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The Internet Businesses

Loophole found in Internet Domain Naming 230

Posted by CowboyNeal from the good-business dept.
kyndig writes "Just what is the 'spirit of internet naming?' ICANN can tell you, as they are the naming experts. In a recent CNN article, ICANN states EnCirca Domain Register is violating the spirit of internet naming by reselling .pro names. The report states that in early 2000, ICANN allowed 3rd level domains (foo.bar.pro) to be sold. Later, ICANN allowed 2nd level domains (foo.pro) to be sold for .pro as well. The restriction to this selling was that a user must have the 3rd level domain first. There are no reseller checks or usage enforcement other than the request to own a 3rd level domain from ICANN. EnCirca president plans to continue reselling 2nd level .pro domains, unless ICANN places a restriction on doing so."
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Loophole found in Internet Domain Naming More

Loophole found in Internet Domain Naming

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  • Why? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Penguinoflight ( 517245 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:37AM (#12222584) Journal
    Well, i've asked the same question. The simple answer is that bar doesn't make any sense alone. foo.bar is the only way to complete a thought.

    Why does this stuff get posted? There is no opinion on this, nobody mentioned that ICANN generally sucks, and who wants a .pro domain anyway?

    • Re:Why? (Score:2, Troll)

      by youngerpants ( 255314 )
      .pro domains are in great demand by prostitutes the world over

    • Re:Why? (Score:3, Funny)

      by ThePilgrim ( 456341 )
      and who wants a .pro domain anyway?
      Me Me! I'm a professional! I want a pro domain! I want to show how professional I am. Please give me a pro domain. Give me one! Now! Me. Pleeeesssssss!!!!!!!!
    • I do.

      I've wanted a .pro domain since I heard they were going to be made available. Shortly afterward, I was told that it would only be for medical professionals and people involved in legal practices, both of which have no interest in anything but .com domains.

      So I wrote a letter to ICANN and the register I was trying to work with at the time and I heard nothing. Although, looking at third level domains, I see an interesting addition, ".eng.pro." It's nice to know someone at ICANN was listening, or that o

  • ICANN sure can tell you. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nenolod ( 546272 ) <(nenolod) (at) (gmail.com)> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:37AM (#12222590) Homepage
    The problem is that nobody seems to care about what ICANN has to say. Which is a shame. But I mean really, ICANN isn't going to be able to fight a corporation so they should probably quit with these little nitpicking events they have, as they always wind up to be a waste of bandwidth and nothing more.
    • Actually, it is quite simple for them to fight. Unless they keep a record of the company attempting to launch the new tld, barring getting everyone to manually modify their DNSs, the TLD won't be visible or will only be visible to a small number of people.

      I can't be bothered to dig up the story, but awhile back there was a company selling a "driver" for a new TLD that basically redirected your primary DNS lookup to their servers and, voila, *.whatever worked. People bought domains under it only to realize
      • A side note:

        People have tried variations on this. .web domains

        new.net (through spyware)

        The Inclusive Namespace (claims to be the first .biz registry, and appears to have an alternate root server as described in the parent post.)

        They all seem to have failed.

        AOL has an interesting service happening with keywords, however it's not exactly an open system. Keywords are either owned by AOL or rented out to sponsors (as detailed in their media kit).

  • ICANN doing something right? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bmw ( 115903 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:38AM (#12222593)
    I normally don't agree with ICANN's position on many things but it seems to me that they could be taking the right stance on this. I'm not sure I would prefer tighter restrictions on domain names and TLDs but wouldn't it be nice if everyone stuck to a consistent naming convention? Imagine something a lot like what we have with newsgroups.

  • DNS? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:38AM (#12222597) Homepage
    Bah, who needs DNS anyway? Real hackers memorize IP addresses! All you need to know is 216.239.57.99, really.
    • What about namebased vhosts?
      • Id love a Firefox extension that allowed you to specify a vhost to get when using an IP address to visit a site - it would make testing websites locally before uploading them to a remote site so much easier than altering local DNS for each location change. Just a little box next to the address bar which means 'send this vhost header' or whatever. Been meaning to look into writing one, but havent had the time.
        • Ermmm... that's what /etc/hosts is alla about...
          • Thats part of the problem, I want to be able to access BOTH my test site and my live site at the same time. I dont want to be editing the /etc/hosts file each time I want to switch sites and I dont want to change hostnames (eg dev.foobar.com) for the sites.

