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The Internet

Will .coop Be Regulated Better Than .com Et Al? 117

Posted by timothy from the who-holds-the-reins? dept.
zoomba writes: "An article from the New York Times [free reg required] today sheds a little bit of light on what is being done to regulate these new domains recently approved by ICANN. According to the article, the .coop domain is now under the charge of National Cooperative Business Association. Hey, could this mean that sites with the .coop domain will actually BE Cooperative Businesses? A fresh change from organizations registering under .com, or companies under .net." (The "partners" link appears not to work; does it for anyone else?)
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Will .coop Be Regulated Better Than .com Et Al? More

Will .coop Be Regulated Better Than .com Et Al?

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  • Slashdot had it's .org before Rob sold out :)
  • right on.. I hate those .somecountry domain names. like in Iceland where I live we have .is. I mean get those damn physical boundaries away from the web were they don't apply..
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Mighty jebus, I hereby deem your flamebait a most informative and insightful flamebait. Oops -- I'm not a moderator right now.

    --

  • for my.chicken.coop!
  • It would really be pretty easy. They own slashdot.org and slashdot.com . Right now, the latter redirects to the former. It should be the other way around.

    Care about freedom?
  • I think we need a .doop TLD for Futurama fans
  • ...We have determined that your web site, RenaissanceArt.org, contains images of women's naked buttocks and breasts. This type of material belongs in .porn, where it can be censored more easily. Your domain is hereby terminated.

    Or:

    Dear registrant,
    We have determined that your web site, CopterParts.aero, is being used to sell fan belts that can be used not just in helicopters but also in land vehicles. Your domain is hereby terminated.

    --

  • Just create tons and tons of new TLDs, each of which is totally unregulated. Then domain-name speculation will get too expensive. If there are 10,000 TLDs, nobody will be able to afford to register toejam.TLD for every possible TLD.

    --

  • Why not just put www.nytimes.com into your hosts file with an ip of 208.48.26.223 (the ip for channel.nytimes.com). That way all links would take you there even when the article doesn't link there directly. Of course it won't work very well with a proxy but I digress.
  • Get rid of TLDs, or at the very least make them optional. They don't do anything, and there will never be a transnational process capable of taking into account the needs/desires/wants of every conceivable cultural, business and technological entity "fairly" -- there will always be some Slashdotters submitting stories about how the goons in charge of .whatever are being less than judicial in regulating it.

    So let's end the insanity and start letting people register domains without TLDs. Most businesses buy their way into this situation (whois slashdot.org and slashdot.com for example), and without regulation bordering on the religious there's no way new TLDs won't end up in the same situation.

  • I don't think he really said that.
    ---
  • Good call. This is the first post I've seen in this thread that deserves to be modded up. (Note: But NONE of them deserve to be modded down!) Anyways, at first I thought they were doing virtual hosts but apparently not. partners and www are different ips than channel. Why wouldn't it work with a proxy? Doesn't it check hosts first?
    ---
  • I'm wondering why the Open Root Server Confederation isn't running a ICANN to OSRC maping service. It'd seem like it'd make it a lot easier to get people to start using your registry.

    It'd be much nicer to say "Oh well tell anyone using ICANN's ROOT servers to use pacific.ocean.alt-root.com instead." rather than "Well only 0.5% of the people on the net will be able to see your pacific.ocean domain."

    So here's my idea, go register alt-root.com or some other easy to remember name. Setup up a DNS server with an SOA entry for each TLD the OSRC recognizes that maps to it's root. Then sit back and let the karma roll in.

    * Disclaimer, it seems like this would be a relativly simple thing to do but since I'm no BIND hacker I could be wrong.
  • We just found that out - I did not know when I posted. And furthermore, just because I have something worthwhile to post, that makes me a karma whore? What a joke.
  • what about a few years from now, when there are permanent internet servers in earth orbit (on the ISS?). will they go under .gov, or will there be an .eo (for earth orbit) "ccTLD", since it meets the requirements....or maybe the rarely-used .int?

    what about (further into the future now) systems running on the lunar surface? mars even, with that nasty 15 min lag time....

    just a thought

  • bah, decentralization isn't inherently any more insecure than ICANN running the root servers. if the the roots served .tld roots instead of domain roots, it would be exactly the same as it is now.

    i guess that's not really decentralized DNS, as much as decentralized TLDs. shrug. in any case, the technology is exactly the same.
  • The problem with the partners link is that it has http://www.partners.nytimes.com/..., when it should be just http://partners.nytimes.com/...
    >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  • Please consider:

    cat /usr/share/dict/words |wc -l
    235881

    This is the big reason we need a hierarchial namespace, and you seem to be conveniently ignoring it. Why do you think a company can usually only trademark a given name in one of many categories of product and service? (True in Australia, probably true in most places.) It's because there is a finite number of possible identifying words for products and companies, and people have to share. We don't need fewer TLDs, or none, we need more, one for each category of trademark, ones for all kinds of organisations, ones for individuals. And they should be subdomains of the country in which the entity exists, since there are few world organisations in the legal sense, and few global citizens. You don't stop the fighting over a limited resource by constricting the availability of that resource, you stop it by finding a way through which most people can share. This is what the hierarchy is for.

