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The Internet

The Battle for .Web 98

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-just-want-my-.dot-tld dept.
Tripp Lilley writes "At FOCI: Friends Of a Competitive Internet, we've sent out this letter to a lot of folks interested in the battle for the .Web TLD in the ICANN New TLD Program. While ICANN's Criteria for Assessing TLD Proposals call for, among other things, "the enhancement of competition for registration services" and "enhance[ment] [of] the diversity of the DNS and of registration services generally", over one third of the proposals on the table come from a fascinatingly intertwined group of existing registries and registrars, including NSI, CORE, and Melbourne IT. (Oh, and before anyone flames me for not disclosing my affiliations, read the full disclosure that's been posted on the site and attached to the letter since we began)."
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The Battle for .Web More

The Battle for .Web

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  • Re:can i have the .bffd tld? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    not to troll my own troll or anything, but this is just such fucking SHIT that i have to keep ranting.

    the enforcement of IP laws on international, or, in the case of the internent, non-national, namespace is about to make me start shooting people. the root of the whole issue is, as i spouted earlier, a poorly thought out heirarchy in which geography is discounted in favor of a monopoly-enhancing scheme of artifically valuated TLDs.

    for instance, if the .us domain were used properly, then compaq.com would actually be compaq.com.us, which is a very clear indication of which compaq you are speaking, as well as a singular line of defense in the IP issue - within the united states, a trademark is held on the name 'compaq,' and no one else should use that domain.

    however, as it is monentarily advantageous for NSI, et al to foster competition for and the purchase of multiple TLDs per trademark, the .com heirarchy was allowed.

    was it stupidity or intentional misuse? who cares! it's fucking stupid, and it exists.

    the fact that it happened, however, will end up hurting the reigstrars in the long run. as no one will bother to go back and Do The Right Thing, the namespace will simply continue to be expanded to make room for all the wanna-be monopolists, as well as at the whim of those with enough money to make it happen. this will continue unchecked until the namespace is so polluted and unusable that single-word TLDs will be doled out to anyone who wants, them, stupid, non-relevant nationalist IP laws will rule the day, and finding any-fucking-thing using any sort of common sense will be un-possible.

    welcome to your future internet, losers.
  • You know that at least 2/3 of all [companyname].com sites will be attempting to register [companyname].TLD for all new TLDs as they appear. How does this increase the name space again? DNS is just going to bog down into catatonic fibrilation.

    If anything we need fewer TLDs. Whack the 3 letter TLDs for one and FORCE the CCTLDs to be used. What about "global" or "international" entities? Screw 'em. Let them do what they do with their phone numbers and postal address... have many local ones in local countries. No one is so important as to deserve some "outside the national realm" TLD. Even NATO is in Brussels and the UN is in New York.

    We need a coordinated alternate DNS now, before the current system completely falls to pot, and hook a few of the big providers into using it too (like AOL, MCI, Sprint, etc.).

  • Has anyone considered a P2P version of DNS? It would take the power out of the hands of centralized authority. Each entity in the web would have it's own lookup table associating names with numbers. The table would be derived from the tables of it's neighbors. Majority and precedent would rule. This has probably been thought up a million times, ya.
  • Why would anyone want .web other then for useless capitalizing of the net? we already have .com for the comercialist fuckers (who dirtied up the web), as a cynical economist, I cant blame them, but as a geek, I am in sorrow.


  • In the words of one of theconference [mit.edu]
    The workshop [cfp2000.org] [I organized] was designed to encourage programmers, systems architects, and usability experts to produce software which directly enhanced civil liberties. One proposal of mine, in particular, has garnered a lot of interest -- specifically, a project to replace the domain name system because of its current poor political properties, which encourage land-grabs, coercion, lawsuits, and other antisocial behavior. The replacement suggests, among other things, that a system in which all names are not guaranteed unique until further disambiguated might solve some of these problems, without (one hopes) insurmountable technical or sociologic problems taking their place.

  • It wouldn't necessarily be redundant if it contained hosts and domains that aren't just on the web, but about the web. Meta-web sites. Web sites, ftp servers, email lists, etc that are dedicated to supporting/selling web servers and web browsers might belong there.

    But actually, yes, it sounds like a dumb idea to me too.


    ---
  • What else do you use tld's for?

    Email? again, a redundant naming; name@domain.web doesn't tell me much; unless it is necessary to distinguish 'web' from 'internet', say.

    Websites: redundant as the original poster said.

    FTP sites? that's what the ftp.name.tld is for.

    Intranets? if it's "intra", then it isn't "web", really, it seems.

    What else? Did I miss anything.
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • Pleading some nonesense about a freeze period to allow some sort of trademark violation to be challenged and/or removed is specious, at best.

    The people who "registered" these common business names with IOD are being scammed.

    Period.

    "Sure! We'll happily take your money right now and set you right up!"

    "If there's some sort of problem later, why, Don't Worry! Be Happy!"

    Nuts.

    These suckers are being scammed.

    They're being led to believe that, at some level, they have some possessory right over these international business names, as domain names in the .web tld.

    Again, nuts.

    I think that would be called fraud, in some circles.

    And note that this from IOD's FAQ admits that you're not getting *anything* that really works anywhere in the current real world:

    "I cannot see .WEB(TM) names from my browser. What's wrong?"

