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The Internet

New TLDs Proposed To ICANN 281

Posted by CmdrTaco from the here's-the-big-list dept.
MemeRot writes: "ICANN has a list here of the new TLDs that have been proposed, along with the companies that have proposed them. The applications haven't been checked to be complete, and ICANN still has to decide whether they're going to allow multiple proposals by a single applicant. Still, this is the list of all possible new TLDs and you will be happy to notice that many people are proposing common sense ideas whose time seems to have come - .sex, .xxx, .kids, and .wap. The current target date for completing any negotiations with registry sponsors and registrars is 31 December 2000." I don't see ".dot"! C'mon!
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New TLDs Proposed to ICANN More

New TLDs Proposed to ICANN

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  • Tim Berners-Lee, when asked what he would do differently if he had his time again, said: "I would make http://www.whatever.com into http:/com/whatever."

    The second version is certainly quicker to type and to pronounce, as well as resembling to the good 'ol Unix directory syntax (despite the differences behind the scenes).

  • For those of you who'd like to see free for all tld's (e.g. .microsoft or .nicebacon)...
    How many .com domain name registrants do you think will register their .com name as a tld? About all of them? Probably.
    And how many seconds will that take? Probably around 10.
    So where would we stand after that? Right where we are now with the .com name space.
    So what's the point? Every bloody marketing moron will register every tld he can think of and the remaining will be taken by people running dodgy xxx sites or cybersquatters.
    Hell, even upthearse.com is taken nowadays!
  • ICANN should allow anything to be used as a TLD, subject to the following 3 requirements.

    Law 1: Any combination of letters and numbers and the dash (-) may be used as a TLD. (dash may not be the first or last character).

    Law 2: Only second level domains may be registered. i.e., ***ALL*** domain registrations must still consist of two parts. Domain + TLD are both required to constitute a single registration action.

    Law 3: The TLD itself is registered to no one and remains free for anyone to use. (like is currently done with .com, .net, .org, etc.)

    This would accomplish the follwing:

    (1) An end to domain hogging. e.g., not even Microsoft, could "buy up all of microsoft.*" since there is for all practical purposes, infinite combinations of microsoft.* to say nothing of m1crosoft.*, m1cr0soft.*, m1cr0s0ft.*, etc.

    (2) An end to squatting/domain-brokering. Anyone wanting a FOO domain name need not worry if FOO.{com|net|org} is already taken. Even the domain auctioneers/resellers can't "get 'em all" so there will always be something available.

    (3) Allows sharing of domains among same named companies and individuals. e.g., Apple Computer Inc. can have apple.computers or apple.inc or apple.comp while Apple Records can have apple.records or apple.music and a farmer can have apple.farms or apple.growers and John Q. Apple can have john.apple or apple.family. The possibilities are endless and there is room for everyone.

    Of course the root DNS servers will need some adjusting to handle this, but could distribute the load based of the first few letters of the TLD. And *only* the root servers need their DNS software rewritten. Ordinary users needn't upgrade anything unless they have software that expects domains to come from some hardcoded list or be exactly 2 or 3 characters long.

    However, limited domain names make them porfitable and prevents corps from "fully protecting our trademark" so this sensible idea will probably not be implemented since it ruffles too many political feathers and doesn't make as much money for domain registrars and resellers.

  • Okay this is wonderful ... everyone proposes these wonderful ideas about TLD's ... let's see ... .gov ... ohh yeah that's the american government ... .gov.uk wait how come .gov isn't .gov.us ?? hmm

    Another thing ... even if the creation of .xxx or .sex came about ... I see no reason why a commercial sex site would do that ... automatically gets into blockers and such ...

    Then there's the wonderful idea of regulating the domains ... ahh yes ... .org is for non-profit orginizations only ... right? Whoa hold on there what's slashdot.org ... ohhh yeah ... commercial news site.

    So here's my proposal ... I say GOODBYE ICANN ... and hello FREECANN ... I have no idea how to get something like this off the ground, but imagine a distributed database that linked domains for ... let's hear it ... FREE ... and anyone could add them ... we'll call it First Come ... First Serve ... and screw 3 letter limit I say we make .news .stuff .linux ... it will be like USENET And IRC And FREENET combined into one ...

    Lost ya? okay IRC ... There's regulation services that hold channels for you ... but it's still first come first serve ... if they decide to not use the channel the service is ended ... then theres USENET ... a bunch of alt.whatever.sex and everyone knows by the name what the newsgroup has. Then theres FREENET the unregulatory shared filesystem that anyone can join and view ...

    I say we make it happen ... FREE THE NET!

  • Yeah, that .three33 stuff is strange since they have it again in Chinese (Japanese too?) as .sansansan. I wonder if three has any significance, as do, say four (death) and eight (luck/fortune, though that seems to be more the case in guangdonghua, aka Cantonese).
  • Why are some of the proposals simply just references to protocols? I'm speaking of things like *.wap, & *.web. Why can't a company live with ftp.companyname.shoes, www.companyname.shoes & wap.companyname.shoes?

    It also seems to me that 95% of the tlds on this list are purely for vanity & not for organization purposes. Like RegistryPro, Ltd proposing the *.pro TLD & Dubai Technology proposing *.dubai. Shouldn't we be discussing the merits of *.apparel vs. *.shirts and not sillyness like *.i, *.pro & *.cool
  • This would mean:

    1. More companies using more than one domain
    2. More conflicts

    3. What company has more rights on cvs.wap: cvs.com, cvs.org or cvs.net? I don't know the answer.

  • I haven't had time to research this more, so I may be incorrect, but what part do the companies proposing these TLDs have if their TLDs are selected? Do they get to be the root servers for those particular TLDs, or do they just get credit for coming up with the name?

