Master Of Your Domain

ICANN has been in the news quite a bit recently. Although new TLD's have been in the works for more than five years now, ICANN has given in to the lobbying of its patron mega-corps and stated that no new TLD's would be created unless trademark holders got first dibs on them. So much for a personal TLD exempt from trademark considerations... ICANN is currently pushing its At-Large Membership, which everyone should join, even though the system has been carefully rigged so that the public cannot make meaningful changes in the composition of ICANN's Board. All these and more will be discussed in their Cairo meeting, which will be Webcast starting 2 a.m. EST on March 8.

An Open Source Response to ICANN

With ipv6 looming on the horizon, it would appear that the open source community has an excellent opportunity to respond to the inappropriate behavior and policies of both the ICANN and NSI in a very positive, proactive, and effective way:

• Actively develope and deploy a modernized version of DNS, with better authentication and all around security, and a more scalable heiarchy allowing for thousands, even millions of TLDs.
  
• In parallel, establish an alternative, open, non-commercial, and distributed set of "root servers" which could map the existing .com names to the ICANN definitions, and allow the open source community to extend the name space at will. Those of us disgusted with ICANN can point our DNS servers at the Free Root servers and be done with it.
  
• An extention to this: map all existing ICANN names from ICANN.name.com to ICANN.name.com.depp (for "depricated," also German for "dip shit" :-)). This would then allow the Free (as in liberty) community to have our own .com, .org, .net TLDs completely seperate from ICANN.
  

We have the power and the technical expertise to free ourselves, so why not do it?

Re:Fork the namespace

Absolutely! Have a look at Open Root Server Confederation [open-rsc.org] for one example. I have had my local DNS daemon configured to point to ORSC's namespace for a good while, and I have found it to work quite well. Just to add to the fun, my DNS also has .localnet for anything behind my firewall.

I have looked all over the various RFCs and found that the current root DNS servers ARE the root servers only because Jon Postal said so. That was before all of the NetSol/ICANN debacle. As it stands, neither NetSol nor ICANN even own the root servers or the networks they reside on.

The trick to making an alternate root DNS become commonly available is customer demand. If there are 'cool' sites that can only be accessed by the alternate root (or IP address), people will want that tld to resolve. If a less cool but informative site on .org tells them that their ISP can easily make it resolvable, they will pester them to do so. It costs the ISP nothing but a few minutes to do it, so why not?

Perhaps if we had a TLD server for .geek to get things started? Perhaps a colo in the Caribbean

If desired, all .geek sites COULD be mapped by the root server to .geek.org for the 'uncool' people still using the lame ICANN TLDs. :-)

IANL, but couldn't such a server/service maintain that all trademark disputes are a matter between the two parties and that the service will do nothing about it unless/until compelled to do so by court order? Could someone who IS a lawyer comment?

I have also considered a scheme where the records get updated throughe a protocol based on the dining cryptographers problem so that the admin/owners can honestly say they have NO IDEA who registered the domain.

Finally, some common sense.

What I'm about to say is heretical, so it'll surely be moderated into oblivion. Oh, well. People have a right to hear the truth anyway, even if they don't like how it sounds.

Yes, we all know the government created the Net. Fine, I'm glad. But so what? If the Internet had not been "exploited" and "taken over" by businesses, it would still be a useless boondoggle. I'm sorry, but there's no justification for spending tax dollars to provide scientific researchers and college undergraduates with alt.flame. As it turns out, the Net could grow into a lot more than that, and we have far-sighted civil servants like Larry Taylor at ARPA in the 1960's (and many others since that time) to thank for keeping it alive until it could pay for itself.

But now it can pay for itself. This boom we're in may have been planted by ARPA, but it was watered and cared for by businesses, and big ones at that. It's them we have to thank for the fact that the Internet is not a useless parasitic drain on public funds. They didn't create the Net, but without them we wouldn't want the Net.

