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The Internet

ICANN Has Approved New TLDs 175

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-which-ones-are-they? dept.
dilip writes: "An Associated Press story mentions that new TLD's have been given the green light. It also mentions that there is no decision on how they will be doled out, what they will be or how trademarks will be handled. Please note however that ICANN's own website doesn't have any mention of this yet (The story is dated the 16th, which is a Sunday, no doubt that the ICANN site will be updated on the Monday)" [timothy butts in:] John Jorsett points to this ZDNet article which says the domains include .shop, .tel and .news.
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ICANN has approved new TLD's More

ICANN has approved new TLD's

Comments Filter:
  • Slashdot.org [slashdot.org]
    Slashdot.com [slashdot.com]
    Hmmm....

  • Then you don't own the domain anymore; you're merely licensing it from the registrar, which would cause many people problems (especially those who have already perchased domains).
  • Did the FSF pay $50k to apply for .gnu? Or are they reacting to the work ICANN has to do to consider .gnu?

    Hmm, which porno company has enough money to apply for .sex?
    1. Choose a rich company
    2. Download it's site (w/o graphics)
    3. Rearrange all words on all pages
    4. Publish it and index on all search engines
    5. Repeat from 3 until being paid to stop this
    6. Repeat from 1 until dead


    Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources
  • Read up the comments a little bit. .US domains are excessively hard to obtain and excessively unrecognizable. (microsoft.com becomes microsoft.redmond.wa.us) If .com etc. moved under .US (.com.us) with the same rules regarding registration, I'm sure many more would use them.

    Oh, by the way, what's up with the ticks? Some international thing? It looks f-ugly and takes more keystrokes.
  • http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/news1/ns -2976.html [zdnet.co.uk] has info on the microsoft underwear issue.

    a search on yahoo for "microsoft underwear" will find ya more links


    -f

  • Uhm, it'd be more than that, unless all the TLDs were one letter. And the databases wouldn't change much as long as people don't go hog wild registering domains (more than they already do).

    Really, all the "any TLD" movement does is remove the dot-com and change the recognizable namespace to include the TLD. Ford.cars becomes valuable, but ford.mostanythingelse is just as worthless as ford-mostanything.com.

    Off-topic and I'm bored:

    26^n + 26^(n-1) + ... + 26^(n-k) when n>k
    n = maximum length of the TLD

    If I remembered my math I could turn that into a sum notation, but I'm not that bored.
  • From the Report
    >>1 August 2000 - ICANN to issue a formal call for proposals by those seeking to sponsor or operate one or more new TLDs,
    >> accompanied by a New TLD Registry Application Form, instructions for filling out the application, and a statement of criteria
    >> for the Board's eventual decision.

    It looks like selecting the different TLD's will be complicated by each of the candidate registrars getting a chance to propose their own rules on how they will deal with trademarks, squatters, and the other issues that come up.

    Even $50,000 may not be enough to cover the costs of analysis given the kinds of rules that have been suggested over the years.

    It looks like this fall will be entertaining at least.

  • American Imperialism (Score:3)

    by scum-e-bag ( 211846 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @04:24PM (#929265) Homepage Journal
    The Internet now has a limited number of suffixes, including ``.com``, ``.mil``, ``.int``, ``.gov``, ``.org``, and ``.net``, in addition to special two-letter codes assigned to countries, such as ``.us'' for the United States.
    I just wish that Americans would take more note of the current .us domain and not assume that they dont have a domain because the internet was "invented" in that part of the world.
  • We should have done this 7, or so, years ago before the goddamn suits discovered our little paradise. <wack limb="hand on forehead"> Stoopid, stoopid, stoopid, stoopid.</wack>
  • When they started to run out of 1-800 numbers ten years or so ago, someone had the idea of adding the universe of 1-877 numbers (or some equivalent) to the toll free list. Because the numbers were distributed by auction, the owners of 1-800-CARWASH had a strong incentive to buy 1-877-CARWASH as well, to pre-empt consumer confusion. The net result was that the number of genuinely new toll-free numbers that became available was a great deal smaller than it might have been.

    If ICANN plan to let somecompany.com get first call on somecompany.shop, the number of new domain names will not increase significantly. The same thing will happen if they auction the site names. In fact, the only way to properly and significantly diversify the universe of top-level domains is to get rid of the .com domain, abolish it altogether and replace it with .shop, .banc, etc, instead of merely *supplementing* it with those new TLDs.

    Of course, this is unlikely (because the pressure will be on to have some sort of bidding process, in the mistaken belief that this will efficiently allocate domain names). But if it doesn't happen, there'll be a much smaller increase in the number of available domains than we'd like.


  • Come now, we all know that slashdot will become a .dot site!

    ;-)

    Steven Rostedt
  • ICANN is requiring new TLD registrars to screen and limit who can buy domains in that TLD

    Seems to me they ought to start doing that with the existing TLDs before they try it on new ones.
    --
  • but what if someone beats them to slashdot.dot?

  • but would it be worth the investment?

    Resolved [00.48], the President is authorized to establish a non-refundable fee of USD $50,000 for the submission of an application to become a sponsor or operator of a registry, which the Board finds is a reasonable estimate of ICANN's costs likely to be associated with receipt and evaluation of such applications, and follow-up. [
    from ICANN site [icann.org] ]
  • Anybody have any real idea what .tel is for? Is it for WAP accessable sites (e.g. slashdot.tel for a WAP version of /.), or for Net->Phone gateways (quick, bring up 911.tel!) or for whistle-blowers (I'm gonna .tel, I'm gonna .tel!)?
  • Looks like the upper(there are 2) 'reply to this' and the fake threads are part of the body of the post.

    If you look at the source you can see a bunch of errors made when typing...encoded stuff in the urls etc.