    If they do happen to get to be root servers for their TLDs, do they get control over what's registered under their TLDs? If so, wouldn't they be regulating it?

    I realize there are a lot more questions than comments in this post, so please feel free to fill me in on what i don't know (which is a lot)!

  • First, it makes a lot of sense for the same company to suggest a .sex type TLD and a .kids TLD at the same time. Having both would allow for different levels of parental censorship. Parents who can't be bothered to raise their kids can either block all nasty porn sites (.sex) or limit their kids to sites that are so dull and boring that they can't possibly offend anyone (.kids). This tactic also gives a greater chance of success at making "family-friendly" browsing possible - if both aren't accepted, maybe one will be.

    As for enforcing the use of these TLDs, someone will probably have to figure out what would and wouldn't be allowed in a .kids kind of TLD, and all of this will take time and money, but those costs could just be passed on to people who keep complaining that the web isn't perfectly sterile and empty of thought - in other words, let them deal with it. An occasional check-up to make sure a .kids site hasn't turned into kiddie porn is all it would take to enforce this (and there are probably lots of people who would do this for free). If things get too restrictive, people might just realize how silly this nonsense really is.

    There is no need to force any adult site to move to a special TLD. Many would probably do so voluntarily, just like many take precautions to keep people from "accidentally" viewing porn. It's good PR to look like you care about protecting underage people from nakedness, just like how beer and cigarette companies pretend to discourage children from using their products (although they are probably under pressure to do that). I'm sure a .sex TLD would be quite popular with adult sites anyway - everyone would want a domain with their favorite type of sex. The added bonus is that people could finally use the internet as it was intended by blocking all but the .sex sites.

  • .dot .info .site .spot .surf .web JVTeam, LLC 1120 Vermont Avenue., NW Washington, DC 20005 USA +1 202 533-2600 Ken.hansen@neustar.com

  • Re:Trademarks go here (Score:4)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @08:25AM (#734617) Homepage
    Actually, someone suggests just that here [rmi.net]. But trademarks conflict sometimes... the same name in different industries or different countries. So it'd either have to be hierachical (company.industry.country.tm) or it would have to include its full address (company.road.zipcode.country.tm).
    --
  • First, I'm glad to see only a few entries that may be subject to trademark status. I would prefer that none of the tld's be trademarks.

    Second, no one took .comp, .rec, .sci, .alt, etc. Those seem like naturals to me.
  • URL to the slashdot help files:

    http://dotdot.stashslashslashdot.dot
  • Bottom line is that TLDs should be for categorizing content, not restricting content which is what the proposed .SEX, .XXX, and .KIDS TLDs would do.

    Well said. Most commercial adult sites ALREADY require some type of adult verification (AVS). Those sites which do not are not likely to abide by the new TLD's .sex, or .xxx. There will always be flash-in-the-pan Geocities-type adult content. Then the big censorship monster rears its head as to who decides what is adult content when we try to fit all those grey areas into the new TLD's. At this point we are back to the political and capricious decisions of "what is" and "what isn't" as is evidenced by current filtering software.
  • First the problems with the proposed .SEX & .XXX TLDs:

    The proposed TLDs .SEX and .XXX seem well intentioned as a way of partitioning off adult oriented materials from minors, etc.

    Seems sensible, but how does one exactly define adult oriented materials? -especially considering the internet is an international medium. What is considered adult oriented here in the United States isn't elsewhere and vice-versa.

    And what happens when ICANN or whoever decides to go the next step and restricts adult oriented materials to only certain TLDs - for example .SEX and .XXX only.

    And how would such content restrictions be enforced?

    In the end TLDs such as .SEX and .XXX will probably result in ICANN dictating content too.

    In regards to problems with the proposed .KIDS TLD:

    Many of the same points above apply to .KIDS too...

    How does one exactly define kid oriented materials? -especially considering the internet is an international medium. What is considered adult oriented here in the United States isn't elsewhere and vice-versa. For example, nudity in many parts of the world such as parts of Europe and Japan is not considered harmful to children. On the other hand, violence aimed at children is widely tolerated in the United States, but not content containing nudity.

    And how would such content restrictions be enforced?

    And as I said above, in the end TLDs such as .KIDS will probably result in ICANN dictating content too.

    TLDs should be used to better categorize content, but not to restrict it. While .SEX, .XXX, and .KIDS TLDs are well intentioned, all three of these TLDs are all primarily intended to restrict content as opposed to merely categorizing it. It's very important to keep this distinction in mind when considering new .TLDs.

    Bottom line is that TLDs should be for categorizing content, not restricting content which is what the proposed .SEX, .XXX, and .KIDS TLDs would do.
  • Personaly I think TLDs sould be limited to 3 chacters. Anyways here's a list of TLDs that I think should be implemented and why.
    .per for personal sites like this [slashdot.org]. (no it's not mine)
    .sex for p0rn
    .xxx for p0rn
    .shp for online stores.
    .crp corprate information.
    .ent entertainment.
    .web whatever
    .inc alternative to .com
    .uni university sites
    .k12 sites for K-12 schools

    anything more is too much and will confuse the crap out of newbies
  • d'oh...

    my mistake, don't know where I saw that we were the 2nd...

    gotta put my head in the ground and try to be forgotten now...