    • Re:DNS? (Score:5, Funny)

      by SorcererX ( 818515 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:49AM (#12222703) Homepage
      The scary thing is... I didn't even need to look up that ip to know it was google

    • Re:DNS? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Simon Garlick ( 104721 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @10:28AM (#12222975)
      IP addresses are for n00bs. REAL hackers memorize MAC addresses.
    • Yesterday I arrived home and my internet was down (Comcast). It was obviously a DNS problem (so sayeth TCP dump).

      First step: Need to call company.

      216.239.57.99
      Google for "Comcast help number" and assorted queries, until it comes up.

      Second step: Call Comcast. They have a major DNS outage, as you are already aware. They have no solution yet.

      Third step: Google for how to specify your DNS in Linux.

      Fourth step: Google for alternate DNSes.

      Fifth step: Do as Google demands.

      Bang! Full intarweb functi

  • ICANN is a disaster. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:39AM (#12222602)
    Nothing they do makes sense to me. It seems like they're just creating new TLDs willy-nilly and giving control of them to new companies apparently without the ability to enforce any of the controls they've created. What exactly is the purpose of all these new TLDs [icann.org]?


    • There is no purpose to these TLDs. It's all bureaucratic crap. The fact of the matter is that it is the root server admin group (primarily VeriSign, that's why they got away with sitefinder for weeks while ICANN continued to complain) that actually has the power to create and maintain TLDs. Which is why nobody really cares about anything ICANN has to say, especially when everything they say tends to be ridiculously stupid.
    • I, for one, feel that the .XXX TLD is a very high priority!
      • I guess it'll never happen ! Otherwise, companies could easy filter access to these sites based on domain extensions, making them much less valuable... :)
        • Based on the volume of indiscriminately-sent porn spam that is emailed everyday, the likelyhood that the porn industry would willingly subject themselves to a .XXX TLD that would allow them to be easily filtered is close to zero.

          I'm not saying that the industry wouldn't use .xxx -- they would. But they would also keep all of the .COM addresses, particularly the ones that are intended to fool people into accidentally surfing to them (e.g., whitehouse.com).

          I mean, fer cryin out loud, there was a porn guy a
          • Exactly the point. Blacklisting doesn't work, and you'll never get the pr0n merchants out of the general TLDs.

            An actual WORKABLE solution is to have TLDs like .KIDS and .TEEN. To get one of these TLDs, you have to SIGN A CONTRACT saying you will abide by the contractually-imposed content restrictions, and perhaps even POST A BOND which would be forfiet if you broke the terms of the contract.

            This wouldn't solve the problem completely, as it still requires client-side or proxy-level enforcement, but it

        • For this reason I wouldn't be surprised if governments try to force it, and regulate speach outside of it.

          So what if only a few people can read the free speach.

          Fortunately I think it has already been tried and failed.

    • The purpose of all the new TLDs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:53AM (#12222737) Homepage Journal
      The purpose of all the new TLDs is "To allow domain registrars to make more money."

      That is why every little movie simply must have its own .com domain, rather than having a virtual directory under the domain of the publisher - e.g. paramount.com/drecky_summer_movie/

      That is why Joe's garage on the corner down the street must have JoesGarage.com, or at least JoesGarageAtFifthAndMain.com, rather than joesgarage.ict.ks.us.

      Domains get cheaper the further down the heirarchy they get - domain registrars cannot charge as much for *.lawyers.com as they can for *.com.

      Unlike physical items like land or gold, new TLDs can be created ad infinitum, so the registrars "figger" (they don't "figure" or "reason" or "think" - that is beyond them) they can get ICANN to keep creating new TLDs and they can continue to make the same amount of money forever.

      Of course, that has worked out so spectactularly well in the case of .biz - after all, I know that when I see a .biz domain I feel great trust for the domain holder, as we all know that .biz mean business, and that anybody with a .biz must therefor be trustworthy!

      .
      .
      .
      .