  • Dealing with landgrab issues (Score:3)

    by TheInternet ( 35082 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @04:45PM (#929274) Homepage Journal
    Just some ideas of the top of my head...

    What if the price was on a scale? That is, after the first fifteen domains registered the price goes up? It would be hard to enforce, as you could have each employee in a company register fifteen domains or something equally ridiculous. Then there's the situation of legimate use. For example, my organization has a lot of domains, but we intend to use them all (make real web sites out of them). People have offered to buy them, but we have turned them down.

    Maybe the solution, therefore, would be to limit how quickly you could transfer the ownership to another entitiy? That way, the "squatters" couldn't buy a good domain one day, and then sell it at a 4000% markup the next, never having intent to use it themselves. No immediate gradification.

    - Scott


    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • I suspect foul play.

    Perhaps the ZDNet ad sales people?
    ---

  • Unless we wish to see the more claim jumping akin to '.com or the '49 gold rush, new procedure needs to be developed. On certain TLDs, perhaps a system of meoderation could be built. When a domain is requested, it appears on a list of domains. If I think I deserve this domain more, I can pay the license fee and halt the other person's purchase. A debate ensues, and if my argument wins, I get the domain, and he gets his money back. Otherwise, I lose my deposit, and he goes on his merry way.

    This would be an invasive restriction, so I don't see using it for a .XXX domain, or anything equally hot, excuse the pun. Something else needs to be done, though. Domains are good for now, but when 6 billion people finally get computer access, we will see a lot of anger.
  • >> What we need instead is browser keyword recognition to replace the currently broken host.domain naming convention.

    Opera (for windows at least, not sure about others) lets you assign "nicknames" to your bookmarks so you can type them instead of the URLs. For instance I have "slash" for my Slashdot book mark so I can simply type it and it will take me to slashdot.

    This is just one of the many nifty little featuers in Opera that made me decide to buy my copy. Worth every penny.
  • Keywords? like.. AOL *shudder* Who decides who gets what keyword? again people squat and then you get annoying crap like _ and -'s in the name. I think the new TLD's are going to confuse people even more, most people still try .com for everything. Thankfully there is Google to help you reach your destination.

    ---
  • Why do we even have TLDs at all? Due to the phenomenon you mention, they don't mean anything (with the exception of .edu, .gov, and .mil anyway...)

    Amazon.com is going to have amazon.* ten seconds after these come out- so why bother?

    The logical action would be to allow registration of domains without TLDs. Since domains are replicated globally all the time, why do we need TLDs? This also removes the "gotta catch 'em all" syndrome that currently exists with TLDs. I could just get .fogwood if I wanted to, and screw the .org after it. Domain names are primarily mnemonics anyhow- so why don't we remove the extra, meaningless designation on the end?

    --Perianwyr Stormcrow
  • That already exists. Check out RealNames [realnames.com]. So far it hasn't gained much popularity, but google supports it.
  • Actually, I can't find ANY documents showing that it is for "non-profit", I see where it is listed as a "catch-all" to catch categories "not in the above", but just because you're not .com-mercial doesn't mean you're not-for-profit. (e.g., a personal domain). D
  • Will we now have www.slashdot.news as our start page in Mozilla? Will we now shop at amazon.shop? Will we now do anything else different in the way we shop of surf or read news on the web? NO. The current *.com's *.net's and *.orgs will most likely just grab there namesake with a new .whatever and that will be that. I would be surprised if we use any of these on a regular basis in the near future.
    Of course, that's just my opinion.
  • When companies started registering every variant/misspelling/commone use of their name, the idea of using domains as an addressing scheme went straight to hell...

    I say each corporage entity should get ONE entry in each TLD and then be done with it.
  • Why would I have to choose between Western & Kanji if the choice is obvious with a .uk appended ?

    That is an interesting thought. How about language codes, instead of country codes? It might make more sense...
    ___

  • "Please stand behind the flaming garbage cans... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16, 2000 @04:49PM (#929285)
    you will all have a chance to be gouged."

    [That, of course, must be said in one's best Apu voice]

    Fuck this shit! It's gonna be the fucking apocolypse man. Fucking registrations flying it from every fucking registrar. Shit. And the registrants are gonna be riding fucking net splits like on fucking IRC man with the simultaneous fucking reg attempts. There's only one fucking solution. I now repost the AC's comment:

    The Solution: Allow ***ALL*** TLDs.

    Seriosuly.

    Allow anything to be used as a TLD.

    HOWEVER, still require registrations to consist of domain name + TLD. i.e., you must still sumbit both parts to constitute a single registrationa application. The TLD itself cannot be registered to anyone. and remains open for anyone to use.

    This would END squatting because it would be impossible for Microsoft, etc. to register all forms of Microsoft.* as doing so would require infinite money. This also allows same named entities to coexist. Apple Records can have apple.records. Apple computer can have apple.computers. A farmer in WA can have apple.farms. While another company can have foster.farms. Joe Apple can have joe.apple. NYC can have the-big.apple. All existing in parallel yet not conflicting with each other.

    Unownable TLDs also ENDS the "domain brokering" business because specific domains cease to possess any value. If you have foo.com, foo.net, and foo.org, you can demand high $$$ from any foo entities. With infinite TLDs, there's always an alternative choice.

    How to implement this from a tech POV? Use the first letter of the TLD to divide up the TLDs among the root servers to balance the load. Subdivide for common letters. Custom DNS software? Yes. But *only* for the root servers. The rest of us need not change a thing.

    Will ICANN do this? Heck no. Bidding wars over limited domains generates big $$$. And trademark holders like the idea of "buying up all variations of our name so no one else can use it". So between the $$$ and politics, I suppose this sensible suggestion will never happen.