  • Trademarks go here (Score:4)

    by fatphil ( 181876 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:36AM (#734624) Homepage
    .tm

    You know it makes sense.

    All claims to other tlds should be thrown in the bin.

    FatPhil

  • The list is not complete as one of the submitters list says "other portions of application claimed confidential"

    That company also asked for .sex and .xxx, so perhaps the TLDs are "rude words" that ICANN didn't want to publish.

  • Haven't they heard of IP addresses?

    Guess I will get .314159
  • Those would be about as useless as .net.

    :)

  • Re:can't do it and follow protocol (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can configure BIND to think it has authority for a TLD, just like you would for a regular domain. This would effectively block out any TLD you don't want to service.
  • I just scanned some comments and didn't see this yet, but how about a .gnu TLD? This way, most open source projects can get their own domain easily, and companies are less likely to squat on it.

    I know.. I know.. .gnu may be limiting to GPL, etc.. .oss? Just a few thoughts that sprang to mind

  • just in time (Score:3)

    by xtermz ( 234073 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:38AM (#734630) Homepage Journal
    when the time comes that you cant even register bigfathairychickswholoveskinnydudes.com .... its a sign that more tld's are needed

    "sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."

  • Glad to see that lots of TLDs were included in the list, although it's enough that it makes you think about whether we should just open up .whatever and have any TLD that's possible? Just an idea, I know it's been thought of before and has it's downsides, but it does have it's benefits also.

    Someday I'll make devildog.org [devildog.org] into something.

  • Ok, I'll start with .earth (better have .world and .globe).

    Next .mars, .venus and how about .planet?

    I guess .moon would be quite a good one, but I obviously wouldn't want .sun!

  • I don't see ".dot"! C'mon!

    He is using "see" in the common vernacular sense of substituting for 'don't understand'... as in saying 'I don't understand why someone proposed 'dot-dot'!

    It does sound like it could lead to more than a bit of confusion, as people end the 'dot-dot' addresses with "www.slashdot.." for example.

  • Don't see .dot? (Score:4)

    by big balls ( 237452 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:38AM (#734635)
    How about opening your eyes?

    --

  • The list is not complete as one of the submitters list says "other portions of application claimed confidential"

    I was wondering about that. If their business plan revolves around secret tlds--well, that's even more stupid that the cuecat nonsense.

    Or perhaps it's .eviloverlord, .takeovertheworld, & .resistanceisfutile, and they don't want to spoil their "surprise" for us just yet. But they could have saved everyone the hassle and just used .microsoft :)
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • I just use google's "I'm feeling lucky" for everything... Then you don't have to remember a TLD and you don't end up going to a pron site when you meant to go to the real white house. I think there were unlimited TLDs then people would be forced to use a search engine for everything and names would have less value. Still there is so much marketing and demand out there for ".com" that it will likely always remain a tight space.
  • I'm surprised to see very little mention of the fact that you can choose your registry. With projects like OPENNIC [unrated.net] available to us, we have much more choice than we think. Of course the great challenge is getting an "alternative" domain name system accepted, but this can be done on a server-by-server basis. Alternative DNS systems can co-exist with the mainstream and gain influence until we can overturn the current, corrupt, and f**ked up system.

  • ".global" -- makes sense for multinats orgs/corps.

    I think that they should ease up on .int instead. Int is for international organizations formed by a treaty, that's OK, but then, what is meant by an internation organization is then defined to mean only inter-governmental organizations. I'll claim however, that it was never the intention of those who wrote the international law on treatises to come up with a general definition for "international organization". Now, the reason why I'm whining is that YMCA [ymca.int] and ESA [esa.int] are not inter-governmental organizations, but yet they've got .int domains. Ain't fair. :-)

  • Why should a company only get one TLD? It doesn't need to be three letters long... Let's just open it up and register it the way the domain registrars are set up.

  • 1) Leave the domain structure as it is; it's heirarchial; anyone is free to expan beneath their current domain as much as they want.

    2) Come up with a NEW lookup service for the WWW. DNS was *NOT* invented for the WWW. IT was not designed with this kind of use in mind.
  • .home (ianbicking.home -- only registration by individuals of their own name or variation on their name... maybe a different TLD, though... .person)

    What about all those John Smiths? Peter Muellers? You'd have to append a number as 4th level domain, which will look ugly:

    344.john.smith.home

    Yuck! Lots of people want homepages with their nicks in the name:

    1.cmdrtaco.home

    Those names make a fine hierarchy, but they look butt-ugly... (IMHO) And if you want to visit a person's homepage, you would again have something that you cannot memorize: a number (given that you have no problems with the name itself).
  • I think the ICANN would do well bringing some order in the current 'Domain Chaos' before adding new Domains. I'll give you some samples. In Germany every Domain has the ending '.de'. In England or Israel you have endings like '.co.uk' or '.co.il' for companies and other endings for other Institutions, which is actually the best Solution and should be used in every country. The U.S. don't even have an own Domain (okay, there is '.us', but there is hardly somebody using it), so they use '.gov' for Government and '.edu' for educational Instituions, which is unfair as compared to other countries. '.gov' should be available for the UNO, NATO and other similar institutions. The ICANN must invent a fair system for Domains toface the Future.