    "The simple answer is that the Internet's root servers, the domain name servers that essentially "run the Internet" have not had Image Online Design's .WEB(TM) added to them at this time. In our understanding with IANA, we were to have been entered in October of 1996. Image Online Design continues to maintain that the completion of the ongoing process with the U.S. Government and ICANN should begin with the addition of Image Online Design's .WEB(TM) registry to the root servers."

    Right. Real Soon Now.

    "Will people be able to send me E-Mail at my .WEB(TM) address?"

    "The same problem with the root servers with regards to browsers exists for e-mail, and all other Internet services. This is the problem we are trying to address at this time."

    Nuts, third time.

    t_t_b
    --
    I think not; therefore I ain't®

  • Hey, this could be an interesting busines strategy for cruise lines and the like that own their own islands. Just get a top level domain registered for you island (say Sexopia or Moviegaria or something) and sell off your tld to the highest bidder.

    If that isn't enough, you might even be able to change the name of your country and get ANOTHER tld to sell off. Or maybe I'm just nuts.
  • Given that all web sites are ...well, web sites, isn't it redundant to want to call them slashdot.web?

    I run five domains that don't have any web services attached to them, two others that have websites that merely describe what the "real" services of the sites are. All seven are lively, useful, running domains.

    The internet does not equal the web, and very quickly (IE, Konqueror), a browser is not equaling an internet tool, either.

    --
    Evan

  • I think there is significant confusion out there regarding what the TDL is supposed to be about. The implication of a .web address would be that a web site lives there. This is completely inconsistant with the way things are now and even redundant in the current paradigm. Web sites (and other services ie. ftp, gopher, etc) are generally indicated by the machine name.

    For example, www.site.web would be redundant unless the .web part had nothing to do with the services of that particular address. (Should I have a www.site.web and ftp.site.ftp and mud.site.mud?)

    So, it seems to me that the TLD HAS to be tied to the type of entity that owns the domain name. Obviously, company, organization, and what? Up until now it's been sorta random. Why not SlashDot.com? It is a company isn't it? I don't know about most of you, but if I'm looking for a particular site/group/company, I always try .com first, then .org then .net. The only way it makes sense to me is if the .web TLD is reserved for company's involved in the web specifically. If there are no rules about how the TLDs will be distributed, then they are completely pointless and just create more names that you have to try before you find the one you really want.
  • This has been raised before, but again, why do we need TLDs?

    They have become mostly meaningless. While ".com" should mean ".company", what it really means is ".lucky-enough-to-get-name-first" and ".org" should be ".non-profit-organization", it really means ".loser-too-late-for-the-party" or ".org.com" to the layman (no offense to .org-ers out there, but I bet you'd rather have .com)

    Why not just allow names to include letters a-z, dashes '-', underscores '_', pipes '|', periods '.' and maybe a few other characters.

    Then a person can have
    http://this-is.my_name.for_using||the.w.e.b

    Or, more sensibly, using the Compaq example:
    www.compaq.com
    compaq.com
    compaq.company
    compaq.germany
    compaq.de
    compaq.co.de

    And so forth. So why can't this be done? Is it a political/economic issue, or is it a technical problem for resolving name->IP# ?
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • You belong in the .org TLD. So do I. That's why my computer is bound to refrag.dyndns.org [dyndns.org]. .alt was a suggestion from a fellow Slashdotter and I think it would be great. A TLD where copyrights had no influence and every domain name was FCFS.


    Refrag

  • The non-com domain (Score:4)

    by bgarcia ( 33222 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @10:00AM (#688649) Homepage Journal
    I would like to see a top level domain (perhaps .ncm?) where the registration rules would be:
    • You cannot own a .com domain with the same name
    • Otherwise, first come first served
    BTW, I wonder how many times Chrysler has tried to sue the owners of www.dodge.com [dodge.com]?
  • This is similar to the commercial I hear all the time for some Microsoft Certified learning institute. They always harp about how the TLD in their domain name is not .com but .ms. I wonder how many people are stupid enough to believe that Microsoft has its own TLD.


    Refrag
  • Even though it's been diluted, .org is a non-profit *organization*, implying more than one person. And again, as others have pointed out, .org's been a trademark warzone too. I didn't mention, but should be included, is that .web or .alt should be able to ignore trademarks problems -- first come first served.
  • Why wouldn't it be used as a permanent domain? If the second-level domains are "eternal and free from lawsuits", wouldn't it be *desirable* to use a .alt domain if you could get it?

    --

  • They most certainly are indicators of a thriving, healthy economy. When the titans do battle, it means that they're faced with real competition from each other, which, in turn, makes it possible for mere mortals to find niches, do business, and possibly become, themselves, titans.

    When it turns sour is when there are no titans slugging it out, but just one titan, making all of the rules. Past examples include United States Steel Corporation, J.P. Morgan's railroad empire [wayne.edu], and AT&T's monopoly over the telephone system. These are all examples of the monopolies Woodrow Wilson railed against [ukans.edu].

    Some people seem to be missing the point of FOCI [joinfoci.org], and for that, I must take responsibility, as the primary author of the letter, the petition, and most of the content of the site.