  • Please consider:
    cat /usr/share/dict/words |wc -l
    235881

    Well, that's a nice oversimplistic explanation which is totally wrong. Last I heard, domain names could be made up of proper names, names not in the dictionary, word combinations, alphanumerics, and so on, which significantly increases the number of available names in the English language alone. I'm not going to grep through the dictionary to come up with numbers, but my dictionary has 27k entries for words with eight characters, which is over 800 million available combinations alone.

    Why do you think a company can usually only trademark a given name in one of many categories of product and service? (True in Australia, probably true in most places.) It's because there is a finite number of possible identifying words for products and companies, and people have to share.

    In this sense you're right, which is why I would mandate that without even changing the current TLD situation that ownership of an identical domain name in another hierarchy should carry a large price tag -- $1,000,000 or more per year with a logarithmic increase for each subsequent identical registration. The big offenders are businesses which register thousands of combinations (hey, at $35 each it's a tiny slice of any marketing budget -- 10k domain names for $35,000? Most marketers spend that kind of money on hookers and restaurants in a month) and they will continue to do so.

    Your solution of creating many, micro-managed TLDs is unworkable. We can't get the UN to keep people from killing each other, do you really think a similar international organization can setup and manage myriad TLDs subject to the whims of a dozen courts, parliaments, etc? Hell, ICANN can't even get .biz off the ground without a catfight.

    I'll also add its unusable -- how do I know which TLD to find something? redhat.com? redhat.software.com.us or some other byzantine combination? The "problem" won't be settled until there's no TLDs to fight over. At least then we'll be fighting over the names themselves, which is what we're really fighting over to begin with.
  • I think the current method of trying to segment the web is, to say the least, futile.

    I own a website that is myname.com and another one that is mynickname.com And neither of them is a business webpage. If you are going to try and hold websites to their extensions then you need to start re-evalutating every new old page, and I wont be happy about trying to move over to a .org domain. AND you have to start evaluating every new website that comes up.

    I think it is simply too hard to enforce, we need somthing else, along the lines of internet2 that could be business only or education only etc. Either that or a heck of a lot more work should be put into correctly organizing the web. That sounds funny doesn't it "organizing the web".

  • Mueseums and co-ops don't fit well into one of the other TLDs. A co-op may be considered a buisness but it is also an orginization. A museum may be dedicated to its educational mission but it isn't a school and does not fit into the .edu mode too well, it may be a for-profit business or it may be a non-profit orginization.

    I think what ICANN was trying to address more than anything was the square pegs going into round holes. When you look at it like that, I think that they have made some headway. Not as much as anyone would have liked.

    When you look at it like that, it also explains why they rejected TLDs like .kids and .xxx. Like it or not, these sites do fit neatly into existing TLDs.

    I'm not saying that I think this is what should have been done, I would have liked to see .kids and .xxx because it would have made it far easier to identify the contents of the site for the typical user that way and that is in my opinion the most important thing that a TLD should do!

    I think that for some ambitious people, there is an opportunity here that is just waiting to be addressed. I'd call it the Digital Dewey Decimal System or DDDS. Design it to work in concert with search engines and indexers, AI would devine a DDDS numeric code for each page and then determine its position in the series of related pages and perhaps ascertain the value of its content. Researchers looking for detailed information could then search by the DDDS number allowing for very specific narrow searches.

  • but channel [nytimes.com] works just great :)

    Props to the /. poster who posted this first..but it was buried beneath some other posts. Wanted to make sure everyone go this.
  • At the bottom is a little blurb on what a cooperative is. Hope it helps!

    http://www.landolakesinc.com/OurCompany/CompanyInf ormationIndex.cfm [landolakesinc.com]
  • If you want to effectively insult someone in a reply, try not to restate that person's comment.

    (end comment) */ }

  • slashdot200/slashdot200 works.

    Or just use this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/27NET .html [nytimes.com]
  • A fresh change from organizations registering under .com, or companies under .net.

    ...and from blatantly for-profit sites [slashdot.org] registering under .org!

  • I agree strongly.

    Not only that, but there is the tendency for all good-faith laws to end up being used for evil purposes.

    One could say, "Listen, if we make a .XXX for anyone who wanted to start a porn site, we would help new companies get their names out and merge many of the adult .com sites to a new system."

    "Not only that, but as parents, those of us who didn't want our children to view pornography could just block .XXX and fee at least partially safe."

    So being the good utilitarian world that we are, we make this law in order to maximize the social good. Some number of years pass and the World TLD Commission is soon made up of members strongly reflecting the rich, old, white men that we should now know from history always end up in power.