  • While reading this article and posts about domain name squatting, I noticed the advertising banner above for Bulkregister.com which says:

    The more names you register, the more you save.

    Why stop at one?

    Talk about irony, why don't you? = ) The GIF is here and you may have to reload it a few times to get the version listed above, but all of them share the same concept anyway. [focalink.com]

  • I have said for years that this would be the number one way to avoid having congress pass COPA. Porn site operators don't want minors on their site, they don't have credit cards. This makes it easy for parents and libraries to filter out a great majority on porn sites. This also enables adults to be able to view all the filth they want to their hearts content.
  • Duh!.. :) .. Now I see your pont!.. thanx..
    --
    "No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
  • TLD's by country make very little sense. Of what sense is geographic location of a domain server when talking about the internet?

    Actually, TLDs by country make a lot of sense! As much as everyone tries to convince themselves that "the net is without borders", the fact of the matter is that it's not. Money, hard national currency, still changes hands for domain names. Squabbles arise over who can legitimately own which names, which can only be decided in a court of law. Who arbitrates the dispute over 'mcdonalds.com' when the McDonalds restaurant chain finds that a sheep rancher by the name of Angus McDonald in the Scottish highlands already owns it?

    I say, get rid of the generic TLDs altogether. Assign TLDs by legal jurisdiction. If McDonalds restaurant wants a 'mcdonalds.???' address for each country they do business in, let them register with each country. If there's a conflict (Angus has already registered 'mcdonalds.uk') the dispute can be settled in the courts of the country that governs that domain.

    As already pointed out, it's currently difficult to get anything added to the '.us' domain. Of course, that would have to change. Perhaps add '.com.us' for all the US commerical sites, keeping '.city.state.us' as it is. This means that we might end up with 'mcdonalds.com.us', 'mcdonalds.co.uk', and 'mcdonalds.fi' if the United Status, the United Kingdom, and Finland have different second-level naming conventions. So be it.

    And there's nothing to say that a site registered as 'foobar.tm' needs to be physically located in Turkmenistan. You could still have a single machine anywhere on the planet simultaneously hosting 'foobar.tm', 'slashdot.us', and 'hotgrits.ca'. But any disputes over the 'foobar.tm' name get resolved in the Turkmenistan courts.

    It's nice to think of the net as being without borders. Call me when it actually happens.

  • So who gets sex.shop? (Score:5)

    by onyxruby ( 118189 ) <onyxrubyNO@SPAMcomcast.net> on Sunday July 16, 2000 @01:19PM (#929290)
    Seriously, how do they choose who gets what first, a lottery? You know there are going to be countless squatters ready with scripts to register anything in the english language in the first three hours. What mechanisms are in place to ensure that names are not simply auctioned or held on to by the domain registrars (network solutions come to mind?) instead of the public.
  • According to my HS english teachers, as of a few months ago, using "their" as a singular pronoun is grammatically incorrect.

    However, so is s/he and all of the other constructs of the like. I hate them all, I'd tend to use "their" 'cept for when it may mess with my grade, in which case I avoid the need for a pronoun. (Which ends up being ugly...)

  • Sure squatting is a problem for .coms. But it's much less of a problem with the the other already-existing TLDs, .net, and .org, and plenty of non-US domains. I landed bourne.sh with no problem!

    Simply put, .com is the name to have if you're a business. Reselling something else isn't nearly as marketable.

  • Okay.. but that's for COUNTRIES. Certainly they should adjust TLD space to reflect countries.
    They should *really* just BANISH .com, .net, and .org, and leave it to the regional entities.
  • We are sorry. The database is currently overloaded. Please try again later.

    You still can't sign up for at large membership. I've been trying all week.
    --
  • Why not start un unofficial TLD?

    All you need is a top dns that people can refer to.

    The major problem is getting people to know that there is something out there, enough to be bothered with reconfiguring their DNS. This can be achieved by a few redirectors that would get pages from the new domain into the search engines.

    OK, what about th IP numbers? does anyone have an idea.

  • The mechanism to stop this is already in place. Simply restrict what domains can be held by what organizations, like the .edu and .gov domains are regulated today. They shouldn't make the same mistake they did last time.
  • If they approve .dot TLD then Mr Malda will vey happy

  • Have you read the "preliminary report" [icann.org] from ICANN? It reads worse than 75% of the cruft that comes out of the US Congress. What in the hell are they thinking? Are they so full of themselves that they feel that all the 'whereas' and 'be it resolved' BS is obligatory? That steaming pile of over-politicized, self-important, penis-extending, CRAP pisses me off more than anything else I've read on /. in weeks....

  • Gentlemen, start your lawyers (Score:5)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @01:49PM (#929299)
    Unless there's some legislation forthcoming, this is going to be a litigation factory. Currently, trademark law (at least in the U.S.) permits companies who are engaged in widely different lines of business to have the same or similar names. If the established companies try to corner their names in every single domain space, even unrelated ones, there are going to be some ticked off folks. Just because I have salon.com, does that mean I get to have salon.banc if I don't actually have a bank? And what if I later establish a bank, does salon.banc have to hand it over to me? Just thinking about all this makes me appreciate why they've been haggling over this change for 5 years.
  • It's one of those stories where you know it's coming but just not exactly when. Kind of like a birth announcement. You probably already know the sex and what the parents are naming it, but it's still news when it happens.
  • >So again, who is the /.er who wants to be At Large Director?

    If noone else was, I was going to:}
  • .to and .nu are not even the big names in the 'selling our national TLD' business.

    go check out .tv or .cc (and even .md and .ws although those make zero sense to me..)