    The point is competition. The point is that, of the proposals on the table at ICANN, over half are related to either Afilias or Melbourne IT. The point is not whether .web is or isn't a good idea, or whether TLDs or the DNS are or are not good ideas. The point is that, given a world that is this way (which is currently is), can we keep competition alive long enough to make real change?

    If Afilias and Melbourne IT are allowed to dominate the DNS any more than they already do, all the Karl Auerbachs [cavebear.com] in the world won't do us any good.

    I'm not saying that Image Online Design are heroes. I'm saying that they represent competition to Afilias and Melbourne IT, and for that, you should consider supporting their bid.

    And, as I said in the letter:

    As a final note, we encourage you to be critical of what you hear on this issue (even from us!).

    So I fully agree with you that people should do research and make up their own minds. There's plenty of public record of the entire history of .web. Furthermore, there's a lively discussion in the ICANN comments area [icann.org], in which plenty of skeptics, critics, or outright IOD detractors are posting alternative viewpoints. Of course, not all of them are using their names, but that's the 'net for ya'.

    Please, though, don't try to make it out like John Mitchell or I are hiding anything. We've made our affiliations [joinfoci.org] clear from the first moment. When we changed the wording of the petition after realizing what Melbourne IT was up to, we mailed all of the existing signatories to let them choose whether or not to apply their signature to the new wording, or let it stand with the old.

    We, FOCI, have worked very hard to be precisely the sort of effort on behalf of a company that we'd like to see more of. We're not trying to snow you, or convince you that we don't have, ultimately, capitalist interests at heart. We're trying to be straight with you, and let you decide what is important to a Competitive Internet.

  • no offense to .org-ers out there, but I bet you'd rather have .com

    Not particularly, no. I own three domains: two are .org and one is .net. I refuese to register a .com domain simply because I'm sick of all the hype surrounding "dot-com".


    --
    Turn on, log in, burn out...
  • Why only three letters?
    Otherwise it wouldn't be a TLD (3 letter domain)...

    --
    Americans are bred for stupidity.

  • Your just gonna register for all the TLD's that are applicable to your company and sue based on trademarks. What's wrong with sticking with .com, .net, and .org?

    You guys own slashdot.com just so no one else can right? That's the same reason my company owns its .net and plural domains.

    I'm all for ".dot" though... and maybe we could make mozilla translate and resolve "/..." properly.


  • everyone just get the fuck over TLDs already and get on with your lives. in five years, TLDs will be as ubiquitous as snot. you'll just go to 'compaq', not compaq.com or any of that other dumb, poorly implemented and
    not-at-all-thought-out heirachcal nonsense.



    Ahh but what about other names.

    What if I want to go to say different groups who have the same ideas. Say a nonprofit organization has a .org and anther has a .com and another group of people have a .net now supose they all have the same name? What then? Do the other people have to give up their name?

    Also what about international sites. Suppose I want to deal with the german division of compaq or maybe the british or how about sony's japanese division? That's where you idea fails.
  • I think it's a good idea, and a good proposal. I like te idea because it's more than just the same old domains. I would really like to have a ".obey" TLD. I think it would be great, it could be used for all the people who obey the corporations and the government, or be used to make fun of them. I also like the ".not" idea, very much, good stuff.
  • apparently there haven't been any submissions for .not to ICANN (not that anme, anyway). Any lawyers out there want to take up the charge?

    IANAL, but I think the reason you saw no such submissions is it costs $50,000 to file for a TLD.

  • The battle for .(*) !!! (Score:4)

    by Billy Donahue ( 29642 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @09:16AM (#688660)
    IOD has to recognize that there is no battle for '.web' specifically. Everyone interested in operating new TLDs is being restrained by NSI, ICANN, and the DOC. IOD was running around for years claiming to 'own' the .web TLD. Well, that didn't work out.. I have nothing against them, but I'm glad that they failed in their '.web' trademark claim. Private companies owning TLDs as private property and as trademarks is not right for the internet and its users.

    A better system is a shared registry. What we have for .com, .org, and .net right now is a system where NSI is the central registry. ICANN granted some 100 companies the rights to talk to NSI's registry to add, modify, renew, etc. new domains into the (com|org|net) registries using a protocol called RRP (registry-registrar protocol).

    As the FOCI/IOD letter points out, NSI is still a monopoly registry, charging everyone from Opensrs.org to Register.com to Bulk Register.com a fee of $6 per domain. ICANN has saved NSI a fortune on marketing.

    I don't believe that Conspiritas^WAffilias should be exclusively running the .web TLD any more than I believe that IOD should. We definately need a .web TLD.. We also need hundreds of others. I'm surprised that the letter has several paragraphs about IOD's 4-year testbed '.web' registry, but no mention of Name.Space [namespace.org], which
    has been running a registry of hundreds of new toplevel domains for just as long!!

    Why do we want to bicker and argue about single meaningless (what does .web mean?) three letter TLDs when the real prize is true expressive domain names that can actually be used to form meaningful phrases and expressions! Doesn't anyone remember expression!!
  • "The internet does not equal the web"

    But ".web" clearly means "web" and not "non-web internet".

    Out of curiosity (being a non-guru web user), what do you do with domains that aren't web associated, and how would ".web" help describe their use/purpose?