    Or mayber it won't end up that way. But one thing is for sure, every single one of the members on that Commission will have some status, most likely have worked in the past with some major corporation, and they now have the power of government.

    So Joe Smith does his documentary in Africa, puts up a site to promote the airing on Discovery and the head of the TLD Commission has stock in the Nature channel. Boy its going to take a heavy conscience to keep him from popping that documentary full of Africans in the nude to an XXX.
  • flamebait? ya know, that guy that everyone from /. wanted so badly to get elected to ICANN ran on exactly the same platform as my post.

    what does that tell ya?

  • I want... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    whatchu.info and nonnayer.biz
  • The reason I've seen that makes sense to me, posted on Slashdot under another thread, is that this first addition to the TLDs is sort of a "proof of concept" of the process for adding new TLDs. That's why it's limited, and that's why they are being so very careful about who is allowed to administrate the new domains. If it works this time around, they will expand the system.
  • linux.coop, that will be funny.


    The willingness of humanity to follow without question is the fall of them.

  • When you use a proxy, the proxy looks up the host name you give in the URL and connects to that IP, so adding a hosts entry on your local box won't do a thing.

    On the other hand, it looks like just sticking the IP address in the URL will work:

    http://208.48.26.223/2000/11/27/technology/27NET.h tml [208.48.26.223]

    (Foo to Slashdot for inserting random spaces--but the link itself works.)

    --
    BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL


  • Domain Name: MICROSOFT.ORG

    Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
    Gudmundson, Carolyn (CG6635) carolyng@MICROSOFT.COM
    Microsoft Corporation
    One Microsoft Way
    Redmond , WA 98052
    +1 (425) 882-8080 (FAX) +1 (425) 936-7329

    if you must be a retard, please do it in private. anyone can own any tld. do you really think that everything under .net is really a "network-critical resource?" or do you think that every .org has been verified as a non-profit organization under us law? or even that .coms are commercial? lots of private citizens own vanity domains, many under .com.

    and, as i'm sure rob has said many times, they bought the .com so that noone could take their name. same reason why microsoft owns their .org. and in case you're curios, yes. there is a slashdot.net. and guess what? it's what appears to be a norweigin publishing comany, unrelated to this site except by a very polite "did you mean to go here?" link.

    --
  • remove the www!
  • Just as anyone can now register a .org domain, even companies that are for profit in some ways (slashdot.. banner ads?), and companies owned by profit organizations (andover). Anyone can register a .org domain. Unless the .coop domain is regulated like the .edu domains are, they will probably fall into the hands of anyone and everyone.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Nope. Partners link doesn't work for me either... Chop off the "partners" part and it's fine.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/27NET .html [nytimes.com]

  • Re:Obligatory ".org" reference here... (Score:3)

    by Psiren ( 6145 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @11:50PM (#597514)
    I'm sorry, but I completely disagree. If I want to go shopping for a new toy, I want to deal with a UK company, and see prices in UK pounds. And I don't want to have to use the transatlantic pipes to do so. A .uk site will always get chosen by me before a .com. A study here in the UK has shown that UK companies using .com domains are actually losing business, because people think they are US based. Physical boundaries do apply, when it matters.
  • "A fresh change from organizations registering under .com, or companies under .net."

    What about commercial, publicly-traded news/discussion sites that have a .org?? ;)

  • Hmm...

    <cheesey dream sequence>
    http://slashdot.coop

    ./coop
    </cheesey dream sequence>

  • In Switzerland one of the main (two) supermarkets is called "COOP". In fact also in many more european countries. This are cooperations of independent supermarket owners that formed a cooperation.

    So do we get coop.coop? coop.ch.coop, coop.fi.coop?

    Confusing....
  • The "partners" link appears not to work; does it for anyone else?

    Try this: http://partners.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/ 27NET.html [nytimes.com]

  • Here you go. [nytimes.com]

    --

  • Just so long as the sites that get the .sex TLD are actually SEX sites. Man, I really hate it when I go to my favorite .sex site and I find that it's actually a site that discusses nothing but sports and religion.

    Sometimes I try to go to a sex site and I end up looking through the frickin White House's web page. Like I have time for that.
  • It is very convenient that a .somecountry domain exists. If I want information on Zurich, Switzerland, I go to www.zurich.ch (and don't get some US town also named zurich). If I want to get a cheap monitor in the neighbourhood, I go to a swiss search engine (that only searches *.ch) and type "+monitor +philips", and I only get Swiss hits (which are always near since it is only a small country).

    Without countrydomains, all information would be blurred, and 99% of this on your searches would come from the US, which often isn't too relevant for me.
  • What the hell was I thinking? chop off the "www" part, not the "partners" part. Gotta stop smoking crack someday...
  • ...and from blatantly for-profit sites [slashdot.org] registering under .org!