      Excuse me, I had to replace the sarcasm fuse in my keyboard.
      • Unlike physical items like land or gold, new TLDs can be created ad infinitum

        Actually, you can do this with money. They tried it once. It was called hyperinflation.

      • Professionalism (Score:5, Insightful)

        by spectre_240sx ( 720999 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:52AM (#12223788) Homepage
        The reason Joe's Garage needs www.joesgarage.com rather than joesgarage.ict.ks.us is because it seems more professional. It creates an illusion of size to the people that don't fully understand the way the system works; ie bob smith who is looking to have his car serviced.

        In the early days of the web, most of the websites worth looking at had a .com TLD and were fairly large and I think that idea has stayed with us until now.
        • >> www.joesgarage.com rather than joesgarage.ict.ks.us is because it seems more professional.

          Not just that - You'll pick up more type in trafic with a dot-com. In fact, many browsers helpfully add the ".com" if you type in a partial URI. - just type "ebay" into your address bar and hit enter. -> bet you go to http://www.ebay.com.

          Unlessyou just can't get a decent dotcom name related to your business, I think it's the way to go...
        • No, joesgarage.ict.ks.us is just too hard to remember. I doubt many people care much about what the actual name is, but they do have to remember the name at least once for it to be at all usefull.

  • I wonder how useful all these domains are. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Amiga Lover ( 708890 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:39AM (#12222608)
    I wonder how useful all these extra tlds are. I've worked on a helpdesk for a .org and a .edu, and one of the REALLY common problems we get is a call from users complaining they can't get on. Invariably, they're typing "www.foo.edu.com" or "www.foo.org.com".

    I bet there's a lot of "why can't I get to lawyer.pro.com??" going on.

  • .pro? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Underholdning ( 758194 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:40AM (#12222616) Homepage Journal
    Am I the only one who's never seen a .pro domain?
    There's one cool thing about this TLD. You have to provide proof of your profession to buy such a domain. Now that's probably the reason why I've never seen a spam advertising a .pro domain.

    • Re:.pro? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Strolls ( 641018 )

      You have to provide proof of your profession to buy such a domain. Now that's probably the reason why I've never seen a spam advertising a .pro domain.

      In that case you may enjoy http://www.network.pro/ [network.pro]. And I'm disappointed to find that instead of a directory of local hookers, http://sex.pro/ [sex.pro] includes "favourite categories" links including life insurance & Christian dating. Well, where else would one look?

      It seems to me there's no point in pretending these are quality, respectable and accredited dom

    • Re:.pro? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pklong ( 323451 )
      Google is your friend [google.com] as ever. Looks like nothing worthwhile is on .pro anyway...

  • Artificial shortage, artificial problems (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:41AM (#12222620) Journal
    As so often, a bunch of administrators have decided that they need to regulate the market, but are driven more by self-interest (justifying their jobs) than by interest in supporting a free market.

    It's Parkinson's Law: bureaucrats expand their work to fill their budgets. It's why half of my country's GDP goes to pay for civil servants.

    In the case of internet domains the only satisfactory long term solution is to allow any company to register a top level domain, with some rules to avoid abuse, and then to allow a free market for reselling, giving, using sub domains.

    Since the market has been restricted for so long, there should be a period in which existing domain holders and trademark holders can get "their" names without excessive conflict.

    All the rest - the "official registrars", the annual fees, the ICANN and their rules - it's just a tax on using the Internet for building interesting communications structures.

    • I like your plan to have more top level domains, but it is ultimately pointless to have more, since trademarks make it hard to register similar domains under different toplevels anyway.

      Therefore, .com is enough, although I admit it is nice to have separate TLDs for nations and non-profits.

      One domain to rule them
      One domain to bind them
      One domain to bring them all
      And in the darkness find them

      • Re:Isn't .com enough? One domain .. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ites ( 600337 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @10:12AM (#12222859) Journal
        Indeed, .com would be enough since trademarks mean anyone with a .com will try to get .net and .org as well.

        So, if everyone was under .com, you could just remove .com and get the same result - more or less what I am proposing.

        The current system just translates into lots and lots of registration fees.