  • Then take slash.dot?
  • And it will be run by the same people who run the U.S. Patent Office.
  • > The article mentions about .ORG as being for charities. That really pisses me off. .ORG is for non-profit organisations.

    Like Slashdot. :)
  • I'm American, and we do occasionally have our colletive heads up our collective asses, but not this time. TLD's by country make very little sense. Of what sense is geographic location of a domain server when talking about the internet? A domain server in the UK can resolve a website with one host in the US and one host in Portugal, and it can resolve an ftp site in western Afghanistan.
  • It'll be a serious mistake (IMO) if they leave out the millions of people who make the 'Net go with their personal sites, etc. if something akin to the proposed .NOM or .PER (or whatever it was) doesn't make it to the final list.

    And no, .ORG isn't for a personal site. Nor is a .COM or a .NET.

    Big mistake.
  • The people at name.space [name-space.com] have been trying at this for a while. Same with AlterNIC [alternic.org], but they ruined their reputation a while back. None of it is free, but preventing domain squatters going nuts is a good thing.

  • True story... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 16, 2000 @01:57PM (#929313)
    The setting: inside a small appliance/tv/stereo shop. I'm killing time dinking around with their WebTV display model when a random employee walks over and takes the keyboard from me.
    "Hi. Would you like to see a demo?"
    "Umm... okay." (i'm killing time, remember?)
    [Now the random starts going through his spiel. i interrupt]
    "could you go to slashdot.org for me?"
    "slash dot dot ord?"
    "no, dot o r g"
    "oh. sure."
    [types in (i kid you not) www./..org.com]
    "no no, s l a s h d o t dot org"
    "oh."
    [types www.slashdot.ord.com]
    "no, no dot com, just dot org"
    "oh, but you have to put in the .com or it won't take the address"
    "um. no, seriously. just .org"
    "no, it's not like internet explorer. you have to put in the _whole_ address"
    "uh..."[glance at watch]"um.. i need to get going.."
  • The ICANN Preliminary Report [icann.org] on the meeting shows in its page title that the meeting was in Cairo, but I do believe that the meeting was in Yokohama.


    If ICANN can't even figure out where it is in the geo-world, can anyone expect them to get it right in the cyber-world?

    Or, as Firesign Theater said:

    How can you be in two places at once when you're really nowhere at all?

  • You didn't seem to look very hard...

    http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/glossary/l ookup?term=.ORG

    .ORG: The top-level domain originally designated for miscellaneous entities such as non-profit organizations that do not fit under any of the other top-level domains. Any person or organization may now register a domain name in .org, a worldwide top-level domain.

    Actually, NSI doesn't get to set TLD policy. Can you cite an RFC to such a beast?

  • So I can make a rotating redirector to Nike, Kathy Lee Gifford, etc. :)
  • There will probably be 6 new TLD's added. All of them will be sold by Network Solutions. And, as part of their idNames [networksolutions.com] program they will offer all current dot com owners first pick of the new TLDS. Then, when it exprires they'll do you the favor of auctioning it off to the highest bidder [wired.com]. ICANN is basically a puppet of big-business. If you want freedom, originality, and true innovation you'll have to start your own Root Server [open-rsc.org].

  • Most of the squatting problems are because of bulk squatters going around and registering {`cat/usr/dict/words`}.com. If we limit the purchase of *.somethings to one or two per person and a half dozen or so per registered company/org, then life would get a little bit easier for 'legitimate' users.

    It wouldn't completely eliminate squatting, but it would eliminat the statistical value of bulk squatting (one $100K and ten $10K sales pay for 2000 unsold domains and $50K in legal fees, vs very few domains and pray that nobody sues and somebody buys).

    www.* should also be banned for purchase. (i.e. www.computers should not be allowed, since it is pretty much like having .computers in the consumer space).

  • Allowing all domain names will turn DNS into the Internet Keywords system, with periods instead of spaces. Not saying this is necessarily bad, but there would have to be some good rules about usage. Like reserving top-level TLDs for everyone -- they may not exist until someone registers t hem, but 'ownership' would go only to second-level domains. This way, no one owns ".store", for isntance, but "walmart.store" could be owned by walmart. Allowing direct ownership of TLDs will create a lot of market-distorting mini-monopolies and trademark lawsuits.

    Just imagine. Rather than hearing, "visit kay-eye-tee-ee-dot-com" on the radio, you'll hear, "internet keyword colorful dot kites".
  • Good idea, but what is to stop me from buying "apple.computers" or "America.online" or "General.motors" etc, and squatting them? I realize that the potential names would be almost limitless, however, many of the bigger names (and there are a lot) that would be the most logical, and thus most desireable to these companies, could still be squatted. Also, the fact that trademarked companies couldn't buy up all TLD variations of their names, could create potential for unscrupulous people to create "imitation" sites that could fool people into thinking that they are dealing with the real company. Imagine the personal information that could be gathered from people thinking that they are really on Microsoft's website, or any online business that would, for legitimate purposes, collect information like address, phone numbers, or credit card information. On my final rant, even though most major (mainstream) sites are .com, could you imagine the confusion if they go to a standardized system, ie: .sex, .tv, .geek, etc? Who would be responsable for catagorizing the content of the site? For example, is /. a .Linux site? Or a .news site? A .forum site? What really needs to happen is to find a way to end the practice of squatting domains. A domain police? Perhaps there could be a way to do this economicly. To sell a domain for a high price, it would most likely be sold in a popular place. (ebay, yahoo auctions, etc.) Time limits could be set on the time from a registration to actual publication of the site. Or perhaps an application that would describe the content of the site and require a contract to be signed stating that you will use the name for your personal and intended content and not resell the domain until or unless you sell it as part of an internet business, etc, otherwise it would be reclaimed by the registrars for further use. This is a very simplified idea, but it could be written to exclude loopholes that would prevent would be squatters from buying "freecomputer.com" (just a random example, I don't even know if its a valid domain) and selling it for $5000 by putting a picture of their pet cat on the site and calling it "published".
  • How much of this can ICANN enforce? In particular, can they emplore companies like E-Toys, the Olympic Committee,etc., to not enforce copyright on things like .org, .net, etc. And can ICANN emplore companies to litigate copyright enforcement simply on .com, or .shop, or .org (in the case of the Olypmic committee) where appropriate.