    I don't suppose it'd be worth the effort to point out that when Slashdot started is was a non-profit site, run by Taco and Hemos for kicks?

    Jay (=
  • All domains should be completely internationalized, governed over by an international NGO, working with the UN or something warm and fuzzy like that. No more of this national crap!

    Or rather certain domains should be national, e.g. .ca, .ie, .us, etc. and certain should be international, with appropriate criteria. If there really is a need for .misc then it should be called that, rather than .com...
  • Coop. Like Hanging at Mister Coopers house! But seriously, cooperative companies? Don't count on it. They're all out to get each other's blood. Or semen... Shout out's to Pikachu and Satori!!!
    ---

  • Let's not forget the most important question (Score:4)

    by andyh1978 ( 173377 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @03:48PM (#597526) Homepage
    Who gets to own the chicken.coop?

  • NCBA (Score:1)

    by hawkfish ( 8978 )
    can be found here [ncba.org].

  • Obligatory ".org" reference here... (Score:5)

    by iElucidate ( 67873 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @03:48PM (#597528) Homepage
    Slashdot should be ".com". Look who's talking.

    Okay, moving on. Chief problems: this is a US organization. Maybe standards for cooperatives are different in other countries. In fact, I'm sure they are. That's the problem with some of these domains in control of specialied organizations. For instance, ".aero". Will it only be for US aerospace companies? What constitutes an aerospace co.? What about if an Pakistani government-owned co. wants a ".aero", except the US has some kind of embargo against them? All domains should be completely internationalized, governed over by an international NGO, working with the UN or something warm and fuzzy like that. No more of this national crap!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • In response to the article's title, who cares? If the average couch potato gets confused as to what makes a .coop, then he'll never use it. The current system and tld's are satisfactory; there are only a couple new tld's needed, and all domains should be country specifiable. The only reason for creation of these frivolous extensions is MONEY.

  • For instance, ".aero". Will it only be for US aerospace companies?

    NO.

    Quoting from the Tidbits newsletter [tidbits.com] :
    * .aero, to be operated by the Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques (SITA), a Belgian airline telecommunications firm. The .aero domain is intended to be used for the air transport industry; it's unclear why the air transport industry warrants its own top-level domain, but ICANN may see it as a precedent for future industry-specific domains.
  • Heck, if you really want domain names to follow strict hierarchies, just follow the same mechanism used by Usenet to create new news groups. There are dozens of people who would gladly police the creation of new domains on the basis that they don't follow "the rules".

    Of course, it's been 8-9 years since I was a Usenet news admin. Maybe things have changed.

    ...

    Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Su-u-ur-r-re they have....
  • Honestly these new TLDs are totally useless. The .coop and .aero are going to be used for american companies (well there may be some flexibilty for .aero) only and therefore don't help reinforce ICANNs claims to be an international entity at all. .museum will be subject to some serious interpretation as to what exactly is a museum... i mean hell could i have my "museum of usenet porn" registered there. .biz is useless since there is already a .com (company business not to much of a difference) and .info which i personally actually like is going to be very underused. .name is in my opinion a really bad domain name but it should atleast allow people to register their names as domain names in a valid category. The only one i think has it right is the .pro its going to be set up so that you will actually be registering a third level domain name and it will be broken into different second level domain categories. Its this kind of usenet style system that should work best. A person will then be able to identify the purpose of a site based on its name and will make the DNS system MUCH more useful. personally i see nothing wrong with yahoo.search.info as or microsoft.compsoft.com. this should also totally remove the cybersquatting issue and the stupid artificial values given to domain names.
  • They were nonprofit until Andover bought out their asse[t]s. Now there's an ad banner adorning the top and the sidepanes all point to Andover/OSDN sites. Pathetic.
  • ...regulated TLDs. What's up with the headline of the article? How would Slashdot like a new .org association to be formed that will have the power to boot them out of slashdot.org if they decide they aren't "org-ish" enough anymore?

    If people have misused .org and .com, so what? That's like putting yourself in the wrong section of the yellow pages. People will have a hard time finding you.

    Once you give someone power to decide who can register in a given domain, you also give them power over the content. Otherwise, what's to stop a business from registering in .coop and then changing their business methods so they're no longer a co-op? This is a big free speech issue.

    The main reason people would be in .org when they should be in .com, for example, is that the .com name was already taken by a 100% content-free placeholder site. The solution to domain-name speculation is to eliminate the artificial shortage of TLDs. But regulating TLDs works against the whole idea of opening up more namespace.

    --

  • Well, I'm not so sure this site is easily definable as a company. A company owns it, that's true. They make money off of advertising. But it's really just a place for conversation within the geek community. There isn't a product sold by /. Yes, they have links to fatbrain and copyleft, but that is not the main focus.