So should they now get special consideration? Should we pause just for a moment and question our compulsion to bite the hand that feeds us? All those who work for a living, raise your hands. Thank you.

Trademark holders go first. You can register www.microsoft.goatse.cx afterwards.

Too many problems

(Unfortunately all the problems won't keep a policy like this from being implemented.)

Unless the domain names allow for the type of detail necessary to distinguish between trademark uses -- is this domain for a company that sells detergent or operating systems? -- it will continue to completely undermine the very notion that trademarks are assigned for specific uses and don't automatically remove normal words from everyday language. Nevermind complications from considering multiple languages

What is to be done about various international trademark disputes? In some countries, "aspirin" is a trademark owned by Bayer Aspirin, but not in the US where it's considered the generic name for acetylsalicylic acid. Is it just that US policy will continue to dictate how the internet functions on a global basis?

What about...

where there are multiple trademarks on a word or phrase, such as in different industries. (For example, who gets 'linux': Linus or the European laundry soap co.?)

-mark

We Are Heading To A Crisis In Trademark Law

The globalization of the economy vai the net is going to create a huge trademark furball. Until recently, someone in Italy and someone in Ventura, California didn't have to worry if their product names were similar. Those two product markets were so distinct that it didn't matter. As we break down the barriers between markets through the net, conflicts that didn't used to exist are going to crop up. For example, let's say there is a small company in Vermont selling a product locally under a given name. There is a company in Texas selling something else under the same or a similar name. Both companies have been using the name for 30 years. Both start selling over the net, creating confusion. Now what happens? Obviously, the same can happen with two large companies from different countries. Trademark law was not really designed to handle these situations in an elegant manner.

Re:What's wrong with giving TM holders first dibs?

Agreed. Give TM holders first dibs for the first 90 days the TLD's are available, then open them up to the public. Just don't reserve them after that.

Common Sense?

...a couple of points here (I will move towards the topic as I go):

1. If the Internet had not been "exploited" and "taken over" by businesses, it would still be a useless boondoggle.

Really? And all the scientific dialog, the ability for university research programs to communicate quickly and effectively - do I even need to go on? - a "useless boondoggle?" Hm. I expect the creation of alt.flame was probably one of the points at which people realized the 'Net had a lot more potential than simply exchanging research data.

2. They didn't create the Net, but without them we wouldn't want the Net.

You are so wrong. We could still be using it to develop open source software, host useless web pages, and pour nice hot bowls of grits down your pants. Come on, now.

3. Here's an interesting question: if I decide that I want to name the street I'm developing something like "Apple Street," should Apple be able to stop me? No. Because while Apple(TM) may be a trademark, apple (or even Apple) is not. Isn't that roughly analagous to this situation? Think about the implications of businesses with plain-language names getting involved here. There are many. There are also many businesses names that are common last names. What if mister Slim buys Slim.ert before the diet company does? is there a problem with that?

nope.

Re:The Big Question: Why?

"Am I the only one who notices a double standard?"

Not at all. ISTR a few years ago when ".to" came out that it caused a little stink... all this "come.to" cutesyism stuff.

Frankly I'm pretty sick of seeing things like "www.m8motorwaymaintenance.co.uk" on the backend of lorries, for two reasons. If I wanted a hostname stuck on my butt, I'd stick a hostname on my butt. If I wanted to point people at my website, I'd at least have the decency to make it a valid URL (see RFC1738). Secondly, the name itself it merely cute, not descriptive.
I'm all for country + a few other TLDs and whatever-the-InterNIC-calls-itself-today enforcing it strictly. If you're not a UK-based seller of things, you don't get a .co.uk domain. If you're not a multinational company, you sure don't get .com. If you're merely American, you belong in .us. Is this really so hard to understand?

We need restrictions on what TLD you can register.