    My question, I guess, comes down to whether or not .xxx will represent all the legitimite pornography on the internet by providing a classification based on domain name. :) What I mean is, will the ICANN domain names have any real merit in classification, whereas the .coms, .nets, and .orgs for gumbi are all owned by the same copyright holder.

  • $50,000? (Score:2)

    by noy ( 12372 )
    from the ICANN website:


    Resolved [00.48], the President is authorized to establish a non-refundable fee of USD
    $50,000 for the submission of an application to become a sponsor or operator of a registry,
    which the Board finds is a reasonable estimate of ICANN's costs likely to be associated with
    receipt and evaluation of such applications, and follow-up.


    does anyone not think this is a large fee for applying, enough to prevent a .booyeah or a .wazzup, but do 'free' orginazations have this kind of money to just throw away? this does not include fees that might come later for running a TLD and connecting to the rest of the network...
  • One article states that there will be limitations on who may get domains in one of the new TLDs, similar to current .gov or .edu uses. The .com, .net, and .org TLDs will be left for free-for-all, based on the snippets I've read.
  • One thing that bugs me about the country codes themselves is that it seems like people don't want to use them.

    Well, it's to be expected... ICANN has a situation where the division of sites by their tld uses two criteria. Geographic location and content-type. Obviously, location is going to lose because:

    a) the net is supposed to be "without borders" (at least in public perception)
    b) in the venture-capita-fueld ubercapitalist internet of today, web sites that don't appear to be us-based are regarded as either substandard or downright untrustworthy.

    Gross generalizations? You bet. But like all gross generalizations, there's a damn big wad o' truth in there.

    Lastly, this two-criteria division is just plain dumb. It's like shopping for a used car in the classifieds, only the classified people have said you can only describe your car by either colour or year. 1995 Ford or Blue Ford.

  • the AP story mentions allowing the election of 5 members by 'registered internet users'. what's a registered internet user ? if it's only corporations, not only do i not see how it will change anything, except open them up to more corporate rule, as if they're not already, but what about people? the internet is 'suppossed' to be a last resort for freedom of speech.

  • So much for representation (Score:4)

    by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @02:42PM (#929345) Homepage Journal
    OK, I know everyone's been riding ICANN because they are being slow to organize. People want something done! and apparently don't care if it's half-baked. But isn't anyone else worried that a relatively large policy decision, fundamentally affecting the very structure of the DNS system, was made before the at-large representatives were elected... heck, before they've even been nominated?

    I thought the at-larges were supposed to be the counterbalance, the last bastions of hope for the average user to offset the awesome and frightening clout of the corporate droids. At the time people complained that at-large representation seemed to be merely a bone thrown by the powers-that-be, to defuse charges of corporate dominance.

    Sadly, it seems such accusations were correct.

  • Blockquoth the poster: Is domainname.type.country really that difficult? No, but I oppose them on principle. Country codes simply facilitate the re-geographicalization (ooo, new word!) of the Net. One of the shining beautiful fictions of the Internet back in the dim dark days of, say, the early 1990s, was that it was transnational -- truly global in scope.

    These, every tinplate legislator is trying to apply regulations or taxes to "their" slice of the Internet. We see systems like Carnivore and the firewall in China trying to re-partition the Internet. We see juries and judges trying to apply local standards to a global medium. Anything that calls attention to the geographic location of a server works against the global nature of the system.

    It's time for people to understand: cyberspace != real space! There is no good reason -- and about a zillion bad ones -- to replicate the geographical structure of the planet in the Net. Let it go, already.

    For from establishing a US dominance, forcing everyone into .com, etc., would lower barriers. Of course, the whole system is mucked up anyway...

  • Re:Countries... (Score:4)

    by Jason W ( 65940 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @02:47PM (#929350)
    This would be great if the country code system actually worked. Here in the US, each subdomain of the .us has to be indiviually assigned to two different people; one the techie, the other an official government representative.

    I live in a town with a population of 4000, and I'm one of 2 people here that knows how to run a nameserver. So when I wanted a me.city.state.us, I had to set up the server, find a government representative willing to listen to a nerdie teenager, fill out a (paper) registration form, sign it in upteen places, and fax it. And this was after filling out the online form 5 times before they were satisfied with the information I'd provided. I actually went a little far in my description of the process. I had to stop at the 'find a government representative', because I had no idea who to talk to, and those I asked could have cared less. So I stuck to my .net domain, thank you very much.

    Maybe its different in other counties, but its pretty worthless in the US.

    --

  • In Canada, until just recently (its undergoing a change in management), .ca domains (and their provincial counterparts such as .on.ca) were given out for free to corporations, registered charities, et. al. who requested them and gave proof of existence basically.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • One of the points of adding TLDs is to alleviate the name scarcity that currently exists. If you only allow names registered under .com, .net etc to be registered in the corresponding new TLDs, you haven't dealt with the problem.

    There should be a short time period where only the owner of yahoo.com can get yahoo.shop, but after that short period everything should be up for grabs.