  • A very simple proposal to end domain abuse (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @08:46AM (#734670) Homepage Journal
    Make the number of TLDs unlimited.

    You could register under any TLD you wanted.

    The catch: you can't own the TLD and can't stop someone else from using it.

    So if I registered "FUJINON.BINOCULARS", somebody else could register "KOWA.BINOCULARS".

    The reason people register more domains than they need is that second level domains under ".COM" are a very limited resource and therefore much more valuable than the registration fee. Talk to any business consultant and you'll find strategic cybersquatting is standard business practice.

    If second level domains where many thousands of times more numerous then the value of any one is that much less. Thus while a domain like "ebusiness.com" is valuable under the current system, the name "acme.ebusiness" would be worthless except as functionally as an identifier for your enterprise.

    While the root servers may have to be rearchitected, this solution would be transparent to all domain clients.

    The biggest problem I could see is with TLDs that are synonymous with a company (e.g. ".IBM"). I'd say those folks could stay under "IBM.COM", or could register several second level domains under ".IBM", such as "computers.ibm" and "services.ibm".
  • ...I dunno what it is. It certainly isn't unbiased.

    .dubai, as recommended by "Dubai Technologies"? .kids, suggested by both "DotKids, Inc." and ".KIDS Domains, Inc.", among others? .africa?

    This is just the same old tired crowd of cybersquatters, speculators and egotists waiting for ICANN to fire its gun into the air.

  • This is not a new suggestion. I, for one, was proposing this to everyone who'd listen within the ICANN formation process since the very beginning, but I was met with nothing but stony silence in response.

    Everyone agrees that there are no technical reasons this wouldn't work. The root servers are easily capable of handling referrals for an unlimited number of TLDs, which is obvious when you realize they're currently handling referrals for all the .com second-level domains *directly*.

    The frank answer to why this isn't on the table for discussion is a political one; it's simply not in the best interests of the corporatists who run the DNSO (and the ICANN board, for that matter). The corporations running the registries and registrars are afraid of their cozy profit model being shaken up by any such change. Likewise, the corporations everywhere who are abusing intellectual property law in regards to the domain name system would fight tooth and nail against opening the floodgates to potentially thousands of new TLDs, since they'd be functionally unable to continually steal all possible domains vaguely related to their names and trademarks.

    Thus, while this is clearly the fairest and healthiest long-term solution for the good of normal non-abusive users of the Net, I am sadly forced to conceed that it is unlikely ever to be implemented.

  • Re:Name.Space (Score:3)

    by Billy Donahue ( 29642 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @02:43PM (#734689)
    While we'd appreciate the free book, I think you may be the one who needs to be brought up to speed if you think that there is a technical barrier to running several new TLDs. Name.Space has been operating a registry for 500+ new TLDs for 4 years now with no complaints from BIND. The FUD that we used to see from the likes of NSI about new TLDs breaking the internet is just that: FUD. There are thousands of domains operating in these new TLDs without a hiccup. You can see them for yourself by pointing your DNS servers to 209.48.2.11, 206.86.247.30, or one of Name.Space's 7 other globally diverse nameservers. Several ISPs have made the switch. Name.Space _IS_ the sort of alternative root system that people have been asking for on Slashdot everytime this pops up. If enough people express interest in a new domain which is generic and useful, then Name.Space will add it to the root. It's that simple.

    Name.Space does not assert exclusive 'ownership' of the new TLDs, only a right to publish under them. It may look like a land grab when placed on a list of land-grabbers on that ICANN site, but it most certainly is not.

    As for your point about domain-squatting vultures,
    Name.Space doesn't support domain squatting or registrations on famous names. Name.Space will not allow a domain to be resold. Which domains are Name.Space squatting on?

  • Name.Space's point is that there is room for both. Why not? Why limit ourselves?
  • There's already a .at (Austria), go to town [www.nic.at]...
  • With new TLDs, every company is going to register in any TLD they can. This will lead to exactly the same problem.

    This is exactly what will happen if TLDs are brought in 1, 2, or 3 at a time, with totally meaningless three-letter names. This is one of the strongest reasons why Name.Space [namespace.org] has pushed to open up hundreds of new TLDs, with meaningful extensions. If you decide to make TLDs which are actually specific enough to do their job of segmenting the domain space, then you need lots of them.. The more specific, the more you need.. And there is no reason not to add hundreds of them. No reason at all... This is probably the only way will avert a landgrab and a goldrush in the new domain space.
  • As other's have mentioned, lots of TLDs won't necessarily help. But they could help. Here's some I think would be good:

    • .movie (since every movie wants its own domain name... cell.movie, excorcist.movie, etc. buy.movie would be dumb, though, and I'd hope they'd keep them out. Maybe .film, definately not both)
    • .museum (field.museum)
    • .law (kurneysmithjones.law or something)
    • .sex (obviously)
    • .game (starcraft.game, etc... only actual games, not sites about games)
    • .coop (wedge.coop)
    • .home (ianbicking.home -- only registration by individuals of their own name or variation on their name... maybe a different TLD, though... .person)
    • .alt (free for all! But it can't mirror any other TLD)
    Ones that might be good are: .art/.gallery, .hotel, .school (.edu might be too restrictive, .k12.xx.us, etc., aren't a great alternative).