    The suggestion of ".web" = ".meta-web-services" makes sense, but isn't that what ".net" was for?
    -----
    D. Fischer

  • Like USENET, what DNS needs is an ".alt" TLD. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 20, 2000 @09:18AM (#688662)
    DNS needs an ".alt" TLD.

    A place where trademark lawsuits do not apply, where there are no "dispute policies", where all *.alt domain names are first come first serve, eternal and unchallengable (other than for non-payment), and further that as a condition of registering OR RENEWING a domain in any TLD heirarchy, that registrants agree that *.alt is a free-from-domain-lawsuit zone. That way as domains renew, everyone agrees to alt's status just like they stick us with new ICANN dispute policies now.

    Every city, no matter how orderly and clean, needs a DUMP and similarly DNS needs .alt to store all the garbage. Why should you support a domain name wasteland? Simple. If you don't, the crap doesn't go away, it seeps into the other TLD heirarchies.

  • Apparently the first got mangled by the Preview routine. What's displayed in the "Comment" area got changed when it was redisplayed. Sigh...

  • Dont know why im even bothering to reply but the sound is created by expelling air through their voicebox in a manner that causes the vocal cords to resonate, normal speech uses several other things to shape the sound, the tongue, the teeth the hard and soft pallet etc., whereas the tuvalans create the entire sound in their throat, hence throat singing

  • What are the rules for random.au? notadotcom.au?

    It's not entirely clear whether such domain names are allowed or not, although a cursory glance actually suggests that you can't -- which would be seem pretty fscked up, to me.

  • (posting here so I don't reply to my own post)

    Speaking of garbage seeping in... other than .not my personal fave is a .sex one. Solves two problems:
    1. Allows parents who can't be bothered to actually talk to their children to easily filter out "smut"
    2. Allows college students and the chronically single (not that I'm -- ahem -- either of those...) to easily access "smut" :)
    Personally, i hate it when I have to remember "Wait, was is goatsex.com, or goat.cx, or what?"
  • Nah, I love the .org. Great TLD for anti-spam e-mail addrsses, just add a y.

    First domain we registered was ringworld.org [ringworld.org], somewhere along the way ringworld.net [ringworld.net] opend up, then came g33ks.net, and lastly itouthouse.com [itouthouse.com]. But in the end, there's nothing quite like posting to a newsgroup as zibby@ringworld.orgy.

  • As the CTO of Image Online Design, I have to question the above Anonymous post. Frankly, we have no "former employees" of the registry. If you're a former employee, please identify yourself. I have no idea what "80s TLD proposal that failed" you're talking about - the idea for the .Web registry was completely my own. In short, the post is a forgery. I strongly encourage research. I just as strongly encourage anonymous detractors who post obvious falsehoods to piss off. Christopher Ambler CTO, Image Online Design, Inc.
  • Moderators, I beg you, mod that up. I completely agree with him and I'll add this:

    A lot of trademark-related lawsuits have qualified domain name holders as "cybersquatters" for not having a "web site" for that domain, and many lawyers base their case on those mere facts.

    I've owned domains to simply use them for my nameservers because they were short and easy to type and remember, and also made snazzy email addresses for me and my friends, helped keep in touch easier but I never cared about having a www.wuteverdomain.com.

  • This whole .web stuff between Chris Ambler's IOD and IANA/NSI/ICANN has been going on for a long time [jmls.edu], and it was never pretty. There is no obvious winner here, so be careful when picking sides.

    Even if you don't like big corporate money-sucking NSI, it's difficult to feel fuzzy about wanna-be big corporate money-sucking IOD [webtld.com].

  • Woops, I stand corrected.

  • mod this up, it's very informative
  • DNS does not work like that. Do you by any chance operate the .CA TLD servers? You have about the same understanding of DNS as does .CA.
  • What I would love to see is a sort of a ".not" TLD, where copyright laws simply don't apply.

    I'm with you 100% on the idea of a TLD expressly for the excercise of Fair Use rights.

    I propose that .FU would be the perfect name for this new TLD.

  • Are there any Tuvalan mp3 files on Napster? Seriously...
  • >What the fuck was wrong with
    > country/state codes?

    Some online companies are international. It's an ego thing and marketing - as who wants to label themselves local when you could be international?

    Although, some businesses are just international. You wouldn't have a http://www.amazon.com.australia.south.sydney.north .14.oakley.street now would you? No, as it'd be too specific.

    The same applies.

  • What really worries me is that apparently the new TLD "owners" are going to be free to act as censors. As reported in the most recent Newsweek, the frontrunner in applications for a new ".kids" TLD says they're going to reject any sites that don't meet societal norms for children. Since a TLD is a global resource, this seems to beg the question of whose norms they're talking about. Are we ready for a ".god" TLD owned and censored by Christian fundamentalists? We've got PICS [w3.org] for proecting kids from porn, so why do we need to add new censorship mechanisms to the web?

  • I've been using the ORSC root system for at least a year and as a consequence my machines can resolve names in IOD's .web. In fact I have cavebear.web registered. (Of course, you'll only be able to use that in a URL if you are also using a root that uses the ORSC root and aren't going through some ISP's not-very-transparent web cache that unnecessarily re-resolves DNS names.)