  • Someone in a slashdot comment once suggested this idea, and I still like it a lot. There should be no predetermined set of TLDs. Instead, when you register a domain, you register the TLD to go with it, which can be anything you choose. Imagine this, the way it works now, a squatter can register ford.com, ford.net and ford.org, and Ford would be stuck.. Under this plan, they would have alternatives to register, like ford.cars, ford.autos, ford.motorcompany, ford.ford, .. the list goes on. the idea is, it would be difficult, if not impossible for squatters to register every combination of every english word (and it would be required to register a TLD with a 2LD, so ford.* in one registration is not allowed).

    There are a few ways this could be set up, The root servers could be set up so that all TLDs that start with A point to a certain one, B to another one, and so forth.

    just an idea.
    Josh Hinman

  • If you've ever tried to register a .us you know how shitty it is. they say NO corperations allowed. There isnt 1 central registrar to get it either. .us assigns the 50 states a .state.us type thing and thats it. Then the state assigns it to the cities and its the cities job deligate.. however with a small city i doubt that they have the know how to do that. Also inside of the .state there are .k12 for schools and other such domains. If i would like to get a .us domain to save .com space i would end up with something like: mbrez.brookfield.wi.us not as easy to remember than mbrez.com. If they opened up the .us space more for .com.us, .org.us, .net.us, .edu.us you would find a LOT more companies registrating in the .us space and you could almost give them away to companies to encourage them to use .us. I know i see a LOT of .co.uk and such but the only reason i ever use .us is for my school (www.elmbrook.k12.wi.us [not allowed to register elmbrook.edu either..and we wonder why NO ONE knows the web addy]).

    nuff ranting

  • Re:Dead on target, you are (Score:3)

    by nan0ok ( 135157 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @09:01PM (#929359) Homepage
    I dare you to find a .se domain that have nothing to do with Sweden. The majority of the national domains (.de .us .fi .at etc.) are quite well kept, with the exception of some small countries with interesting edings like .to and .nu.

    In Sweden you have to have a _nationally_ active company/organisation to aqcuire a .se domain. If you're a small shop in only one city you have to hide under a subdomain that is x.se where x is [a-z], ab ac bd. If you're a single person you can have a domain under pp.se.

    IMHO a _good_ system (albeit to expensive, why pay the same for .pp.se and .com ?), but it only works on a national level. I really don't see the need for a international name-soup like the .com .org .net mess we have right now.

    Of course an international system like this requires an international bureaucracy that doesn't (?) exist today, and it's questionalbe whether it ever will be. Because of this and the anarchic aura of the net I think that the vision of an ordered Internet where information is intuitively sorted in TLD/subdomains is, and will continue to be, just a vision.

  • Unicode (Score:3)

    by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @09:02PM (#929360) Homepage
    Has anyone looked at the use of non-latin alphabets for domain names and TLDs? There are countries, such as China and Russia, that might prefer to use other alphabets in their domain names. How would you like it if all Internet domain names were written in Hindi?

  • .XXX (Score:4)

    by kootch ( 81702 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @02:49PM (#929364) Homepage
    I know it's a sore subject, but if they did .shop, why didn't they also do .xxx? Considering the publicity that the move to have .xxx created has been largely christian conservatives bent on eradicating porn from the internet, i don't see why just creating a .xxx tld and giving porn kings free reign over that tld is such a bad idea. atleast when you get spam that leads to a porn site, you'll know it's going to a porn site. and it will get rid of the misspelling problem and the whitehouse.com problem. Okay, maybe calling them a problem is a bad idea, but just as porn has its place in both movie rental stores and in book stores, can't we put porn on the internet in its own little nitch without pissing off too many people?

  • Re:I want a .tla domain... (Score:4)

    by rgmoore ( 133276 ) <glandauer@charter.net> on Sunday July 16, 2000 @02:51PM (#929365) Homepage
    Seriously, what's the f***ing point? Of course all the major companies will squat on all the new domains as well (think etoys.gnu, etoys.rob, etoys.sux and so on) because they don't have a choice if they want to preserve brand recognition.

    This isn't necessarily so. The problem with some of the existing TLD's is that they don't have any clear criteria for who will and won't be allowed to register a domain. Essentially anyone is allowed to register a .com address, so it's essential to preempt anyone else from getting desired domain names.

    But if the FSF gets their wish to have a .gnu TLD, they can (and probably will be required to by ICANN) have a strict policy about what one has to do to qualify for a .gnu address. You might, for instance, be required to have a software project with the name you intend to register that meets FSF guidelines as free software. Thus there couldn't be an etoys.gnu unless someone had a free software program called etoys, and the fact that it was a software program rather than an online toy merchant would be adequate defense against trademark infringement. Similarly, the registrar for .sux might very well require that the owner of a copyright is forbidden from owning the corresponding .sux domain. It's perfectly reasonable in serving the purpose of the TLD.

    The point is that the whole problem with the existing system is that there's a real shortage of top level domains. This wasn't a problem when the current system was established, because people weren't setting up personal internet addresses or a zillion different addresses for the same company with different names for each product. Now, though, there's serious collision between any person named Barbie who wants to set up a personal web site and Mattel Corporation, and you know who's going to win in that kind of a showdown.

    If, though, there were a .mine or .per domain for personal web sites, and a .prod domain for product names, it would be obvious to anyone that barbie.mine was the personal web site of someone named barbie and barbie.prod was the site for Barbie dolls. Then all you'd need is a little bit of case law (or legislation) to show that these sites are sufficiently distinctive that a trademark holder doesn't have to sue to take down personal web sites and a lot of problems go away.