        Take any business that operates in many countries. It is ridiculous for it to have to get domain names businessname.countryname. No-one wants to categorise companies or organisations per country.

        What it should be able to do is get countryname.businessname. Thus, we'd see names like "uk.itunes' instead of 'itunes.co.uk' (which incidentally was snapped up by a bright young thing before Apple could get it).

        The concept of national domains is anarchaic, and irrelevant. It's a totally useless concept and every popular country domain is one that is abused - e.g. .tv, .to, etc.

        Trademarks are entirely compatible with a freer scheme. Imagine two companies share the same name but operate in different markets. Easy - if you have a trademark, you are entitled to request a 2nd-level domain matching your name. I.e. two businesses with the same name, in different sectors, can share a TLD, with one or other acting as registrar for the other. The ICANN can be kept for arbitrage.

        We'd see the end of cyberquatting, stupid disputes, and fat fees for registrars just because one has to register an endless list of domains just to get adequate protection for a trademarked name.

        • Re:Isn't .com enough? One domain .. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by jizmonkey ( 594430 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @11:15AM (#12223415)
          Dude, you don't understand trademarks very well. If you look at say the corporate charter filings at the Sec. of State for California you will see dozens of companies with very similar names no matter what you put in. Multiply that by 50 states, then across the world. All of them might be entitled to a particular domain name. A trademark doesn't mean that you own a sequence of letters.

          Rather than having convoluted and arbitrary names, it's better to have domain names which map to the company which is most relevant to the consumer. Someone in Belgium can easily remember company.be, likewise company.co.jp in Japan. There are very few worldwide companies like Amazon and General Motors, and even they like to customize their web sites for the local markets. Amazon.co.jp is a totally different web site than Amazon.co.uk.

          In my opinion, pretty much none of the long TLDs are worth having; all they do is cause artificial pressure on artificially scarce real estate. Perhaps a few like .org or .int are - international organizations like the Red Cross and Amnesty International don't really have a presence in any one country. But it's lunacy to have that .org TLD open for any Tom Dick or Harry's vanity site.

          Maybe if .com had used registration restrictions like .co.jp it wouldn't be so polluted. But given worldwide differences in corporate law, it would make just as much sense to not have .com in the first place, to let each country manage its own TLD, like I already said.

        • The concept of national domains is anarchaic, and irrelevant. It's a totally useless concept and every popular country domain is one that is abused - e.g. .tv, .to, etc.

          Dude, .de is one of the biggest TLD at all - it is approximately as big as .org and .net combined. And no, it's not abused. In fact, I expect from a German company to be reachable under company.de if they want to be taken seriously.

          • I'm unsure what you mean by the "size" of a TLD. Number of domains? Number of people surfing in Germany?

            When we had a lot of downloads of our free softare, something like 20% came from .de.

            But I don't think this necessarily means that the domain extension .de is the cause - it's surely more to do with the size of the German population and the fact that all German ISPs have a .de domain.

            I've nothing against national domains. Fine, if this matches a specific sense of identity. Like the alt.de. newsgrou
      • If .com were all that's needed, why not do away with it entirely? That would open up the entire top level domains, now wouldn't it? Let's take this a step further. How about we completely open up the TLDs. How about we also make them expensive enough to discourage the average guy from registering one. Lets say, $100,000/year. This money can be used to fund the root servers. This would also take a lot of pressure off the root servers since they no longer need to host the entire .COM namespace, they on
    • On the matter of artificial scarcity in the DNS, you may find my "Cornucopia" [circleid.com] idea interesting. It's in the category of crazy ideas that ought to be considered, even if only to break people out of an established mindset. (Also at my site [nutters.org].) The basic premiss of the idea: "What if every domain name you wanted was available?"

  • The nature of the spirit of name restritctions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gihan_ripper ( 785510 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:41AM (#12222622) Homepage

    An honest question here --- could someone please explain to me why the action of EnCirca is in transgression of the "spirit of name restrictions"?

    I don't see the problem myself, and would be grateful if someone could explain the situation.

    • An honest question here --- could someone please explain to me why the action of EnCirca is in transgression of the "spirit of name restrictions"?