    There were some initial technical problems at the IOD end getting the zone file updates to work smoothly, but everything seems fine now.

    And I've never had any failures on the part of the ORSC root.

  • I can just see it now...

    keyword: the Borg is watching you
    ============================================
  • Not really. There are several companies that would still want domain names secured for their products. I seem to recall some small nation getting the .TV domain, and immediately begin to start selling space to the networks.

    --
  • Isn't the point now moot since we now are blessed with "internet keywords"?

  • TLD's (Score:5)

    by Tei'ehm Teuw ( 191740 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @08:36AM (#688682)
    Should be dynamic. Keep some basic guidelines, such as three letter TLD's and then just deal with it.

    The controlling parties know that by introduction of a schema like this, they would lose their stranglehold on the pay for TLD services, regisrtation etc, and in the end the power they hold would be lost, so woulld the profits. The massive amount of stonewalling to keep the few TLD's out there is really getting old.

    Open 'em up, lose the regulation and force the TLD controllers to change their business model. Now it's a striking similarity to the US area code system running only a dozen or so area codes.

  • I want "dot" and "dash" TLDs, enabling clever morse-code domains.

    i.e. dash.dotdashdot.dot or dot.dashdot.dash
  • troll? redundant maybe, but I didn't see the other post when I posted. I thought I was just answering the question.
  • I noticed the FOCI logo is mearly a rearrangment of a swastica. I smell trouble afoot.

    ---
    pack

  • Alas, here is yet another poor soul who has never heard my moving rendition of "Flight Of The Bumblebee."

  • Re:TLDs and trademarks (Score:4)

    by Billy Donahue ( 29642 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @09:23AM (#688687)
    God knows where ICANN came up with that figure..
    No doubt the fee was designed to try and exclude
    small businesses and entrepreneurs from the domain
    game and to raise over $2million for their near-vacuous coffers.

    With this $50,000 application fee,
    ICANN has assured that no non-profit or
    other cost-sensitive operation would even
    apply, and has cleared the path somewhat for
    their giant Telco and TM buddies to hijack the
    whole 'new' system.

  • Re:TLD's (Score:4)

    by andyh1978 ( 173377 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @09:24AM (#688688) Homepage
    IMHO [ic.ac.uk], ISTM [ic.ac.uk] that all TLD [ic.ac.uk]s should be TLA [ic.ac.uk]s ;-)
  • I actually like this 'restriction', although it doesn't go quite far enough. For any new 'TLD' to be affective, you need to restrict the allocation of them. If we're running out of TLD's because the Coca-Cola company has register hundreds of permutations of their name, adding a new TLD will only force them to register the .web permutations as well.

    You need to restrict them to registering within a single TLD.

    If you're a for-profit company, you can get .com.

    If you're a web-portal, you can get .web.

    If your a network provider, you can get .net.

    If you're not-for-profit, you can get .org.

    Just like you can't get a .gov unless your a government, or a .mil unless you're military.

  • Tuvalu got a TLD, despite the fact that almost no one in the country had internet access. So, they sold the rights to .TV (a company) and used the money to get into the UN... what I'd be interested in knowing is whether other countries might do this? Could this become another way around the domain name crunch- registering in another country's tld (a la what Tucows [tucows.com] is advertising with .uk)?

  • .web shmeb (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Of all the mooted new TLDs, I always thought .web was the worst. I mean, you're already connecting to port 80, and there's that ubiquitous www. prefix, so .web is totally redundant and uninformative.
  • "...in spite of the presence of an arguably better proposal from Image Online Design [webtld.com], who have been fighting to bring you a working .Web registry for over four years now..."

    B*llsh*t...

    Here's the sort of thing Image Online Design aka webtld.com has really been doing, while it's been hiding under the smokescreen of this pap: "Image Online Design...continues to work to ensure that these policies and procedures are created fairly and openly, and will be pleased to work within the framework if they are created such..."

    These noble, philanthropic, high-minded folks have been pandering to squatters, just like the scumbags.

    And taking money, of course!

    "pepsi.web" registration information.
    Owner: Mitch Wolf
    Email: mwolf@tacobell.web
    Steno-Wolf Associates
    PO Box 12959
    San Luis Obispo
    CA, 93406
    US

    "cocacola.web" registration information.
    Owner: Antonione Paupério
    Email: antonione@uol.com.br
    Rua Pequetita 179, 12 andar
    São Paulo
    São Paulo, 04552-060
    BR

    "ford.web" registration information.
    Owner: omer gokalp
    Email: omerasir@mail.com
    ýnonu cad saray sk 17 mahmutbey
    ýstanbul
    ýstanbul, 34550
    TR

    "sony.web" registration information.
    Owner: Ray Solone
    Email: Ray_Solone@asinet.com
    3100 Fite Circle
    Sacramento
    CA, 95827
    US

    "toshiba.web" registration information.
    Owner: C. Wiersma / S. Kraus
    Email: cwiersma@home.com
    906 Yates St.
    Victoria
    B.C., V8V 3M2
    CA

    "microsoft.web" registration information.
    Owner: Greg and Brent Hather
    Email: rhather@aol.com
    3675 Sequoia Drive
    San Luis Obispo
    CA, 93401
    US

    Do you know how fast all these suckers are gonna get blown out of the water by hordes and hordes of lawyers once this scam get out?