  • Nothing changes with this (Score:3)

    by Angst Badger ( 8636 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @02:28PM (#929366)
    So does anyone actually believe that the Indianapolis Bull Manure company is going to be able to register ibm.shop? Gimme a break. So long as the existing IP laws remain in effect, this is just another way for moneyed interests to muscle their way in to the endless profit of Network Solutions.
  • Because I hoped to make a humorous point about for-profit businesses and .org, I went to mafia.org. Just a little place-keeper page there. Then I went to mafia.com and got taken to idrive.com. Now I'm wondering if iDrive is a wholely-owned subsidiary of the Legitimate Businessman's Club. :-)

  • It also looks as though they're not completely brain-dead on the topic of trademark infringement and/or cybersquatting. One of their criteria for evaluating the proposals of new domain registrars is their treament of the following:

    measures proposed for minimizing use of the TLD to carry out infringements or other abuses of intellectual property rights.

    IOW, if you want to register new TLDs, you'd better have a plan for how you're going to prevent trademark infringement and cybersquatting. It's too bad that they can't go back and apply those criteria retroactively to their existing registrars for .com, .net, and .org.

  • I want a .tla domain... (Score:3)

    by pq ( 42856 ) <rfc2324&yahoo,com> on Sunday July 16, 2000 @01:23PM (#929375) Homepage
    - all the TLA organizations can go into that hierarchy, along with the FBI, NSA, NIH, NSF et al. And we can have a TLA.tla site to dole out these names to you if your organization is spelt as a three letter acronym.

    Seriously, what's the f***ing point? Of course all the major companies will squat on all the new domains as well (think etoys.gnu, etoys.rob, etoys.sux and so on) because they don't have a choice if they want to preserve brand recognition. What we need instead is browser keyword recognition to replace the currently broken host.domain naming convention.

  • Re:So who gets sex.shop? (Score:3)

    by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @01:23PM (#929377)
    If you read the ZDNet article they mention that ICANN is requiring new TLD registrars to screen and limit who can buy domains in that TLD, someting that is sorely needed. Limiting .shop to people who actually run shops, etc.

    -- iCEBaLM

  • Tech support nightmare (Score:3)

    by Nicodemus ( 19510 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @10:46PM (#929384) Homepage
    I can see it now... 99.999% of clueless newbies think that every address has to start with www, so you KNOW they think that every address has to end with .com. I just know that I'll get calls much like this:

    end user: I'm trying to get to the address 'books.shop', but it won't come up, are you down?
    me: Not the last time I checked. What exact address are you putting in?
    end user: www.books.shop.com
    me: sound of head banging against well worn forehead dimple in desk.

    Instead of a domain system, I think that there should be a regulated search engine, with categories, etc, much like yahoo, that people would register their sites in. The domain system has just failed. To get a domain these days, you have to come up with something pretty damn wacky and easily forgettable, so you might as well just give people the IP. Maybe with IPv6 we could just have permanent IPs in much the same way we have permanent domains. Then if we ever move then just have the IP routed differently. This might cause a major headache for routing tables, but maybe something could be worked out. Who knows... I really have no idea =)

    I think we can see an example of this same system with phone numbers. Imagine everyone trying to have a unique name instead of a phone number. Sounds ridiculous, right? Everyone has a phone. Well, pretty soon everyone will have a website. But I guess wheels are very hard to stop or even turn once they get rolling. Nic

  • What I honestly don't understand is why they even bother to continue to expand the TLD space.

    Think about it. Every dot.com that's any dot com is going to snatch up its corresponding dot.shop or dot.tel or dot.whatever and redirect it to the original site. Any dot.com that doesn't do this will be playing catchup for a seriously long time. Sure, domain squatters may make this difficult, but in the long run, the dot.coms and the dot.whatevers will all be the same anyway.

    If someone snatches up something.shop and something.com wants to get the address from them, they'll pay to get it.

    So what's the point? Business for domain name registrars, I guess.

  • What a wonderful idea! I mean, just think about it - I registered wap-dev.net and wap-dev.org a little while back, for a non-profit mailing list I run. Now imagine that I register these and wait a month for people who have a script that can place a bid 1 cent higher in price than I have offered for the names, in the LAST minute of the auction. So I lose my domain names, to someone who KNOWS that I want these two names. They now contact me and offer them for sale at 200% the price.

    Now what do I do? Give the domain jumpers the money or register some new names that will also get jumped a month later?

    Still sounds like a good idea?

    ... I thought not!


    "Give the anarchist a cigarette"

  • Re:Unicode (Score:3)

    by petros ( 47274 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @11:02PM (#929387) Homepage
    Has anyone looked at the use of non-latin alphabets for domain names and TLDs?

    I don't know if anyone has, but I think it's a terrible idea. Everyone should be able to read/write domain names, and whether you like it or not, latin is the lowest common denominator, computers around the world can handle it. Allowing domains in different character sets is asking for trouble. The same goes, for example, for email headers, but sadly I often see mail clients that generate a date header with the date in the local representation.

  • Goldrush (Score:5)

    by NatePWIII ( 126267 ) <nathan@wilkersonart.com> on Sunday July 16, 2000 @02:31PM (#929391) Homepage
    And we thought the rush for the dotcoms was bad... Now that everyone is more aware of the potential worth of domain names the mad rush to grab up names is going to be overwhelming. I'm interested to see exactly how the fair/legal way to allow registration of then new TLDs is going to proceed.

    We already have a bunch of big brokers calling every week asking when they can start to "pre-register" names from the new TLDs. This is absolutely insane if you ask me. I sure hope ICANN and the accredited registrars can work out a good plan otherwise all heck is going to break loose.

    One way to possibly handle this is only allow registrants of a particular name the ability to register the same name in the new TLDs and then for unregistered names in the .com, .net and .org allow a free for all.

    That way we would stop, Joe Blow from registering yahoo.shop but if he comes up with a new domain like joeblowiscool.com he can register whatever he likes.