I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it. We need to say that given the entity that you represent when registering a domain, you are only limited to certain TLDs. Network providers must use .net, anything with strong commercial interest is .com, non-profit organizations are .org, etc. Of those 3, an entity can only qualify into one of them, so there is no overlap.

Of course, one asks how do internation rules come into play. For that, we need to force the use of country codes, then have each country decide the usage of the TLD within that country code. If you are looking for megacorp.com, the browser should be smart enough to start at www.megacorp.com.us if you are in the States, or www.megacorp.co.uk if in britian or so on. Thus, the *true* TLDs are the country codes, then each country can set it's own restrictions, so that the definition of a US non-profit organization does not play into how the UK might decide who gets org.uk domains.

But it all falls down to teaching the public and businesses that those TLDs *are* important in distiquishing between commercial and non-commercial interests. Commercial companies should have absolutely no reason to grab an .org name, and should be prevented from doing so. Thus, trademark dilution due to domain names in a unappropriate TLD become null and void; the TLD indicates that the word is not associated with the commercial business. (Mind you, if the content on the page is libel, that's something different).

Alas, the days when URLs were meant to be invisible to the non-proficent user are long gone.

Re:Finally, some common sense.

"They didn't create the Net, but without them we wouldn't want the Net."

Not true. I wanted the net back when companies didn't make it possible. As a matter of fact, lots of people wanted it back then. After Oct 31st, 1994 (I think), I wasn't so sure I wanted it.

"So should they now get special consideration? Should we pause just for a moment and question our compulsion to bite the hand that feeds us? All those who work for a living, raise your hands. Thank you."

You are right. Since I pay to access the net everyday, I should get special consideration. *I* gave my money to those companies for MY sake, not for their ability to get what they want. I gave them money, they supported OUR network. The transaction is complete, they are not owed a damn thing. If we didn't want the net, those companies would have ever spent a nickle to run a damn thing.

Without US, they wouldn't want the Net.

Bad Mojo

Cyber Squating

The problem was more in how the switch from being ARPA to comercial was handled. A lot of loose ends were left up in the air and the real power went to NSI. Everytime ICAN rattled the saber they were slapped around by certain congress members. 21 Bil for NSI goes a long way.

At any account the two large issues were trademark and the incredible chunks of change a row in a database cost.

As for trademarks I echo what others have said. Although there are rules in place they arn't applied across the board. For instance, by NSI's rules etoy should have never been pulled. But the deeper issues are corporate interests VS. "the little guy".

An example is nissan.com. This domain is owned by Mr. Nissan, (who's family has held the name for almost 3000 years). Nissan Computer Corp has had a trademark since 1991 on the name. Nissan Motor corp wants the name. Although NSI rules have kept Nissan Motors from taking the name outright they can still litigate Mr. Nissan into the poor house.

No matter how you cut it money and power pervail over rightful ownership.

Fork the namespace

There is nothing magical about the existing DNS tree, except that everyone uses it. Why not establish another group of root servers in some country that doesn't give a rat's ass about US trademarks (say...China?) and create whatever TLDs we want. If we all chip in our registration fees that would otherwise go to Network Solutions, I'm sure our new "Open" DNS organization could buy the hardware / bandwith needed. OK, for interoperability, it would have to be set up to forward queries not resolved in the "new" namespace to servers linked to the "old" namespace, but that shouldn't be difficult. Load up a new root cache file and tell ICANN where they can stick their board.