    And I love this:

    "As stated in the registration section of this web site, if you are at all hesitant to register due to the situation, please wait for a resolution before doing so."

    Hesitant? Well P.T. Barnum said something about a sucker being born every minute. I guess this is continuing proof.

    t_t_b
    --
    I think not; therefore I ain't®

  • Isn't .web redundant? (Score:4)

    by dmorin ( 25609 ) <dmorin @ g m ail.com> on Friday October 20, 2000 @09:29AM (#688693) Homepage Journal
    Given that all web sites are ...well, web sites, isn't it redundant to want to call them slashdot.web? Am I missing the point? That TLD still doesn't say anything about the nature of that site -- is it porn, or educational, or commercial? (mmmmm, educational commercial porn....)



  • Every city, no matter how orderly and clean, needs a DUMP and similarly DNS needs .alt to store all the garbage. Why should you support a domain name wasteland? Simple. If you don't, the crap doesn't go away, it
    seeps into the other TLD heirarchies.



    One man/woman's trash is another's treasure.

  • No. The .net TLD was for network providers. AOL should be a .net since they are a commercial entity whose primary function is to provide 'net access. OTOH technology.web might be a Slash site for discussing HTTP, XML, etc. It's on the web and it's about the web.

    Or maybe .web is just for sites on the web that don't fit any other TLD category.

  • How does one stop site jacking like Adobe recently suffered if there is no lawsuits possible?

    Not trying to be flamebait, just wondering how you'd handle somebody that jacks other's domains.

  • You need to restrict them to registering within a single TLD.

    If you're a for-profit company, you can get .com.

    If you're a web-portal, you can get .web.

    If your a network provider, you can get .net.

    What happens if you are a for-profit, web-portal and network provider (e.g. Altavista)?

  • All the hoopla about new TLDs is something I cannot understand. I can't imagine that many desirable domains are going to be made available simply because there are a bunch of new TLDs.

    Rather, I expect that all the present holders of domains with any value - real or presumed - will swoop in to claim the corresponding domain in the new TLDs, and if they can't get it in the initial rush they will get it through litigation. So just what exactly will be left ?

  • I suspect that these kinds of "quality guaranteed" TLDs are going to find themselves in a pretty messy situation pretty quickly.

    As you say, what constitutes "children's content" varies not only from community to community but family to family. I personally would consider things like Pokemon cartoons to be mind-numbing pablum that isn't worthy of consumption by humans and hence unfit for .kids. Other people will, of course, find Pokemon to be the greatest thing for children since Wonder Bread(tm).

    The implied impramateaur that the content is fit for children is likely to raise the ire of those who don't agree. What scares me, as a future director of ICANN, is whether that implied impramateaur will become an ICANN issue rather than one that lands squarely and properly in laps of those who decided to undertake (and presumably profit from) the .kids venture.

    And I do wonder about those folks who go to .kids expecting to find stuff about immature goats. ;-)

  • That's the whole point of a .alt type domain, that it doesn't matter if anyone jacks anyone else - after all, it's not meant to be a permanent company style domain.
  • Maybe you're trying to be funny, but a TLD [ic.ac.uk] refers to a Top Level Domain rather than a Three Letter Domain.

    --
  • That's why the only system that seems to make sense is an arbitrary three letter TLD - is a company going to register .aaa, .bbb, .zzz and so on? I don't think so (though some might try).

    With an open number, instead of registering .com .org and .net they'd probably just go back to registering .com only.
  • I run a webserver at home. It's not for commercial use, I'm not a private organization, nor am I running a backbone system. I'm definitely not .edu, nor .gov at home. I don't earn money, run banner ads, sell anything, etc... on my site; I run it out of the 'love' of running my site and the enjoyment of others.

    I need a TLD for domains that are "part of the world wide web that haven't already been specified by other TLDs". ".web"'s not the best, and I like the idea of ".alt", but in most of the TLD offerings, the concept of sites like mine have been lost. I've had to grab a .com and .org (and thanks to a register.com offer, I've also got a .com/.net/.org thing as well), but it's not the ideal solution. But offering .web is better than nothing.

    (Yes, the original post was humorous, but I think there really is something missing in the offered TLDs. Thank goodness for Opennic :D)

  • Nope, you can't - but what's so bad about that? Everything fits nicely into the existing subdomains (COM, ORG, NET, EDU, GOV, ASN, ID), and I don't see the advantage that would come from allowing registration directly under .au. Unless your nick is MegaTau and you want to arrive on irc as meg@t.au - but "vanity domains" aren't what .au's for.
  • This seems like a stupid TLD. Why would anyone want it? The computers attached to that TLD will hopefully do more than host Websites. They'll support other Internet functionalities such as FTP, IRC, whatever...

    It just seems like a pointless TLD. Something only the stupidest of PHBs will want.


    Refrag
  • You are not allowed to register more than one domain per business in the com.au namespace. Of course this does not stop the common practice of going down to the Dept of Fair Trading and registering another business name to get an extra domain.
  • Why would it be desireable if they could have thier names jacked at any time? It's kind of a circular argument, but I have to ask the question - why WOULD a company want to have a domain in a space that was populated by random sites. Sure some edge companies might, but why would someone like Microsoft want a site in such a space where someone could place a porn site at www.microsoft-word.alt if they forget to register every possible thing?