    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
    www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
  • Isn't this the opposite of what we had just heard from Esther Dyson, who basically had said the ICANN was in the process of determining the process of applying for a new TLD? I forget where the article was published; can anybody help out with a link?

  • microsoft underwear (Score:3)

    by cpeterso ( 19082 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @03:19PM (#929403) Homepage
    This is real. There is a French lingere company that made some underwear called "microsoft" (small m). Microsoft (big M) was unhappy, but allowed them to use the name with a small m. I don't have a reference off hand, though..

  • If you get spam with "xxx" anywhere in the url you know what it is -- so the whole point is exactly that the URLs don't want to tell you where you're going to. From which it follows that .xxx would never work without government enforcing it on those companies -- the latter wouldn't want it. And that is only possible with ICANN or some hired watchdog being legally obliged to check every site it registers, periodically. Don't think so.
  • Most of the country codes were established in the mid-1990s, but no new domain suffixes have been approved since the late 1980s.

    Really? There have to have been new countries since then... not that I can think of any offhand, but aren't names and borders changing annually?

  • Get the news first-hand... (Score:4)

    by fReNeTiK ( 31070 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @01:31PM (#929412)
    The ICANN site has now been updated. You can get the preliminary report of their little chat-party in Yokohama here [icann.org].

  • New TLD's will be useless, until, and unless, ICANN enforce some restirctions on who gets what domain names.

    It started with how the domain names are adiminsted, (ie, for profit), which ment thaqt it was advantageous for the administrater (NSI) to sell as many as possable. This _must_ change, else the whole squatting, and registering of multiple domains ("Click here to register .net and .org too!", anyone?) will contiue.

    ICANN, get some real rules on who gets what in there, else all you've done is up the registrars profits.

    Unless, of course, that _was_ the whole idea?
  • OK, I'm not sure about this, but I think this with exactly what new gTLDs is to be introduced is not settled. ICANN has just said that new gTLDs will be introduced, quoting from Preliminary Report [icann.org]:

    Resolved [00.46], that the Board hereby adopts the Names Council's recommendation that a policy be established for the introduction of new TLDs in a measured and responsible manner.

    That these will include .shop, .tel and .news are only examples that ZDNet takes out of thin air. Now, you should be able to guess that from ZDNet's own words:

    The first new Web addresses should start to appear by this year's end or the beginning of next, but no one will know what the new top-level domains will be until November.

    So, it is not clear that .shop, .tel and .news will be on the list. And, the At Large Directors who are going to be elected will probably be involved.

  • Bagh, back in my day, we didn't need any of these fancy schmancy TLD restrictions or new names.

    Everyone who wanted a .com simply bought one that was their first name (e.g. bob.com, louie.com). Hardly anyone used nameservers, so nobody cared who owned what domain name. It wasn't until all these lazy Silicon Valley kids came around and started using up all the Domain Names for unimportant companies and Trademarked names. If you kids worked for a living instead of being so lazy, then you'd memorize the IP addresses of all of your favorite sites and put the nameservers to good use as VAX terminals or something.

  • Working by committee... (Score:5)

    by Segfault 11 ( 201269 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @01:32PM (#929428) Homepage
    Wow, after a couple years of waiting, we finally get an announcement that there will be new TLD's sometime soon. Furthermore, they will separately convene to decide which ones they will add, then hopefully get it done by the end of the year sometime. Gee, I can hardly contain my excitement.

  • Just one small thing about the zdnet article... (Score:3)

    by Shadukar ( 102027 ) on Sunday July 16, 2000 @01:33PM (#929429)
    The article mentions about .ORG as being for charities.
    That really pisses me off. .ORG is for non-profit organisations. I am part of a community which uses .org address, and we are definately NOT a charity.
    What worries me is that more and more people are becomming clueless as to even the existance of non-dotcom addresses. Think about it, all the adds you see, all the advertising you are being pounded with, all the hype in the media, its all about the dotcom. How many dotnets or dotorgs are famous? (yes, yes, i know, people in the know-how visit more .net and .org sites than .com's , but its not our oh-so-great-superiority complex that i am talkign about.)

    So the thing is, when people see .org, they barely register what it means, heck it wouldnt suprise me if people started wondering ".net? what the hell is that?! arent all internet addresses ending with .com?". SO i wonder, what will the effect be of those TLD's? Will people recognise them? Or will big companies say "the average Jon Doh only knows dotcom, we dont want to confuse his little brain with .shop or .tel".

    Oh damn, i was only supposed to rant about how the writer of the zdnet article is a clueless dork for thinking that .org is ONLY for charities.

    Thank you for skipping through my post,

    ;)

  • [Yeah, I'm replying to my own post, sue me]

    Interesting to note (from the above linked report):


    1 August 2000 - ICANN to issue a formal call for proposals by those seeking to sponsor or operate one or more new TLDs, accompanied by a New TLD Registry Application Form, instructions for filling out the application, and a statement of criteria for the Board's eventual decision.


    ...Meaning RMS may get his .gnu. Maybe slashdot wants to sponsor .dot?

  • The silly thing is that every major corporation will find out who has the new TLDs and then go out and register under each of them ASAP. ibm.sex and microsoft.shop will then be owned by guess who.

    The people biding for the rights to administer these new TLDs knew this from the beginning and it's why they push so hard for it. a cope Million .com domains registered and about 20% of those will register with any new TLD that becomes available.

    If you thought you saw cibersqauting and abuse with .com and .net domains you ain't seen nothing yet. Expect people to register huge piles of .sex domains to keap them from being "abused". I.e. whithouse.sex probably won't go the way of whithouse.sex even though it should :)

    So OSM are you gona register natalee.sex ?

    BTW : If you register your own name under .sex do you have to include *only* nude pictures, interviews etc... of people you actually had sex with or can you be more general in your approach ?

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