    I would argue that the site is pretty much run in the same spirit that it always has been (old-timer's bitching to the contrary). It's still just people posting their opinions on Linux, tech, and star wars topics. So while some behind the scenes stuff has changed, the site really hasn't. Does that warrant a change in the address?

    Also, before it was bought by Andover, /. developed a following and some "brand recognition" with slashdot.org. At what point does it become neccesary to lose that recognition to better conform with the naming standard.

    Don't get me wrong, I think the current .com, .net, .org system is broken. There are a lot of egregious abuses out there, like the 600+ domain names owned by Verizon. If there were any actual standards for the TLD's in place, where should the line be drawn? Is /. really abusing its TLD, or should any of the issues I mentioned have any mitigating effect?
  • Damn kids.


    The willingness of humanity to follow without question is the fall of them.
  • This is exactly why we need to do away with TLDs completely. We'd need an international non-governmental organisation to manage all of these TLDs. But the US would absolutely NOT give up their current monopoly on the Internet.

    Also, when you have a TLD-based system and it is heavily policed, it a) creates more lawsuits, and b) companies can rename themselves "Microsoft Co-op" and they'd get a .coop (99% chance, even WITH heavy policing). Then they would send official-looking e-mail to everyone and we might have an ILoveYou+Melissa all over again.

    What scares me even more is that if they don't agree with what you are doing, in a heavily policed and monitored TLD, can they take it away? I'm sure they will be able to, just as is happening on a much smaller scale right now with .com, .org, and .net.
    ------------
  • I agree that current methods are futile, but I don't think any naming convention is going to bring the organization needed.

    There are already groups that are trying to organize the web. They're called web directories. I think over the next few years, they'll get larger, more sophisticated, and in my instances much more specialized. Also, once XML comes into wide usage, search engines will become much more useful, providing some standard set of data definitions can be agreed on and adhered to.

    Personally, I don't put much stock in using TLD's or DNS entries to organize the web. The system is fundamentally flawed, and those flaws will only become more apparent as the web scales.
  • what'sup.coop/how's_veronica?
  • Look, what you are saying is pretty much right. Right now, .com, .net, and .org are not verified to ensure they are commercial, organizations, or whatever. And your webpage doesn't really fit into any of those categories. But if you would have read the article, you would see that .coop is going to solve this problem.

    They are going to charge much higher registrations fees for .coop, and with this money they will do research and reviews to ensure that .coop's are actually relavent. This really is a great idea. When I go to a .coop, I will know I will not end up at something totally offtopic. Now if the whole net were done this way, that would be a problem. The .net .org .com chaos will still be intact. Anybody can have still have one. This is just more options for but website creators and for web surfers.

  • Re:Obligatory ".org" reference here... (Score:3)

    by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @05:23PM (#597542) Homepage Journal
    You are right that TLDs won't go away. I think the problem is that it appears that with the current DNS system as it is has to be centralized in some way, else if it were distributed you could have any number of destinations for a given URL. I don't expect the UN or any international body like that to really help here.

    The US having a monopoly of the internet? There is a truth to that but I don't feel it's a monopoly in any strict term except on the .org, .mil, .com and the .edu and that's the name service only, I think there are a lot of non-US groups that own domain names in .org and .com. I really wouldn't expect a different outcome if any other country had developed networking technology first and became the Internet leader. I think the fact that (I heard) 70% of the internet's users are in the US means that the US would naturally have the infastructure and vice-versa.

    The only reason that we have chaos now is that few were checking if a .com applicant really was a an org intending to be a .com, the registrars just took the money an ran with it as they had no mandate or perogative to check these things, they aren't a city zoning board.

    I honestly think it will take some sort of regulation to fix things and that isn't going to happen.

    In short, there are no easy answers. I'll have to hunt down and hurt the person that told me that technology solves problems. Some jerk.
  • The main reason people would be in .org when they should be in .com, for example, is that the .com name was already taken by a 100% content-free placeholder site. The solution to domain-name speculation is to eliminate the artificial shortage of TLDs. But regulating TLDs works against the whole idea of opening up more namespace.

    Okay, I am with your post up until this last paragraph. And what you are saying makes some sense. But if you seem to be so against regulation, how esxactly do you propose to get rid of the artificial shortage of TLDs? Especially when this is caused by the "content free place holder sites"...won't getting rid of these take some regulation?

  • Almost all the links on the site will take you to http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org]. Try going to http://slashdot.com/ [slashdot.com] or http://www.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] and click on any of the "read more" links (or even that big honkin' logo at the top of every page). Slashdot.com may work, but slashdot.org is being activily pushed.
  • What I am afraid of is that with all of these TLDs, the companies with Trademark Paranoia will go around making sure that they are in the park with all of these.

    what I have said before, and it still makes sense, is to have infinite TLDs. Open them all up, have a party. Then at least there is a chance for the freedom that was there before. and if MS wants to spend untold millions registering every possible name variant, they can afford to spend some of the extra cash.

    as it is, now everytime a company wants to lock up a site, the need to buy up all of the variants of .com .net .org, regardless of what these meant originally. These were never really well enforced.