    Basically, any company entry into the space could be a lot more costly for a big company than staying out of it. Companies that did go there would simply be at risk of losing thier domain at some point - so why would they go there?

  • Why would it be desireable if they could have thier names jacked at any time?

    I don't understand how that would work. Can I "jack" domains that have already been registered, or just ones that haven't been registered yet?

    --


  • > The .com.au is the .. official space for Australian business.

    Oh! God DAMN I hate the morons who came up with whatever.com.au and all the other stupid .com.TLDs. I keep getting mis-directed internal e-mail from an Australian health care company when the morons working at it forget to put the .au on the end of .com.au, and so it comes to our company which has the actual .com domain name.

    I'm considering starting a collection of Australian Citizen Health records, and then auctioning it all off :)

    Hey, what's that postal rule? If you didn't ask for it and you get it, it's yours?!

  • I can make some educated guesses about the DNS system, but all I really know is that it translates words to numbers. I don't know anything about the techniques used.

    I assume they use some sort of category sorting method to optimize the search / matching process from word to IP. But even then, I'd think that since every unique name is equivalent to a ~ Base 40 number (26 letters + 10 digits + misc punctuation), it would be trivial to convert name to lookup value to IP #.

    Offhand, I can't see why we need TLDs.

    Just allow a person to choose a domain name. All subdomains could then be arbitrary strings prepended with a period (.)

    Thus,
    http://this-is-my-stinking-address
    is acceptable.

    And I can have
    http://arbitrary.sub.domain.s.on.this-is-my-stin king-address

    I wouldn't be surprised if there were reasons why this wouldn't work, or is a bad idea, but I don't know what they are.
    -----
    D. Fischer



  • Open 'em up, lose the regulation and force the TLD controllers to change their business model. Now it's a striking similarity to the US area code system running only a dozen or so area codes.



    How exactly are area codes handled badly? I mean growth of area codes needs to be controlled or you get really weird patterns of growth and the like. One good example of good regulated growth is the 1-800-* numbers that had to be added. Because a similar area code block was found (888) it's easier for the consumer. One of the reasons why people don't go hilly nilly with area codes is that is usually how long distance is calculated (meaning if you call outside you area code you are charged long distance charges from your carrier and most people don't want to pay long distance talking to someone from say across the street).

  • can i have the .bffd tld? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    .BIG FAT FUCKING DEAL

    everyone just get the fuck over TLDs already and get on with your lives. in five years, TLDs will be as ubiquitous as snot. you'll just go to 'compaq', not compaq.com or any of that other dumb, poorly implemented and not-at-all-thought-out heirachcal nonsense.

  • As covered in this [slashdot.org]

    On another semi-related note if anyone ever gets the chance to listen to Tuvalan throat singing it is very eerie. They have a mothod of singing whereby they can sing 3 or 4 different notes at once in different harmonics and it sounds very weird and impressive.

  • .au registration rules (Score:5)

    by lpontiac ( 173839 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @08:51AM (#688714)
    On the other side of the world, Melbourne IT owns an 80% market share in the .au TLD, which is increasingly recognized not as geographically bound to Australia, but as a Global TLD in its own right.

    I'd be interested in hearing more about this ".au is global" if it's actually true - and I doubt it. http://www.melbou rne it.com.au/ver2/html/services/indexinww.htm [melbourneit.com.au] states:

    The .com.au is the official designated space for Australian Internet names - it is the official space for Australian business. In order to register a .com.au domain space you must be a registered Australian commercial entity and your Internet name must be derived from your business name.
    This is common knowledge in .au - the rules for getting a .com.au [ina.com.au] are pretty damn strict. To get a .net.au you need to be a registered company that's involved with the Internet and to get .org.au you need to be a registered non-profit organisation. Oh, and Melbourne IT isn't in charge - they licence the right to manage .au from the .au Domain Administration.

    Melbourne IT's apparantly also into the .com registration business, so perhaps this is where they got confused.

  • TLDs and trademarks (Score:4)

    by bricriu ( 184334 ) on Friday October 20, 2000 @08:51AM (#688715) Homepage
    Reading the .web proposal application (posted here [icann.org] on ICANN, I see there's a bit about watching out for copyright infringement, etc..... What I would love to see is a sort of a ".not" TLD, where copyright laws simply don't apply. A pipe dream, to be sure, but it would nice to be a place where the government would guarantee the right to parody, mock, implicate, and point out the faults of various corporations, etc. Insure our "fair use" policies, essentially. And, hey, apparently there haven't been any submissions for .not to ICANN (not that anme, anyway). Any lawyers out there want to take up the charge?
  • I smell trouble afoot.

    Don't you mean: Something's afoot at the Circle K? -Bill & Ted

  • Why only three letters?

  • As covered in this [slashdot.org] story the compand DotTV bought the .tv top leved domain name from the country Tuvala for $50,000,000.

    On another semi-related note if anyone ever gets the chance to listen to Tuvalan throat singing it is very eerie. They have a mothod of singing whereby they can sing 3 or 4 different notes at once in different harmonics and it sounds very weird and impressive.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Tuvalu is a small island in the Pacific.
    Tuva (throat singers) is a small region in Siberia.