    But .web, .dvd, .pro, .biz, .wap, etc., are simply dumb. They are totally ambiguous -- how do you know if something should be a .com, .biz, .ecom, etc? I would be rightfully concerned if I had mybusiness.com and someone else registered mybusiness.ecom. The other TLDs have to actually mean something, and be exclusive of the generic online-business/zine/community/whatever that is .com/.org/.net. If someone registered mybusiness.hotel, it wouldn't really matter to me.
    --

  • I agree. What it means to me is that we don't need TLDs anymore, just do away with them and register domain name like "microsoft" or "slashdot" The .org/.com/.net/.whatever doesn't matter anymore. IBM will still own IBM.* and Microsoft will still buy microsoft.* and sue anybody who was able to get a microsoft.anything as soon as it happened.

    They don't even mean anything anymore. .GOV and .EDU are the only correct TLDs anymore.

  • Companies who wanted to farm TLDs would just spin off many microcompanies. It's cheap to be a microcompany.

    What definition of a 'company' would you use? SEC "C-Corporation"? LLC? Aunt Gertrude's Bead Jewelry Enterprises? How about international definitions of companies?

  • OpenNIC [unrated.net], the Democratic Name System, has a .null TLD [devnull.net] that is often compared to alt. of Usenet.
    <O
    ( \
    XPlay Tetris On Drugs [8m.com]!

  • One feature which we need with these new TLDs. (Score:3)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:40AM (#734708)
    ...the new web browser feature to block out DNS entries with specific TLDs. I don't know about you, but I redirect all the damn ad pages to 127.0.0.1 in my /etc/hosts file (that is, E:\WINNT\System32\drivers\etc\hosts, hehe). Doubleclick should be forced to use the TLD of .ads. That way, we can block them out at will.
  • Every keyboard and OS in the world supports ASCII (positions U+0000 to U+007F of Unicode 3 [unicode.org]). Not every keyboard and OS supports Unihan (U+4C00 to U+A000 or something). One generally has to buy CJK input support for common consumer [apple.com] operating [microsoft.com] systems.
    <O
    ( \
    XPlay Tetris On Drugs [8m.com]!

  • Well, if we let commercial sites use .org, then commercial porn sites should be allowed to use .com or .org too.

    Remember that the purpose of names is to make hosts easier to remember, instead of using numbers. It makes it easier to find things, not easier to block things. If I have a not-specifically-sex site, and I post a rant that contains the word "fuck" too many times, or a raytraced picture of a simulated woman with big bouncy hooters, am I going to have to worry about the government telling me to move my site to another domain? I better not.

    This TLD stuff is not a replacement for filters and ratings. It is not mneumonic purposes only!

    BTW, is it just me, or does .xxx seem stupid? .sex is much better, since it is descriptive. "Sex" refers to reproduction and the enjoyable sensations that mother nature gave us to trick us into reproducing. Whereas "XXX" just refers to an obsolete rating that the MPAA used to assign. My guess is that most people who are looking for porn, are completely uninterested in the MPAA.

    "Yeah, everything on this site is XXX. We ran every JPEG by the MPAA, and they said that none of them qualified for an R."


    ---
  • ICM Registry, Inc. wants both .kids, and .xxx, and nothing else. I am sure congress is going to have a field day with this one.
  • Umm, so if microsoft picks windows.microsoft, then I can register yousuck.microsoft? :-)

    I'd actually thoguht of this. Absolutely. As long as your use of this domain fell within the normal fair use standards for trademarks. If you were Corel^H^H^H^H^H Red Hat and registered "yousuck.microsoft" you might be liable under trademark dilution (IANAL), but if you were an advocacy group, sure go ahead.
  • .aids? .shoes?

    The whole point of the DNS is to create a hierarchial naming system. If the roots of the hierarchy are going to be this numerous, it defeats the point of having a TLD at all.

    What is needed is for the people buying domain names *cough*corporations*cough* to stick to the suitable hierarchy. Owning ford.org is perfectly legitimate if I happen to run the Betty Ford center. Try to fix the system before you destroy it altogether.
  • Yes, but the entry requirements are rather high. You have to be an organization founded/recognized by international treaty.

    My dream is to have 31337.int.

    Would require a little more pull than I have right now though...
  • (by the way if there are any major world leaders reading that would be willing to help me out, please email me)
  • His method seems to get around that by not having an incentive to make silly TLDs. e.g. you couldn't have http://applerecords because you need both a TLD and a domain-name. You could register applerecords.applerecords, but you probably wouldn't because you'd end up looking like a moron. So you'd probably opt for apple.records instead.

    This brings up the issue of typo TLD squatting. Maybe I don't like Apple Records so I register apple.recodrs with a bunch of FUD about them. However, there's no advantage to having apple.recodrs over, say, spple.records, so it's not any worse than the current system in terms of typo squatting (though it's not any better either). I haven't been bothered too much (or bothered at all for that matter) by typo squatting so far.

  • Why limit tld's? (Score:3)

    by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:43AM (#734737) Homepage Journal
    Why put any limit on the number of tld's? If a company or organization or whatever is willing to sponsor a tld and act as the database for looking up tld addresses etc then why not let them? Just make it so one company can't own more than one tld.

  • Hmm.... (Score:4)

    by wedg ( 145806 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:43AM (#734738) Homepage Journal
    If it ever comes to the point where the domain name system has to be re-vamped, maybe it should be done like newsgroups. All the new suggested TLDs I'm hearing sound like newsgroups to me. com.os.microsoft anyone? How about org.news.slashdot? Just a thought.