Rehash of the same old thing

Every time a DNS/ICANN related story comes up, myself and several others post relevant information about how you can get involved, how you can participate, and what you should be doing if you don't like or don't agree with the way these policies are being developed.
Now, here's another story, stating the truth of what I and others have been saying for $DEITY knows how long now.
I'll make this very simple:
IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS, GET INVOLVED AND CHANGE IT!
And that doesn't mean joining the ICANN At-Large membership. It means getting involved with the Domain name Service Organization [dnso.org], specifically Working Groups B and C, and working to get rid of business-centric, short-sighted policies before they're enacted. In the end, it all comes down to numbers: Right now, the corporate lawyers and the businesspeople have a stronger lobby within ICANN than the individuals and the end-users do.
Don't be fooled, you will NOT have any impact on policy from the At-Large Membership. The proper venue for activism is within the DNSO working groups.
See this page [dnso.org] for the mailing list archives of the working groups, and instructions on how to join. It's as easy as subscribing to a mailing list.
Unless and until you actually get off your ass and do something to change things, you're just going to be pissing in the wind. Slashdot is a wonderful forum, but all of you should be voicing your concerns where they matter, in the Working Groups, instead of here.

Re:What's wrong with giving TM holders first dibs?

Leaving out rights of free speech and other such tangents, it comes down to the concept of fairness and the level playing field which is the heart of that thing of connectedness we call the Internet. For example, I've never trademarked my family name. But that shouldn't mean that the Chase Manhattan Corporation [chase.com], which has trademarked my family name (and long before my grandparents came to this country), has any more right to chase.org, chase.fam or chase.whatever than I do. Unfortunately, according to ICANN, Chase Manhattan apparently does have more rights to carving out its place on the internet than me.

I don't mind trademarks, and I'd even go so far as saying that Chase Manhattan has a better claim on chase.com than I do, they being a commercial entity with a trademark. They also have a better claim on chase.org than I do, simply because they registered it before I did. But their claim is no better than mine for using Chase with any future top level domain. I should not be precluded from the opportunity to register it first (and neither should they).

What problem will new TLDs solve?

Please forgive my ignorance, but exactly what problem will new top-level domain names solve? Companies already get foobar.com, foobar.net, and foobar.org; wouldn't new TLDs just be more of the same?

Or are there supposed to be restrictions on who can register these new ones (like country codes)?
--
Patrick Doyle

Interesting Problem

Well, this certainly poses an interesting problem. Suppose a new TLD, .foo, is formed. On one hand, in a perfect world, companies would not have to worry about cybersquatters and/or other companies with similiar names. Each company would have a robust, intuitive domain name that would allow interested parties to find them with litle problem. On the other hand, in the real world, competition for domain names is fierce, and will remain such regardless of however many TLDs are created. It is certainly justifiable, under these circumstances, for companies to want some sort of assurances that they will not have to deal with squatters whom have no real legitimate claim to a domain name.

But what other ways can this be resolved? Well, there is the current Anti Cybersquatting legislation. I am not familiar enough with it for an in-depth dissection, but from what I've seen it is a rather clumsy, heavy-handed approach
that may harm legitimate, private users.

Until we have an easy, universal set of criteria to aid in determining whether a domain claim is legitimate, we are going to see this problem, and variations thereof.

Perhaps what we need is a "Meta" TLD that would allow multiple companies/individuals with legitimate claims on a domain to register it. Example: I, proprieter of ford computers, wish to register ford.com, a domain to which I have an arguable claim to. However, it's already been claimed by Ford, a popular auto maker. So, with the meta TLD, any queries to www.ford.com would pull up a page that would present choices to the user: (i.e., "Are you looking for Ford auto? Click here." "Are you looking for Ford computers? Click here."). I imagine it would ultimately end up similiar to some of the redirect pages (openssh.org) we see posted voluntarily.

Not a perfect solution, granted, but I think it may go a long ways towards solving some of the current issues.

TM/IP protection and ICANN

Here's the deal:

As a trademark (or other intellectual property) owner, you are required by US and International law to protect your TM/IP, or lose it. The law clearly and firmly places the burden of policing possible infringements on the TM owner.

This includes the time, effort, and cost involved.

There are existing services that charge a nominal fee to do domain name/trademark infringement searches. Some registrars have this as part of their business model (e.g., look at the links off of http://www.whois.net).

Now, ICANN, via Working Group B (which is stacked full of TM/IP lawyers), wants to shift that burden to the registrars themselves, eliminating that business model, and superceeding US and International trademark/intellectual property law!