    No relation.

  • What we really need is a .NUL domain that would be a non-searchable region of the web. And the public should be able to vote websites into it, a la Slashdot moderation. Offhand, I can think of one outfit that'd be there before sundown....

  • Re:stupid TLDs (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Excellent point. The idea of tying a TLD to a specific protocol is stupid. TLDs should represent broad concepts (like .com, .org, .net, .gov, .mil, .edu, etc.) not anything specific that is likely change or become obsolete in the short-term or medium-term future.

    Actually, I'd say that the whole business of adding TLDs just for the sake of adding TLDs is just stupid. It won't solve the problem of people buying up gobs and gobs of "good" names and then trying to re-sell them at a profit. Heck, there are enough people who _now_ register the same name in .com, .org, and .net just for the heck of it. What's to prevent this from happening if there are 10 or even 20 more TLDs?

    What we need is more common sense and some way of discouraging this sort of stupid behavior. Maybe something like this: don't change the fees for registering names (maybe even lower them), but charge $5000 (or something else like that) to transfer a name to another party. This would still allow transfers (for example, if a company that owns a .com TLD gets purchased by another company), but would discourage the practice by making it unprofitable for many to participate in it.
  • A web site is just one service that a company can provide, so what do you get by registering a whatever.web address that you don't already have with your usual www.whatever.com? It seems like it would only cause more confusion in the market place, leading to more lawsuits and heavy-handed domain ownership policies.

  • In the words of one of the conference [mit.edu]
    The workshop [cfp2000.org] [I organized] was designed to encourage programmers, systems architects, and usability experts to produce software which directly enhanced civil liberties. One proposal of mine, in particular, has garnered a lot of interest -- specifically, a project to replace the domain name system because of its current poor political properties, which encourage land-grabs, coercion, lawsuits, and other antisocial behavior. The replacement suggests, among other things, that a system in which all names are not guaranteed unique until further disambiguated might solve some of these problems, without (one hopes) insurmountable technical or sociologic problems taking their place.
  • "I'm sick of all the hype surrounding 'dot-com'."

    I can appreciate that. I wanted a "dot-com" because of the hype -- it's easier for the average joe to remember.

    It probably didn't come across, but I meant my comments to be tongue-in-cheek. At the same time, I think people generally want ".com" and ".net" and ".org" are 2nd & 3rd choices, respectively. Also, according to GreatDomains.com Valuation [greatdomains.com] general system, the monetary worth of a domain name decreases roughly by 10x, 100x, (.net) or 1000x(.org) everything else being equal. That is, "biz.com" would be worth $10 million, "biz.net" $1 million, and "biz.org" $10k (high-end guesses based on the GD system).

    Of course, I predict the current naming system will be outdated and replaced within 10yrs (5yrs if I'm feeling saucy :) and our kids will be boggled that people paid millions for ".com".
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • Introducing more TLD's just means companies have to register every other TLD so nobody else does. When the Internet blows up and we have to start it over, we should make second-level domains unique. If you get slashdot.org, nobody can get slashdot.whatever.
  • I don't know about u guys, but not enough people realize what kind of menace NSI is to the net. Ever hear of priority service? People who are "Internic" get screwed with crusty templates that aren't reliable because u didn't pay the extra parking fee and get hosted as worldnic, u get charged for 299 usd if you want to transfer ownership of a domain in a reasonable amount of time, or do it the standard way and wait with the other 5000 people who've sent in a notarized fax. Then there is the domain thats been deactivated or expired for over a year, who ever gets to renew it? I'm sure those deleters don't get paid enough. And the most hopeless part is that 2/3's of the domains are registered with them.
  • The analogy was imagine the US area code system with only 12 area codes. Folks, would be selling their phone numbers on EBAY.
  • One of the reasons why people don't go hilly nilly with area codes is that is usually how long distance is calculated (meaning if you call outside you area code you are charged long distance charges from your carrier and most people don't want to pay long distance talking to someone from say across the street).

    Umm... No.

    That's what I used to think, but the Minneapolis/St. Paul area has gone from one area code to four in the last few years. It's still a local call from one side of town to the other, even though it's an area code or two away. Just dial aaa-nnn-nnnn, no 1- prefix required.

    On the flip side, it's a toll call to dial up someone over a certain number of miles away, even if they're in the same area code. (You have to dial 1-nnn-nnnn; the area code isn't needed.)

  • And info.au .. (www.quitnow.info.au)
  • since when does PICS stop your child from downloading another browser that you did not configure, using graphical FTP, or going to their friends house to watch smut?

    BTW, I don't have kids, but couldn't the youngster simply CTRL-ALT-DEL their windows box to bring up the running apps and then shut down Net-Nanny or any other filter? Could this stop the library filtering we are soon to see here in the US

  • Just easier to remember I guess.
  • .web and .wap are dumb. Just imagine how dumb you'd feel now if you registered a .wais or .gopher address 5 years ago. TLDs need to be more permanent than the protocols, http (and hence, the "web") could be replaced by a better protocol at any time, and WAP is already passe. I suppose these TLDs would be OK for a secondary URL, but no one should rely on them for their primary domain names.

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