    And don't forget about the thought police who beat on folks who had a really cool name legitimately years before the "dotcom company" came out. For an interesting story in this regard check out Toywar.com [toywar.com], where the story of etoy.com is documented in humorous style.


  • I think we need a .bored domain for when I'm bored as hell, sick of work, and all I can do is listlessly browse the web.

  • Dear registrant,... (Score:3)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @07:12PM (#597547) Homepage
    ...A routine audit of our records has shown that you are a habitual abuser of the domain-name system. First you put your site at FineArtNude.com [fineartnude.com], but you were expelled, since listing under .com was inappropriate for a site that didn't charge people for access.

    Then you registered at FineArtNude.coop, claiming that you were really a cooperative of photographers working together to promote each other's work. You were expelled from this TLD as well because the .coop registrar determined that your material could cause erections in websurfers who were incapable of understanding your URL or the warnings on your splash page.

    Most recently, you have been registered with us at XXX TLD, Inc., Where Erotic Pictures Are Sent to Make Them Easier to Censor. However, our hard-working employees, in the course of diligently surfing our TLD for abuse, have now determined that some of your images might be considered artistic rather than pornographic. Furthermore, some end-users have complained that not all of your images are of female bodies. Some of these users became sexually aroused before their trembling hands could move the mouse to the back button, thereby causing them to question their own sexual orientations.

    Under ICANN's new three strikes rule, your servers have been marked for physical destruction.

    XXX TLD, Inc., constantly strives to give the best possible service. If you have any questions regarding this e-mail, please speak to one of our Customer Service Technicians at 1-800-scr-ewyu. Due to the high volume of calls, you may experience delays.

    --

  • slashdot.COM, by the way, belonged to some other company some time ago. Then, at one point, it quietly became the property of Andover.

    --

  • Why does the .edu domain only allow US educational institutions, by the way?
  • I hate those .somecountry domain names. like in Iceland where I live we have .is. I mean get those damn physical boundaries away from the web were they don't apply..

    So any company with a website under .is will do business with anyone, anywhere, in any currency they choose. Maybe at the same time we should abandon geographic parts of postal addresses, make every telephone number 20 digits long, etc. etc.
    In a great many cases these physical boundries do apply, since XYZ website refers to some entity in the physical world. Cities, universities, volcanos, businesses, etc all exist in the physical world.
  • Anyone can register a .org domain. Unless the .coop domain is regulated like the .edu domains are, they will probably fall into the hands of anyone and everyone.

    IIRC .edu isn't properly regulated either, just that it is less of a .misc than .com, .org and .net.
    The only two which come to mind as not being a mess should really be the second level domains .mil.us and .gov.us
    The obvious problem with .coop is that the meaning of the term is ambiguious in the first place.

  • I was wondering (Score:4)

    by L-Train8 ( 70991 ) <Matthew_Hawk@@@hotmail...com> on Monday November 27, 2000 @03:52PM (#597552) Homepage Journal
    I was wondering why the new TLD's were so odd. It seemed like there would not be a huge demand for .museum or .aero. These new ones wouldn't really relieve namespace overcrowding. Apparently, ICAAN wants to see the catagories used appropriately, and not have the chaos of .com, .net, and .org. If they can police these narrow new TLD's, then they will approve more.

    It's an interesting idea, and a worthy one. But it seems messed up to me that ICAAN is worried about being unable to police the use or misuse of TLD's. Isn't that one of the main reasons they were created? If they can't control it, then perhaps a new administrative body is needed.
  • National Cooperative Business Association

    Which nation is the NCBA refering to in its name? I think I can guess.

    One of the big problems with the gTLDs we have is that they were based on the assumption that they were for the U.S. but in reality their namespaces are used globally, which increases clashes.

    This is a good illustration why closing down the gTLDs to new registrations would be a better solution than adding more. ICANN are just repeating the mistakes of the original DNS designers without the defence of being pioneers.

    TWW

  • Why do you think a company can usually only trademark a given name in one of many categories of product and service? (True in Australia, probably true in most places.)

    Applies even to megacorps, e.g. Apple Computers cannot have anything to do with the music business

    It's because there is a finite number of possible identifying words for products and companies, and people have to share.

    Also tradmarks are restricted to specific geographies

    We don't need fewer TLDs, or none, we need more, one for each category of trademark, ones for all kinds of organisations, ones for individuals. And they should be subdomains of the country in which the entity exists, since there are few world organisations in the legal sense, and few global citizens.