The folks from Working Group B have even invaded Working Group C, the WG for the addition of new Top-Level Domains (such as a .com, .net, or .org), and have ramrodded through what is now being accepted as a legitimate proposal that would eliminate the possibility of new TLDs without this shift of cost and burden from the TM holder to the domain name registrar.

In short, the TM holders don't like US and International law placing the burden and cost of protecting their marks on their shoulders, and have found a political venue in which they can get away with shifting this burden onto someone else.

And every single one of you who isn't in there fighting to prevent this is tacitly allowing this to happen.

If this becomes reality, ICANN will have effectively superceded worldwide laws and treaties.

And since the DNSO leading body, the "Names Council", and the ICANN Board of Directors is full of trademark/intellectual property owners and biased business owners, this stands a very good chance of happening. The only way to prevent this is for each and every one of you to GET INVOLVED.

Re:Finally, some common sense.

Businesses didn't build the streets, but we use streets to go to the office. Businesses also create wealth which is taxed which is used to pay for the streets. Therefore, Business Interests should trump all other concerns. If the Company decides that my house would be a convenient location for them, they should, by right of their ominous size and wealth, be entitled to my house. I should thank them as they drive me out of my house.

All new subdivisions should be zoned for commercial interests. Residential developement should occur only after businesses have declined to take advantage new developments.

Free speech was nice 200 years ago, but the Companies are much larger now and they often find this "free speech" used against them to publicize boycotts and the like. Consumer advocacy should be outlawed because no one is a bigger advocate of the consumer than the Companies.

There should be no notion of balance in public policy. Just because we *could* create TLDs for non-commercial interests (personal home pages, free software, consumer advocacy, etc), doesn't mean we *should*. We must seek to make sure that Business Interests are catered to at every corner to show our debt to the Companies.

Re:Whats the Problem

I've got to agree with your sentiment here. Recently I went shopping for a shiny new domain name for a domain I and some friends are putting together. In the 100 or so domain names I happened to come up with, I found about 4 that were not taken. While I kept no good statistics, I'd be willing to bet that 60 of those were taken by squatters like noname, inc.

Well, this method that the ICANN is chosing won't help me at all, because I don't have any trademark rights to anything and if I want to register some domain that these guys own (or will soon own) then I'll have to go buy it (which I will NOT!). Here's a question for you: why don't we just remove the incentive to squat on domains by making it impossible to sell them?

I'm serious, is there any reason besides greed that would motivate someone to register a domain and sell it to someone? I honestly can't think of any. A quick pick:

• A company that starts a project, then cancels it might want to recoup their costs, but we're talking like $70 here and most companies that I know (even the ones run out of basements) wouldn't be too worried about that since it would cost more to pay someone to try to sell it.
• Someone like myself who gets a domain then wants to change it could simply register the other domain and abandon the first one. Perhaps it would be possible to sell the domain back to the registrar (say to get back the cost for the second year or something) on some kind of pro-rated basis. Why would I want to try to sell it, do I look like a registrar?
• A person or corporation who is trying to protect their name, trademark, or whatever wouldn't want to give up the domain.

So why don't we do this? Make domains only brokerable between the registrar and the "owner", with no possibility of profit? I think that would stop domain scalping. IANAL, I have no MBA, and I'd love to hear from people who are more enlightened about this than I am.

The whole damn thing needs a reorg...

That's going to be an unpopular one on Slashdot, I know. But the whole DNS system needs a complete and total reorganization. Something which allows for the same flexibility as the current system, but suits the Net itself more...

• Ditch the country codes. All of them. The whole point of the Net is that physical location isn't supposed to matter. It also makes little sense that a US site doesn't have to use the .us code, but all other countries have to use theirs.
  