      I think the point is that before, you'd register megacorp.foo and you'd effectively get all possible sub-domains for free, i.e. www.megacorp.foo, hamstermatic.megacorp.foo, www.gerbilotron.megacorp.foo and so on.

      I assume what's happening is that if you register megacorp.pro, you'll need to pay for any additional sub-domains...

      Although I could very well be extr

    • Re:The nature of the spirit of name restritctions (Score:5, Informative)

      by Arathrael ( 742381 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @10:49AM (#12223170)
      Had to read the link myself to understand it, the article summary is less than clear.

      Basically, the idea was you could initially only buy third level domains such as IAAL.law.pro, but you had to provide credentials to establish your professional status to buy them.

      ICANN then allowed second level domains to be sold - e.g. IAAL.pro - but you had to own a third level domain first and hence have gone through the credential-establishing process.

      EnCirca are selling second level domains to be sold without having a third level domain first, thus skipping the credential-establishing bit entirely, and this is bad.

      That's as far as I understand it anyway. Does that make sense?
    • The registrar itself should not be selling domain names; that's the "spirit" that's being violated here.

      It would be like Verisign taking control of all *.com domain names.... wait, never mind ;)

  • ... a law firm called Smith Jones could get "smithjones.law.pro." ... ICANN later allowed second-level names -- such as "smithjones.pro" -- as long as the individual or firm already has a third-level name.

    Aside from profit (you pay for two domains if you want the 2nd level one), what was the reason for this restriction in the first place?

    • Re:Reasoning? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) *
      Let's say you've got two individuals named John Dow. One's an IP lawyer, and one's a brain surgeon. Both of them have accrued enough fame in their circles that if you were to ask a lawyer and a brain surgeon who Jon Dow was, they'd both immediately have answers, but those answers were different.

      However, only one of them could get "johndow.com", leaving the other out in the cold in terms of easy-to-remember domain names. If one were to have "johndow.md.pro" and the other were to have "johndow.law.pro", i
      • I guess that makes sense. Myself, I would have thought that instead of using "johndow.law.pro" and "johndow.md.pro", there could have been "johndow.law" and "johndow.md". But then, the whole "pro" domain must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

  • Give it a few years (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jfried ( 122648 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:46AM (#12222673) Homepage
    Even now, people hardly remember domain names. They use google to find it because its easier that way.

    Give it a few years an people will be asking you, whats your google search string?

    But anyways its .pro, Frankly this is the first time I have heard about it. I dont think anyone will shed a tear for them.
    • ...I was reviewing the server logs of one of our clients and people were searching in google/yahoo/msn/ask jeeves for the entire domain name, i.e. siteurl.com.

      Even when people remember domain names some of them obviously don't know what to do with them (a stupidly large number of people I've met don't know what to do with the address bar and go to pages they regularly visit by typing the name in google, which is set as their homepage (somehow)).
    • Give it a few years an people will be asking you, whats your google search string?

      That won't happen, for at least one reason. When you buy a domain, as long as you keep paid up, that domain is yours (aside from the slim chance of registrars screwing up and letting someone hijack it). Google (or any search engine) search strings, on the other hand, are only valid as long as someone doesn't manage to work their way to the top of the search results, above even your own company.

      Right now, Maxwell House can c

  • .pron (Score:3, Funny)

    by Reignking ( 832642 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:47AM (#12222675) Journal
    Can .pron be far?

  • Question about DNS... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bluprint ( 557000 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:48AM (#12222688) Homepage
    I thought the third level was essentially handled at the web server, is that not true? So, if you had foo.pro, you could set a link that went to bar.foo.pro, or make your webserver serve bar.foo.pro or whatever, but routers would always send requests to *.foo.pro to your IP address and let you work it out from there. Is that not the case?
    • I thought the third level was essentially handled at the web server, is that not true?