    That wouldn't be TLD's so much as second, third or even fourth level domains.
    The sort of things which probably actually really belong under non geographic TLDs are the comparativly few companies which operate on an international level (company and trading names only) (i.e. what .com should have been); operations on the Internet. ISPs and NOCs (what .net should have stayed as); creative works and fiction, including TV programms, films, music, etc. and other abstract entities e.g. Slashdot.
  • TLD namespace control does nothing more than exacerbate the existing artificial monopoly. There is no technical reason at all for having a set number of TLDs. Putting more control of TLDs in the hands of any organization just encourages that organization to abuse said control.

    Or: Who will watch the watchers?

    Free the TLDs! Open the root servers! Decentralize DNS!
  • Why do you think a company can usually only trademark a given name in one of many categories of product and service? (True in Australia, probably true in most places.) It's because there is a finite number of possible identifying words for products and companies, and people have to share. We don't need fewer TLDs, or none, we need more, one for each category of trademark, ones for all kinds of organisations, ones for individuals. And they should be subdomains of the country in which the entity exists, since there are few world organisations in the legal sense, and few global citizens.

    Nor will anyone be able to see the wood for the trees anyway.
  • This is a good thing. (and a bad thing)

    It's good, because .com, .net, .org are (basicly) all the same now (infact many things I've read say you should always register all three, even if you only fit into one of the catgorys
    It's bad, because:
    .coop is 4 letters, insted of the normal 3...this scares idiots
    .coop doesnt exactly yell out "this is a domain for a non-profit group"
    .coop isnt .com (this sounds stupid, but I'd say a good chunk of computer users who don't know anything but .com domains exist...yes...we do have people that stupid useing computers

  • telnet://groundzero.wox.org:6666 Go here! Click Here!!! [wox.org]
    ---
  • Yeah, it works, but only if you are registered -- you just get redirected to the login page. If you have the registration cookie you are once again redirected -- this time to the article at www.nytimes.com. If you don't, you'll have to log in until someone finds a new backdoor (like www10 used to be).

    (end comment) */ }

  • It seemed like there would not be a huge demand for .museum or .aero.
    Well, in those cases it's the organisations which will be allowed in them who want them. Either because they think it'll be some sort of "quality stamp", or perhaps that they want a registrar who is part of their community, instead of someone who's only in it for the money and thus has an interest in registring as many domains as possible and doesn't care about who gets which domain.
  • The Fox should be in charge of the chicken.coop
  • From the article:
    The proposed registration fee, $75, is much higher than the fees proposed by the other winning sites, which average about $5.

    The average is hella higher than $5. .BIZ alone is charging $2000 (see Wired [wired.com]), so even if the other six were all free, the average would still be almost $300.

    Kind of ridiculous when so many registrars are reg'ing the big three TLDs (.com/.net/.org) for $10 and less per year. Joker.com [joker.com]'s down to around $9, $8 in bulk, on what I think is a $6 fixed cost they pay. So much for competition of other TLDs driving down prices. I doubt anybody who shells $50,000 per TLD (non-refundable) application fee with a 3% chance of approval (7 out of 210+ TLDs [icann.org] were approved) for a niche market is going to charge $8.

    Gads...I just realized ICANN took in $11 million on the initial appliciations...and they're trying to revoke country domains for impoverished and unrepresented nations like Haiti and Brazzaville if they don't pony up?
  • Speaking for myself I'm quite glad that .com, .org, and .net domains are not "better regulated". Given that I represent neither a company, an organization, or a computer network, would I be prevented from registering under such domains if these were strongly regulated? What if I started with a .org site and later it became a full-fledged company? Would non .xxx sites be forbidden from carrying XXX content? Enforcing classification of TLDs according to type is not necessarily a good thing. There's a real need for generic TLDs that allow for sites that evolve, present dynamic content, or are difficult to classify.
  • Yeah, mad pr0pz to you, too. Now they'll change it again. Tell the whole world, why don't you.
  • The fact that people had to resort to using .com, .net, and .org TLDs as generic appendages is, in my opinion, a symptom of the flaws inherent in such a classification system. It shouldn't be strongly regulated.

    Consider there may be several companies sharing the same name, all having equal rights to a regulated .com domain. It's possible then that a company might not find a domain if forced to move from one class to another. They shouldn't be forced to drop the domain name they've registered under, a name people already identify the website with.

    If you as a visitor would like to know whether company X is an NOC, a company in Mongolia, or a personal page then simply look at the site's content. If people need to confirm a company's non-profit status then perhaps the website could display a certificate granted by whatever agency non-profit organizations must register with.

    The point is that TLD classification according to type makes it easier to pigeonhole websites and therefore restrict their content. This should never happen. There should always be room for unrestricted content domain names. We need less bureaucracy, not more. The drawbacks of strongly regulated domains are worse than the benefits, which may very well be obtained through alternative means.
  • People really do prefer to buy goods from California when they live in New York City.

    In the US there are tax advantages to buying goods from other states. Companies are not required to charge sales tax on a transaction unless they have a physical presence in the customers home state. (Users are supposed to remit the tax on their own, but there is no enforcement of this.)