    - w

  • You could do it at the libresolv level (or whatever the equivalents would be on other systems). There would be a system-wide configuration file, maybe. libresolv consults that before doing any name lookups and automatically returns an error if user jimmy is looking a domain matching .*\.religion.

    Mind you there's nothing that says that jimmy can't download or write his own libresolv in order to read Christian propaganda, but he probably wouldn't go to the trouble (especially if he didn't have superuser permissions).

  • Presumably they would still disallow hostnames that started with a number. e.g. you could register zero.1, but not 0.1.

    Not to say that it makes it any less stupid.

  • That's it!

    Why isn't there an .etc TLD?!
  • As in New York City? What happened to .ny.us.whatever?
  • Do these guys even have a clue? Jeezus, I'm debating sending them my own copy of O'Reilly's "DNS & Bind" just to bring them up to speed.

    For the most part, the pther requests seem even and measured, thoguh I might urge some consolidation (eg, having both .sex and .xxx is a bit redundant; same goes for some of the other categories)

    But Name.Space looks like the largest group of domain-squatting vultures I've seen. I'm thinking they should be unilaterally rejected just to prove a point.

  • .c0m and .n3t should do it :)

  • Why should they pay you anything?
    It's your silly broken software..
    The world changes.. Deal with it.
    No one owes you anything.
  • This is actually how URL's work in England (and maybe all of Europe?). Software translates them back and forth between English and US style. I think URL's are always displayed US style in UI's these days, however.

    com.microsoft.www makes a lot more sense. Also, this fits nicely with schemes like Java's name space, where your piece of a namespace begins with your URL. For example, when sun releases new Java packages, they go in the package named com.sun.*.

    -m

  • .dot and .god? (Score:3)

    by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:47AM (#734770) Homepage Journal
    .dot is there -- it's under the section proposed by JVTeam, LLC. So if .dot becomes a TLD, how do you register slashdot? Is it slashdot.dot or slash.dot? I prefer the former, then you can register dot.slashdot.dot and slash.slashdot.dot. Too bad no one's proposed a .slash TLD; then you could have slashdot.slash and dot.slashdot.slash.

    BTW, I notice that Joe Baptista's .god domain hasn't made it into the proposed lists. Anybody know what gives there?

    --Jim
  • I want atdotdot@dotdotat.dot

    It's already been done along similar lines. There's a guy in Austria with the email address dot#dot.at (obviously, replace the # with an @ to get the unspamproofed version -- then try saying it out loud).

  • Dumb (Score:2)

    by voidptr ( 609 )
    This is absurd. I think it's time for someone to seriously look at starting a 'pirate' DNS service again, just to wrest control away from ICANN. They've turned the entire DNS structure into a farce. Did anyone else pay attention to what you had to do to suggest a new domain? US$50,000, which doesn't even guarantee you anything. And if two companies suggest the same thing, which one gets control? Seems to me the one that looses their 50k is gonna be pissed.

    What we've aparently got now is ICANN creating a horde of mega-squatters who can afford it. And now that we've finally gotten control of the registry away from NSI, we're going to have a whole bunch of little registrar monopolies shooting up offering domains under their space. (Excepting those that just want it to have their own TLD just for them). You can bet that they aren't going to be as competitive as the ones offering .[net|org|com] are right now.

    The big companies will just buy company.*, which defeats the point. If you actually manage to buy Microsoft.sux before they do, they'll just sue you into oblivion anyway.

    Lastly, there's alot of software out there that validates hostnames by some pretty specific rules. 4+ character TLDs with dashes and numbers are going to break all that. Are the companies that just bought .my1st-tld going to pay me for the time it takes to fix those checks in my company's software?

  • I wanted this exact feature myself for .law

    While I'm at it, someone suggested .gnu or .oss but I think .src would be best (not in list and friendly to a lot more).

  • www.slash.dot? (Score:4)

    by Lxy ( 80823 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:49AM (#734783) Journal
    how would you tell someone that your URL is dot.dot.dot without spelling it out?

    "You'll die up there son, just like I did!" - Abe Simpson
  • In some sense, you've made the "whitehouse" domain even more scarce, since now it's just "white.house", not "whitehouse.{com,org,net,gov}"...

    No, because you could still register "whitehouse.gov" (etc.), as well as "presidency.whitehouse" and "whitehouse.presidency" and "burn.down.the.whitehouse".

    You say they'd be "worthless except as a functional identifier of your enterprise", but this may be the whole problem - now there's essentially only one domain which represents you as "acme.ebusiness". If "acme.e.business" is also gone, and your company's name is "ACME eBusiness", then you're pretty fucked.

    You'd be considerably less fucked than you are now just .com, .net, .org. You'd still have "ebusiness.acme", "ebusiness.acmecorp", "acme.e", "acme.ebusiness.corp", "acme.ebusiness.com", "acme.ebusiness.services" etc. You'd still have recourse to trademark infringement.
  • Some of these just seem silly. Actually, a lot do...

    ".three33" ?
    ".air" -- what, now industry-specific domains?
    ".cool" -- Um, right.
    ".museum" -- why, oh why, would they need an entire TLD ? What, .org isn't big enough for 'em?

    A lot just seemed aimed at grabbing a piece of the pie -- especially coming from those corps that appear to be registrars, and choose a TLD named after themselves. And the folks at Name.Space, well, my thoughts on them aren't exactly polite...

    But some are interesting.