  Besides this, country codes only rarely give any indication of the site's purpose, which a domain name should be restricted to doing. Take, for example, my old high school's URL; I think it ran http://flinthill.ind.k12.va.us or something like that. This is a classic example of too much information in a name (Flint Hill, Independent school, K-12, Virginia, US), leading to something a lot longer than a domain name should be. A simple http://www.flinthill.edu would have been better (and isn't taken either).
  
• Obviously, with the country codes gone, some new TLD's will have to be implemented. I'd propose the following, just as a start...
  • .com, .org, .net, .edu, .gov, .mil - same as before.
    
  • .sum - personal Web pages. Why "sum," you ask? It's Latin for "I am," and it fits nicely into three letters.
    
  • .art - Sites dedicated to some art or another. The official site for a music group is one example.
    
  • .log - Sites dedicated to news. Slashdot is one example.
    
  • .act - Activism sites. These differ from .org sites in several ways, not the least of which is that a .act site actively encourages people to take a stand on one issue or another (PFAW, for example), whereas a .org site does not (PBS).
    
  • .mun - Municipal sites. Differing from a .gov site because of the information they contain. A .gov site tends more towards legislative, historical, and similar information. A .mun site leans towards community events, tourism, etc.
  
  
• Strict controls on domain name registry. As someone else here has pointed out, your choice of TLD is restricted by what sort of entity you represent when registering the domain name. If you represent a commercial interest, you may only buy a .com address, for example. An ISP may only but a .net address. If you represent yourself, you may only buy a .sum address. Note that the etoys/etoy problem would thus be avoided; Etoys gets etoys.com, whereas etoy gets the etoy.art address. There is one way to get multiple TLD's for one entity: if those sites represent different aspects of that entity. Take AT&T, for example. It's mainly a commercial business, so it should take att.com. However, it contains AT&T WorldNet, an ISP, so that aspect of it would take att.net.
  This also gets around trademark issues, because it makes it quite clear when a name is being used for commercial purposes.
  
• Obviously, we need to do something about existing domain names. The only fair thing I can think of to do would be that an entity gets to keep all domain names which fit that entity (for example, an individual gets to keep all .sum addresses, but no others) and is reimbursed for the other domain names for whatever had been paid out that year.

How does this sound to people? The problem is that the current system is too fluid; flexibility has its place but this goes too far. Obviously, more TLD's than these are needed; feel free to contribute more. Just remember that any you add should be thought out such that an entity can obviously fit into only one of these TLD's, or obviously fits into one catecory far better than the rest.

Re:Fork the namespace

AlterNIC [alternic.net] was trying to do exactly this for a long time. The problem is, you need existing root servers and DNS servers to use your server as a root server. How does my company's DNS server (ns.fooinc.com) know about foo.bar-nic.baz [bar-nic.baz] (the root server for the .baz TLD)? I have to tell it -- and every DNS admin needs to be told about foo.bar-nic.baz. That's the problem. It's a wonderful idea otherwise, and I'd be all for it.

Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]

Re:We need restrictions on what TLD you can regist

This is a pretty obvious point, but...

Network providers must use .net, anything with strong commercial interest is .com, non-profit organizations are .org, etc. Of those 3, an entity can only qualify into one of them, so there is no overlap.

Almost all network providers are also commercial organizations. In their view, they have a perfect right to both a .com and a .net address. I find it hard to disagree with them.

Re:What's wrong with giving TM holders first dibs?

One problem is that there are too many trademarks.

If you take all the US trademarks, and all the Canadian trademarks, and all the Australian trademarks, and all the German trademarks etc etc etc, you'll end up with no names left over at all.

Secondly, some trademark owners take an overbroad view of their ownership. McDonalds is a classic case, who will harass anyone who uses "Mc" in any food related context [mcspotlight.org], even if McDonalds does not and never has used the particular word in question, or even go against a bank for giving out beanie babies to people opening accounts [mcspotlight.org].