    For example, Amazon.com is based in Washington and most US residents avoid sales tax on purchases from Amazon.

  • Consider there may be several companies sharing the same name, all having equal rights to a regulated .com domain.

    And can you give an example of two globally operating companies with the same name? Since a properly regulated .com domain would contain exactly zero companies which only operated in a specific geographical area.

    he point is that TLD classification according to type makes it easier to pigeonhole websites and therefore restrict their content.

    Ordered classification makes things easier for people, it makes sense for the same reason that TV and radio stations don't use random frequences and libraries don't simply put books on shelves in random order.

    There should always be room for unrestricted content domain names

    Having room for "unrestricted content" is not the same as having everything as random content.
    What is the point of having TLDs as abbreviations for something, if they don't actually mean something. They might as well be a random set of letters and digits.
    And at the same time why bother with hierarchically structured addresses and telephone numbers, just assign a random 30 digit number to any phone line on the planet, a random set of letters to every building and for that matter a random (unique) name to every person.
  • People really do prefer to buy goods from California when they live in New York City.
    In the US there are tax advantages to buying goods from other states. Companies are not required to charge sales tax on a transaction unless they have a physical presence in the customers home state. (Users are supposed to remit the tax on their own, but there is no enforcement of this.)

    Why California over somewhere in New Jersey do issues such as being in the same time zone, able to visit in person, etc mean so little to to US customers?
  • Given that I represent neither a company, an organization, or a computer network, would I be prevented from registering under such domains if these were strongly regulated? What if I started with a .org site and later it became a full-fledged company?

    If things were regulated then either
    a) you'd have to change your name anyway in order to become a company because there was already a company with your name
    b) that name would be free since you would be the first company to use it.
    The point about proper regulation of .com is that it would also restict companies to using some version of their actual name.

    Would non .xxx sites be forbidden from carrying XXX content?

    Possibly, if their domain name was misleading.

    Enforcing classification of TLDs according to type is not necessarily a good thing. There's a real need for generic TLDs that allow for sites that evolve, present dynamic content, or are difficult to classify.

    In that case what's needed is something like .misc or .dymamic Rather than treating everything else as .misc, to be honest the whole of .com, .org and .net may as well be renamed .misc
    The whole point of well ordered and regulated domains is to make things simpler for people. e.g. so they know foobar.net is a NOC rather than some company in Mongolia, that foobar.com.ny.us is company in New York state, USA not the personal page of an Astralian, etc.
  • The net has gotten where it has because of anarchy, not because of top-down hierarchical organization by some distant bureaucracy.

    I'd love to see how far things have gotten with IP addreses being handed out at random...
  • If I want to go shopping for a new toy, I want to deal with a UK company, and see prices in UK pounds.

    Because at the end of things businesses are entities in the real world. Also you might want to go there in person (without needing a passport, visa, plane ticket, etc); telephone them (without having to pay international rates or work out if they are awake) or if they do something illegal take the appropriate legal action.

    A study here in the UK has shown that UK companies using .com domains are actually losing business, because people think they are US based.

    People thus being reluctant to do business because they are afraid the price might change, that they might have difficulty contacting the company in other ways and would prefer to keep the legal protections against "cowboys" they have with a regular shop.

    Physical boundaries do apply, when it matters.

    Physical boundries apply because at the end of the day a business is an entity in the physical world, which sells products or services in the physical world.
    Physcial boundries don't apply where this is not the case, e.g. review and discussion on "artistic" works.
  • I'm not quite sure about the uptake of .coop for that matter but what is more interesting is how ".com" focused companies are going to react.

    For example what is Sun going to say? "We are the . in .coop"?

    I feel the takeup of .coop will not be as great as many internet users have experienced the high and low events of the ".com" these past years (and there is so much more to look forward to)....On the otherhand, the Internet and its users is known to change in many areas.

    "Do you .com or .coop?"
  • If I want to get a cheap monitor in the neighbourhood, I go to a swiss search engine (that only searches *.ch) and type "+monitor +philips", and I only get Swiss hits (which are always near since it is only a small country).

    Also it is probably a waste of time for the company suppling your monitor to have a .com name. Since they'd only usually do business with people in Switzerland (and possibly Northern Italy, etc), expect to be paid in Swiss Francs...

    Without countrydomains, all information would be blurred, and 99% of this on your searches would come from the US, which often isn't too relevant for me.

    In the case of a place like the US something like .us makes the same kind of sense. Or do people in New York City really prefer to buy goods from California (or Alaska or Hawaii)...

  • Re:partners link... (Score:4)

    by tregoweth ( 13591 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @04:03PM (#597588)
    Try http://channel.nytimes.com/2000/11/27/technology/2 7NET.html [nytimes.com]. (Props to Jorn Barger [robotwisdom.com] for pointing out the channel.nytimes.com [nytimes.com] backdoor.)

    -jon

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