      Basically, no. All levels are handled by DNS. You can use a wildcard, but you could also send, eg, foo.bar.pro to one IP and bar.bar.pro to another. You can also delegate subdomains to different nameservers - so you could delegate foo.bar.pro to your friends nameserver and they would handle all requests for *.foo.bar.pro. That, in effect is how registrars handle second-level domain requests - you query the registrars nam

    • If you want bar.foo.pro you have to get it from whoever owns foo.pro. They control the DNS records for foo.pro, which means they control DNS entries for *.foo.pro. This can be handled at the webserver basis if you point *.foo.pro at your webserver, but in the case where foo.pro is popular, someone will buy foo.pro and then resell all the variations of *.foo.pro, and direct each variation to someone else's web server. From there, the buyers could handle *.bar.foo.pro variations via their webserver.
    • Routers don't automatically send it unless the DNS records specify a wildcard for the domain. Slashdot seem to do this (try foo.slashdot.org)

      It can also be specified explicitly, when you do that bar.foo.org can point to a completely different server. I do it this way since I have my hosting for various things all spread out. I could still use a wildcard but I don't really see the need.
      • Routers don't automatically send it unless the DNS records specify a wildcard for the domain

        Excluding corner cases like nameservers defined in router configs to resolve names within tftp, telnet/ssh, ping, and traceroute commands issued by admins from the router's CLI, routers have *absolutely* nothing to do with DNS!

        All DNS transactions are handled between DNS clients and DNS servers, or between DNS servers and other DNS servers.

        If your computer sends a DNS query for "foo.bar.com" to its nameserver and
    • DNS is a hierarchy of names:

      - The root DNS servers know the IP addresses of the DNS servers for .com, .org, .edu, etc
      - The .com DNS servers (there are many) know the IP addresses of the DNS servers for google.com, yahoo.com, citibank.com, etc.
      - The google.com DNS server knows the IP addresses for the hostnames "www.google.com", "news.google.com", etc.

      IF there are any third-level domains under google.com (like corporate.google.com, yomama.google.com, etc) then there are two possibilities:

      - the

  • Wrong title (Score:5, Insightful)

    by presroi ( 657709 ) <neubau@presroi.de> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:48AM (#12222690) Homepage
    There is no "Loophole found in Internet Domain Naming" as the headline says. The loophole lies in the Policy for a certain TLD. It has nothing to do with internet domain naming.

  • etc (Score:3, Informative)

    by XO ( 250276 ) <blade,eric&gmail,com> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:48AM (#12222691) Homepage Journal
    I think that the point is, they wanted the 2nd level to be a generic description of what type of professional service the business provides.

    *shrug*

    does it really matter?
  • "Spirit of the Internet" be damned. What business people need are laws and contracts.

    No need to get all mushy if their legal department dropped the ball.

  • Well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cyn ( 50070 ) <cyn.cyn@org> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:54AM (#12222748) Homepage
    The .pro domain was specifically stated to be created for 'professionals' - doctors, lawyers - basically jobs you would have recognized as professionals in 1950, it's not just ANY professional that could get a .pro!

    The problem is they're not doing any checking, they're just opening up the .pro for anyone who has the cash. Personally I wouldn't see that as a problem, but the fact of the matter is it was originally intended to be established, checked, professionals.

    I suppose the real point was to say "these people have been checked and have shown they are professional, so you can trust them - at some level - with your information". Basically a free 'level of trust', similar to a SSL cert.

    The problem is, amongst other things, nobody would goddamned well know that. Joe schmoe is going to put more trust in law.com than law.pro - "what the hell is pro".

    Most people just go out there and get their .com - maybe the net and org - and are done with it. A few of the niche markets get their .tv for example (oh the irony), but that's recognizable - and they're pimping their URL at you constantly while you watch. I could understand a .law for lawyers and the likes, but .pro is just too generic.

    IMO - the concept has failed, and was a bad assumption to begin with. If you're going to be branching out more and more domains, trying to bring in the big bucks, make them really friggin specific so they're useful.
    • It is hard enough getting people to understand the difference between .org, .com, .net, .gov, and .mil, the origional non country specific domain names.

      Domain names are confusing to the masses. The addtional top levels are only making it more confusing. How many companies find a domain name, and register it in as many top levels as they think are relevent? Most? Certainly seems to support the theory that this is just for the registrars.

      When I was in the 9th grade (1993, and the Internet existed but wa

  • I propose a new TLD! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thenerdgod ( 122843 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @09:57AM (#12222763) Homepage
    It shall simply be for .

