Care to Register Your Own TLD?

luap writes: "MSNBC is running this article about a Top Level Domain proposal by the Consumer Project for Technology to add the TLDs ".sucks," ".unions," ".consumers," ".complaints," ".ecology," ".isnotgreen," ".isnotfair," ".shareholder," ".taxpayer" and ".unite." Where are ".rules," ".isaloser," etc..?"

More TDLs are certainly overdue -- but ".isnotfair" and ".isnotgreen"? How about ".fam" for family? What new TDLs would make most sense? Would officializing ".sucks" do anything besides lead to companies buying additional domain names to sit on? These questions will do nothing but hover until ICANN acts on this or other TLD-loosening proposals, which so far it has been reluctant to do.

Not so with *unlimited* TLDs.

All this does is increase the number names companies will HAVE to buy, to protect their trademarks.

Open the floodgates. Allow *anything* to be used as a TLD, HOWEVER.... and this is what's important: All domain registrations *must* still consist of two parts, domain+TLD. The TLD itself can be registered to no one nor belongs to anyone, thus insuring its availability to all.

This will accomplish the following:

(1) Campanies simply *cannot* "buy up" all the domains anymore as there will, for all practical purposes, be an infinite number of combinations for trademarkname.* as * can be now anything.

(2) Companies with similar or identical names, but doing different things now have plenty of elbow room to coexist (unlike now). Apple computers has apple.com. What is Apple Records to do? Why, apple.records, of course. A farmer could have apple.farms, the temp agency could have apple.employment, etc. since, emphasizing again, that the TLD itself (.apple) can't be registered to anyone, thus future companies and individuals can forever enjoy use and availibility of the .apple TLD. Even Mr. Joe Apple (joe.apple).

It'd be an end to squatting; an end to hoarding; an end to buying out of spite; an end to domain brokering. And how difficult would it be for servers to implement on a technical level? I see it as no worse than the .com subdomain is already being successfully handled (for now, inagine as *.com with the .com simply dropped).

Katz nations - site purpose in URL

Not too long ago, Jon Katz posted an article on cyber-nations. This is the level at which TLDs should be determined. Surely there are 'classes' of sites out there, and the surfer would benefit from having a better sense of the domains.

Mainly, the .com domain is over used. No surprise there. As I see the usage of .com, it breaks down into shopping sites, business presence sites, business 'hit-and-run' announcement and advert sites, and service providing sites - selling no tangible product (yahoo or slashdot). The boundaries get blurry sometimes, but for the most part, I think this is accurate.

Should we stick to the three-letter scheme? Is there an obligation to do so. Regardless, the purpose of the site should be shown in it's URL.
So, there should be a .buy or .shop. Same for .corp or .inc or .biz; .ad/.advert; .priv or .fam, .serv (for places like here or pricewatch)

Then again, there is the international consideration, where the domains OUGHT to be sensitive to the fact that no everyone speaks English. Any polyglots out there care to give this some thought?

And of course, if we can corral all the porn sites to the .xxx domain, they'd be both easier to find and to filter.

It won't matter much

It really won't matter much if these TLD are available soon, or even now. Looking into my crystal ball, I see that it won't be too long before all servers physically located inside the USA borders are forced to adhere to strict laws regarding naming. It will soon be required to move from .edu, .com, .gov, .net and so over to .edu.us, .com.us, .gov.us, .net.us and so. After that, all domains with a .us name must adhere to rating laws. That way, you can have a government enforcable way to filter the internet.

"but what about all non-us sites?" - They get filtered out by default on public terminals usable by minors.

"can that filtering be turned off for adults" - Of course it can, but will it? I dunno.

"Isn't that against freedom of speech" - No, it'll get shoehorned under federal regulation over international / interstate commerce.

"can the states require even more location specific names?" - Yep. If the state of california requires .CA.US on all servers hosted in the sate, that can be done as well.

"What about browsers, are they next?" - You betcha! After the feds shoehorn the TLD regulation under the guise of interstate / international commerce, and the states require state level domain naming, it's a brief interlude before browsers will be forced to identify what location it is in. That way, collecting taxes from internet purchases become easy to track and collect.

-Joe

Domain Namespace Inflation

All this does is increase the number names companies will HAVE to buy, to protect their trademarks.

what.sucks

TLDs.with.more.than.three.letters.sucks

There were already better suggestions...

...for TLDs, like .bus, .home. etc.

What we don't need are special-interest groups turning the TLDs from a value-neutral categorizing system into a lobby effort with crap like .isnotgreen.

Why, you ask? Well, it sets a really silly precedent. What about when someone lobbies for .isgay? Someone's gonne be up in arms about that.

If this 'Consumer' org gets their wish, I'll be pushing for .isatreehuggingbullshitorganization

Steve

This is a joke, right?

Some points to consider:

• The ".sucks" thing will never work. Every company that registers a ".com" will grab the ".sucks" as well, just in case. Microsoft will, without question, own "www.microsoft.sucks." The article says that companies will be prohibited from registering their own names under such a domain, but how can that be enforced? It goes against some very basic laws that give a company the right to control what happens to its name (a la eToys).
• TLDs are not mean to simply be clever endings to website names. They serve a purpose. If ".sucks" is accepted, then so must be every other clever idea that someone comes up with for a URL. Why not ".ate.my.balls," for example. Yeah, they're cute, and yeah, it would be nice in some ways to have more URL flexibility, but it goes against the basic purpose of TLDs.
• If it goes through, I have dibs on "www.linux.sucks" so that it can't fall into the wrong hands. *grin*

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