    ".global" -- makes sense for multinats orgs/corps.
    ".mobile" -- Hrm. Perhaps.
    ".kids" -- Hm. If they have a decent TOS/AUP requirement to allow booting the obvious kiddie-porn domains...
    ".xxx" -- if there's an incentive for porn operators to use it, rather than just .com. I'm not sure what that would be, short of legislative action, however, and that'd have to be done through treaties or agreements between all registrars...
  • Obviously, the same way you tell someone your email is atdot@atdot.org :)
  • At least give me credit for using the DIV tag to properly display the mailing address! All those other ninnies did was cut and paste!
  • Adding more TLDs will only compound an existing problem. Anyone who has ever registered a domain would note that most registrars encourage registering of domains in every possible TLD. Here is where the problem is. If people were forced to actually obey the 'rules', .com for companies, .net for networks, .org for non-profit, etc, then the domain situation would perhaps be better off.

    With new TLDs, every company is going to register in any TLD they can. This will lead to exactly the same problem.

    1. Almost all the suggested TLDs that are words are English words.
    2. I guess there was no requirement that they be any specific length. I had thought they at least had to be 3 letters, but there is .i .go and .yp
    3. Shouldn't 2 character TLD's be reserved for Country Domains?
    4. There didn't seem to be a restriction on characters used (other than starting with a letter) as there is .three33 and .co-op
    5. The list is not complete as one of the submitters list says "other portions of application claimed confidential"
    6. Based on the number of times they were suggested, I guess .nom and .tel will make it in
    7. I thought .buy had been talked about frequently, but no one suggested it.


    I think the the .i is the most inventive, but you might as well have the whole alphabet.

  • Don't they realize that no matter how many TLDs they add, companies are still going to buy them. Amazon will buy amazon.stupidfuckingtld if they have to just so that nobody else has it.

    The real solution would be to limit the number of domains that people can have, but we know that won't happen, and if it did it would only hurt smaller people and the big companies would find a loophole in it.

    I wish we could make it so that companies couldn't have .ORGs and only ISPs could have .NETs, but that won't happen any time soon.
  • I'm personally not a money hungry domain registrar. I'm an individual hacker, like the rest of us. I've had stories posted to Slashdot. I've got a lot to say about issues that affect you and me.

    Either add to the discussion or shut up.
    Why can't you reply to my point, instead of
    wishing that I'll go away? My point was that the TLD namespace needs RAPID expansion to avoid a landrush by trademark interests and domain hoarders. I'll be satisfied when I see that happen in a democratic and fair way. Trickling new TLDs in one at a time, each 'owned' by a different registry is not my idea of democracy or fairness.

  • Re:Gotta love ICM Registry, Inc. (Score:3)

    by lizrd ( 69275 ) <adam.bump@us> on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:55AM (#734817) Homepage
    This sectioning off of the web by content really concerns me. Are we going to get ISPs that refuse to carry .sex or .xxx on their DNS servers? Are we going to have some committee that decides when a site cannot register under the .com or .net TLDs and must register as .adult? I realize that it is still possible to get to sites without using DNS, but it's a lot harder. This raises the spectre of censorware becoming really effective, thereby we lose one of the best arguments against it. That would really suck.
    ________________
    They're - They are
    Their - Belonging to them

  • Re:Hmm.... (Score:4)

    by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:55AM (#734818)
    Combine this idea with the previous post where it is suggested that anyone who is willing to sponsor and host a TLD should be able to, then you've got a really cool system going, imho. Of course, then you need a TLD registrar to keep all the zone lookups in order, right?

    By the way, I love this com.* org.* type construction a lot, for the simple fact that you can begin to build URL completion around them. Looking for a company, but aren't totally sure how to spell the name, or worried that it might be hyphenated or whatever. Typing: com.business*name or com.bus*name, gets a list of matches, until you've found your site. This doesn't work so well when the matching starts at the most specific part of the address and is mostly useful for filling in the last four digits/characters.

  • ADULT TLD (Score:3)

    by grovertime ( 237798 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @07:56AM (#734820) Homepage
    .xxx, .sex - seriously people, there is only one reasonable selection

    .cum


    1. S I T E [mikegallay.com]
      1. U N S E E N

  • .FUD


    --
    Chief Frog Inspector
  • I've said it before, but Rob wants:
    http://slashdot.dot/
    (H-T-T-P-COLON-SLASH-SLASH-SLASH-DOT-DOT-DOT)

  • .OSS? (Score:2)

    by kevlar ( 13509 )

    I think there should be a .oss -- Open Source Software... hell theres enough of it out there...
  • Why put any limit on the number of tld's? If a company or organization or whatever is willing to sponsor a tld and act as the database for looking up tld addresses etc then why not let them? Just make it so one company can't own more than one tld.

    Exactly, Burn all TLDs. Then you could have a cooperative system for having nameservers refer to one another. Are the TLD's on a given nameserver encroaching on an assigned TLD? (Conflicting name assignments is AFAIK the only argument against unlimited TLDs) Then the other referring nameservers would just give them the equivalent of the Usenet Death Penalty.

    This way, you could have .dot or .slashdot or whatever. You just register TLDs as if they were Domain Names, because that is effectively what they then become. And you would avoid much of the bureaucratic and authoritarian nonsense we're seeing from ICANN lately.

  • Re:.dot (Score:2)

    by plumpy ( 277 )
    then you have to worry about the pronounciation. slash dot dot (sounds like colon slash slash, yes?)