Trademarks should not automatically convey ownership of a domain, there should be provisions for previous ownership (EG in the etoy.com case) and in the likelyhood of confusion.

One reason we should be worried is North American 1-800 telephone numbers. When the 1-888 code came out, because the 1-800 code was full, anyone with a 1-800 number was given the option of getting the matching 1-888 number as well, "to avoid confusion". The 1-800 code took 30 years to fill up, the 1-888 code took 2 years.

Bullshit. You don't know history.

The business world has a severely bloated sense of its own importance, and how much everyone needs them; they make big rationalizations to support this claim. In their ego, they like to take credit for everything. Your post is a classic example of all of this.

The idea that the Internet needs businesses is bullshit, totally unfounded. Businesses need the Internet, the Internet doesn't need businesses. The Internet exploded of its own accord, but the US economy is only exploding because of the Internet (thank you very much).

The Internet was just fine before businesses got involved. It was already exploding. The business world took years to figure out how to take advantage of it, or even whether "this Internet thing is here to stay"! Most had no clue. We have little if anything to "thank" them for. The Internet, and maybe everything else, would do just fine without them.

Your comments show you have no idea what was going on with the Internet before e-commerce. Well, lots of things were. For one, the very technology for the current Internet was developed on the Internet itself, back when it was what you call "a useless boondoggle". For another, it offered great academic and research benefit (but maybe you consider those useless, too). A lot of cross-cultural communication, more than ever before in history. The Internet was transforming the world long before the first banner ad appeared.

OK, so you say "we wouldn't all those high-speed lines and powerful servers if it weren't for banner ads." But this is wrong too. If people want to create and read Web pages, the system would adjust to accommodate them, distributing its load as needed. Instead of having one Yahoo, there would be a directory site, a news site, an email site, a map site.... If you know anything about Web technology, you know it would be very easy to do. The simple fact is, we don't need businesses, and that makes them very uncomfortable. They're used to pushing everyone around, and any situation where they can't is threatening to them.

I could go on. Perhaps you should question your own compulsion to kneel unquestioningly at the altar of business. Where did you get the impression they're doing everyone such favors? From reading and watching the news, maybe? Who controls the news media, hmm?

I do like how the truth sounds, but your post is nothing close to the truth. It's definitely not "common sense". It's revisionist history and pro-corporate propaganda.

I've said it before...

And I'll say it again...

DNS names were never meant to be seen by the general public. They were never really meant to be seen by anyone, but the process of creating a URL system over a URL system took too long and so people advertise domain names.

What we need to do is simple:

• Settle on a URN system. Sure, most of the current proposals are imperfect but they're hella-better than what we have now
• Incorporate using this new URN system into the new generation of web browsers, FTP clients, etc.
• Hide true URLs and domain names so they only show up in logs, debugging info, etc.

Currently the "location" field in a web browser is only vaguely useful. It's a good place to type in the web site URL when you know it, and it's a quick way to verify what domain/file you're on. But what about when it's what it is in mine right now:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00%2F03%2F07%2 F0713200&cid=&pid=0&startat=&threshold=2 &mode=nested&commentsort=3&op=Reply

I, a trained geek who likes to know these obscure things don't need to see that, and the average joe definitely doesn't need to see it. What if that were replaced by a set of fields that gave me my location in some kind of logical hierarchy? "Language: English, Site Type: Online Forum, Site Name: Slashdot, Site Section: Article Comment Posting"

That (from what I understand) is that they're trying to allow with URNs.

That would also mean that when you're trying to reach McDonalds Clothing you fill in McDonalds in one box, Clothing in another, and then you're done. No accidental exposure to grease-filled nutrition free "sandwiches".

If that were done it wouldn't matter who owns mcdonalds.com or ford.com. It wouldn't matter that slashdot has a .org domain and that openssh.org isn't the main OpenSSH web site.

Am I dreaming? I don't think so... All we need is a push to get rid of browsers displaying URLs and we're halfway there.