess, since first@last is pretty easy to guess. the other SPAM issue was that more and more ISPs require the outgoing mail address to be on their network, and sothe users needed to configure the IMAP/POP accounts to use our sevrers, rather than their local ones.

    3. User ignorance, the way the email was/is built of the second level domain (john@smith.md) and the website is off the third level - john.smith.md confused the users, the sales people, and management. We never effectively explained the subtle difference to non savvy users.

    4. Long names. http://www.john.smith.md is an ok sized domain name,but if you had a long orhyphenated name, the email address and domain name become excessively long, and awkward to work with in "real world" applications,likeputting on business cards and letterhead.

    In short it sees the .name folks are making some of the same mistakes, and not addressesing the inherent problems needed to overcome the issues.
    In retrospect there are several more trouble issues that both our .md plan and .name share,
    but no sense in beating a dead horse, they definately need some help, some luck, and cash if they expect to succeed.

    I wish 'emluck cause I think they will need it...
    -MS2k

  • Not your typical TLD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Skwidd ( 568637 ) <joebob@mediawEIN ... minus physicist> on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @01:09PM (#5289022)
    The .name registry has some unique features:
    - Customers register 3rd level names (ie: firstname.lastname.name)
    - They charge an additional annual fee to have access to the corresponding e-mail address (firstname@lastname.name)
    - Customers can't use the DNS services that they use for 'real' domain names

    The dotName people had some lofty ambitions when the registry was created. They were hoping that their names would become the standard for unique ids over all kinds of communications -- they'd point to your website, e-mail, cell phone, etc. This sounds like a reasonable idea (a unique communications id), but names are not unique enough...

    Is anyone familiar with any similar (but ideally smarter) efforts?

  • How about some *sensible* TLDs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sheriff Fatman ( 602092 ) on Wednesday February 12, 2003 @02:54PM (#5289901) Homepage

    I must admit, I'm not surprised to see .name going tits-up, and I'll be surprised to see how .me.uk plays out over the next year or two. I think this whole notion of trying to cater to individuals is pretty well doomed - there's always going to be too many people with the same name, and they're going to end up as the exclusive preserves of the rich and vain people who happened to get there first. If they really want to sell domains to individuals, give them a bit of character... hands up anyone who wants their own .geek domain?

    On a more general note, I may be missing something *really* significant, but I really think that the internet DNS system suffers heavily from piss-poor management. As it stands, we've got all these fairly uninspiring TLDs - .museum, .aero. .info, the list goes on. I can't believe any commercial organisation are going to go for a .biz or a .info domain without trying to get the .com as well. One of my clients provides information publishing services to the media industry, and they're now buying .com, .co.uk, .biz and .info for every domain they register - not 'cos it's bringing them any extra revenue, but because they're worried about cybersquatters and competitors trading on their brand.

    Added to this, I really don't think ICANN are doing a particularly good job setting up the 'new' TLDs. I've said this before on /., but why the hell isn't there a .movie TLD? Every mainstream film that's released these days has an official website with a fat marketing budget behind it. Movies tend to have short, easily memorable name, and - more importantly - they're almost always unique names, to avoid people confusing one movie with another. Since films don't really depend on their internet presence for revenue the way many companies do, they'd probably be a lot more receptive to using something other than .com at the end. As long as the registration process was vetted the same way as .edu or .ac.uk, you'd rapidly create a system where a .movie site was guaranteed to be the 'real deal', leaving the fanboys to fight over www.starwarsepisode3.com. I'm sure there's numerous other candidates - .game, .book, .show, maybe .band or .music or somesuch. Certainly none of them can be any worse than .museum - do a Google search for 'museum' [google.com], and see how many pages of results you have to go through to find a .museum TLD. I got bored after about a hundred results.

    .sex and .xxx offer possibilities, too. It can't be that hard for an ISP or hosting company to insist that their customers use a specific TLD for pornographic sites. All concerned parents have to do is block access to .sex and voila! they can sleep at night believing their kiddies are safe from the child-eating internet porn monsters.

    At the end of the day, if ICANN want to provide TLDs as a service, they've got to accept that no-one's going to get rich, and if they want to get rich, they should be identifying their potential markets just like any other business and working to meet the needs of those markets. TLDs like .name and .aero just seem like a waste of everybody's time and bandwidth.

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