    That's the whole point. When slashdot was first around you couldn't go to www.slashdot.org (well... it redirected you to remove the www). The whole point of the name "slashdot" is the annoying pronounciation. Say the whole URL out loud:
    H T T P SLASH SLASH SLASH DOT DOT ORG

    If he had .dot, it would be http://slashdot.dot as in:
    H T T P COLON SLASH SLASH SLASH DOT DOT DOT
  • Whoa! Cool! h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-dot. Say that 3 times fast!
  • I've said it before, but Rob wants: http://slashdot.dot/ (H-T-T-P-COLON-SLASH-SLASH-SLASH-DOT-DOT-DOT)

    Oh, well, that's the Italian form; the Elizibethan goes H-T-T-P-COLON-SLASH-COLON-SLASH-DOT-DOT.

    --Jim

  • This ain't gonna work (Score:3)

    by dwdyer ( 5238 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @08:03AM (#734843) Journal
    Will these companies have exclusive rights to those TLDs? If not, this seems kinda stupid. Not that having exclusive rights to a TLD makes much practical sense, either.

    Right now, people who are aggressive in their pursuit of domain namespace will grab .net, .com. and .org at the same time. If we add more TLDs, then these same people will buy up as many names as they can.

    If they don't you can bet that whoever grabs disney.sex or microsoft.sucks will get slapped with a suit.

    We'll see even more namespace squabbling, even more lawsuits, even more domain grabs, and the only ones to really benefit will be marketdroids pitching TLDs to clients.

    Bah!

    If we're going this far, why not just hand the whole thing over to RealNames and do away with TLDs altogether.

    Humbug!
  • My own suggestions:

    .slash
    (in addition to /. could be used for fan-fiction)

    .tld

    .url

    .www (as well as .ftp .nntp .smtp etc.)

    .etc

    .ssl

    .phd, .cpa & .lld (there's already a .md, so it would only be fair. Wait, add .ianal while you're at it)

    .spam

    .oss

    .linux .bsd .os2

    Of those that were suggested, I call dibs on deer.xing and shark.fin

  • This would be a feature best put into the underlying OS, or possibly the proxy server (if one is used).
  • ObDisclaimer: I am not trying to start a flame war, just express my views on censorship. Read the whole post and think about it before you make a fool out of yourself ;)

    I would not mind requiring all explicit adult entertainment sites to register under a particular TLD. I hate accidentally visiting them, and it would be easier to block them if they were labeled before I click on the link (or worse yet, sent their by some JavaScript).

    I agree that censorware has too many problems, I am not a fan of censorship, but I would appreciate a warning before I have something I might object to displayed on my screen. If I really want to see it, so be it. But if I really don't, at least warn me first.

    Classic example: I am looking up information regarding a new security exploit, and some 31137 kiddie's web site pops open 200 windows of XXX porn. Not appreciated. I have ended up disabling JavaScript, Java, and automatic loading of pictures while visiting sites that might pull this stunt.

    But back to the point. I don't really want censorship, but I do want user selectable blocking. If _I_ don't want to see it, ask me for my permission. Censorship is when someone else tells me _I_ can't see it. When I tell them I don't want to see it, its just another preference menu.

  • Re:One feature which we need with these new TLDs. (Score:3)

    by dboyles ( 65512 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @08:13AM (#734856) Homepage
    Doubleclick should be forced to use the TLD of .ads. That way, we can block them out at will.

    I really don't think you want that to happen. As it is now, it's not too hard to set up a proxy like junkbuster [junkbuster.com] to filter most of the stuff that you don't want to see. That is to say, it's not too hard for the typical /. reader to set up.

    Now fast forward to a time when *everybody* can easily block ads like that. One of two things would happen:

    1. Companies like DoubleClick would come up with new, sneaky ways of getting their ads to show up.
    2. A lot of good sites that depend on advertising for revenue (let's assume for the sake of argument that /. is considered "good") wouldn't be able to continue. While some people might consider this good -- you know, an anti-commercialism of the internet sort of thing -- I think it would be bad as a whole.
  • How are you going to resolve a conflict between foo.org and foo.com when both try to get hold of .wap?

    I cannot imagine any company or organization using exclusively .wap

  • But then you'd have the same problem as porn blockers... not everyone has the same definition of "spam" or "porn". Granted, the S/N ratio would greatly improve if the ones that qualify under the lowest common denominator definition would be relegated to .ads, but that wouldn't be a complete solution.
    --
  • Well he could get slash.dot and then have a host in there called "slashdot.slash.dot" which would then come out as "aytch tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot slash dot dot". You could really go nuts making subdomains if you wanted, though I don't think anyone would actually bother to put in a non-sensical string of dozens of "slash"s, "slashdots" and "dots" placed randomly and delimited by dots. http://slashdot.dot.slash.slash.dot.dot.dot.slashd ot.slashdot.slash.dot.dot.slashdot.slash .dot". Loads of fun.

  • Re:Is there a proposal to enforce the TLD's use? (Score:3)

    by skoda ( 211470 ) on Tuesday October 03, 2000 @08:19AM (#734879) Homepage
    What I found disturbing was that ICM Registry, Inc. proposed the pair: .kids and .xxx .

    Uhmmm... What exactly does their business plan entail? (shudder) No, nevermind, I don't want to know.

    -----
    D. Fischer
  • Why? There isn't a CSS for closed-source software. I see no reason that software, of any kind, needs it's own TLD.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

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