    Yeah, you heard me... '.'

    So you can register whatever you want with my new tld... Say you want... hmmm "slashdotbitesass"
    that'd be your new tld!

    origin slashdotbitesass.
    10.10.10.10 A www

    woot!

    Seriously, why the hell even go through all the trouble for new TLDs. With the possible exception of the utility of .XXX, everyone assumes ".com"
    when you say a domain name. Even if you say ".net" they try .com

    It's sheer madness!

  • The Spirit of Internet Naming? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by birdman17 ( 706093 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @10:05AM (#12222818)
    Too late to cry about that now. That went out the window the first time a non-commercial entity bought a .com domain...

  • The cost? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jacobcaz ( 91509 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @10:14AM (#12222871) Homepage
    Why is a xxx.yyy.pro name worth $345 per year ($595 for 2 years)?

    Where is the value over a .com? I say, more power to them if they can convince "professional" organizations to pony up the cash.

    I see that some sites offering .pro domains mention an expensive vetting process to determine the authenticity of the registering party. I have to ask, "why?" Where is the value to the end user or to the registering party?

    There certianly isn't any value for me (as a professional or as a user) and I imagine these "rules" will be relaxed as some point where .pro will be just another .info or .biz - a TLD I never bother to check for availability when I register a domain.

  • degrees, hello? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <[info] [at] [devinmoore.com]> on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @10:28AM (#12222979) Homepage Journal
    The only TLD that even makes sense to add at this point is to add .phd, .mba,etc. for accredited university graduates. And where the hell is the .adult or .sex to pass off all the adult sites onto? You could just require that adult content has a .adult extension and then censor the hell out of .com, and no one could really complain, since free speech would still abound over at .adult, or whatever.
    • Here here!
    • There are two obvious problems with having .adult (or whatever) as a madatory TLD for adult content: definitions, and enforcement.

      The definition: what is "adult content" (or whatever term you decide to use)? Is an educational site that includes images of genitalia (e.g. sex education) included? A discussion site where people discuss sexual matters? (And does it make a difference whether such discussions are regular or occasional?) What about Wikipedia's articles on human sexuality [wikipedia.org]? Does your ISP's us
      • I agree that that would be nearly impossible to enforce, and that there are always going to be people (probably a fairly high percentage in the porn industry) who will want to hide among the .coms. However, I also feel that opening up a .xxx TLD and doing little or no enforcement would still be a great boon to the internet.

        It would at least cut back on the amount of explicit material on the rest of the web, browser filters could take care of .xxx if people don't want it, and I am sure there would be a lo

  • .scam (Score:2, Funny)

    by wingsofchai ( 817999 )
    I'm waiting for .scam to come out so I know who NOT to trust...I mean, we have .biz for businesses we "trust" and .pro now for certified "professionals"...

  • Isn't the 'sprit of internet naming'... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Andy_R ( 114137 ) on Wednesday April 13, 2005 @10:48AM (#12223153) Homepage Journal
    ...simply "let's get rich quick"?

    I'll believe otherwise when .tv sites start being about the island of Tuvalu.

    Here in the uk, (where .co.uk is the normal domain for businesses) we've suffered years and years of the company that owns the (supposedly invalid according to ICANN's rules uk.com domain selling worthless 3rd level domains to people, who unsurprisingly find lots their traffic going to the 'co.uk' with the same name.

    99% of my spam comes from people who work for foo.uk.com (where foo is my company's domain) who sign up for junk and get their own address wrong. ICANN doesn't want to know about this flagrant abuse of the system, presumably because there is no financial gain to be had by closing down .uk.com
    • I'll believe otherwise when .tv sites start being about the island of Tuvalu.

      Yeah! And when .cx sites start being about Christmas Island!

      Of course if those sites are about Christmas Island, I can tell you I'm never going there. One hell of a hazing ritual for the new guy...

  • loophole my ass (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jbltgz ( 549512 )
    I wouldn't call this a loophole. ICANN is in the business of generating revenue. If they stop these guys from letting them register domains then they're just stepping on their own airhose.
  • An insanely arcane registration methodology would make .geek TLD membership self-validating and highly trustworthy (...although not necessarily useful...)

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