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The Internet

ICANN Trying To Speed Up 89

Posted by Hemos from the moving...much....faster dept.
coder_cc writes "ICANN posted a Preliminary Report on their Melbourne ICANN Board Meeting and it looks like the public's dissatisfaction with the gTLD process is finally getting to them. Under a lot of board- and committee-speak (yukk) they urge their President to complete negotiations for the new gTLDs and set themself a time-limit of only 7 days to comment on the eventual negotiation results. Without negative feedback in seven days, the ICANN President is authorized to go ahead and sign the agreements. But don't hold your breath, the Board still CAN make comments and hold this up for a long time."
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ICANN Trying To Speed Up More

ICANN Trying To Speed Up

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  • who gives a shit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Who really wants to rush thouse crappy -.biz and -.museum names anyway. I mean come on, are you excited about these? Are you going to register your name under one of the stupid new tdls?

  • Re:New TLD's--good censorship idea (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Step 1: Approve XXX

    Step 2: Force all XXX content providers to an XXX name

    Step 3: Enforce filtering, which is made much easier now

  • Re:new.net (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You have to be kidding. new.net is nothing more than a blatant land-grab by a company trying to take advantage of the dissatisfaction with ICANN. If you let them do this, they're going to be worse than ICANN, since they're a totally private company, and can tell you to screw off with a lot fewer words than ICANN.

    Also, if you look at their plug-in, it resolves *any* domain that you can't resolve anywhere else to 64.208.49.135. That's right, there's a wild card in their DNS query tool....and it points to them.

  • A good rant about this (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    At ICANNWatch.org [icannwatch.org]

  • If you not a corporation, ICANN sez screw you (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2001 @09:05AM (#361410)
    Look at their threat to retroactively restrict .ORG to non-profit CORPORATIONS only. Look at the "trademark holders always win" dispute policy ICANN promulgates, even if the domain name has another meaning or is even your own name.

    Like USENET, DNS needs a .ALT top level domain where domain names are strictly first come first serve and where domain name lawsuits are barred.

    Without a garbage dump where anything goes, the trash will just clutter up all the other TLDs.

    How to enforce this. Make it a condition of getting or renewing or even just keeping an existing domain name, that you agree not to sue and indemnify and hold harmless all *.ALT domain names.

  • I am amzed that the concept corporative control of the Internet lives on in this day and age. Sure, the Internet was founded my insanely controlling defense agencies in the military, but nowadays we have entered a new era - the world of Open Source, with ESR and RMS as our modern day MESSIAHS!

    I demand that these incorporated fascistic companies be disbanded, so that the internet can throw off the shackles of fascism and enter the new age of Free Software. Free software and free love and free speech are the principles on which the Internet has been founded - look at RMS's multiple girlfriends and strip club fun.

    Only when the internet is truly free will we, as a people and as a nation, be free too.

    If necessary, we must FIGHT. Fight the establishment, and wheel out our pensioned wheelchair warriors to destroy the controlling influences that make every little detail of our lives a living hell.

    We must fight for FREEDOM!
    --

  • What's the rush here? I find the new TLDs reprehensible, not only for their lack of taste but how they fail to fit within the current types of organizationally-centered TLD names. They are domains, remember this, not web sites. But I'll get off my high horse.

    Anyway, I still find it odd that people want to ram things through that change so much. It seems irresponsible.

    Am I the only one here that thinks this?
  • Not a terrible idea. I think experience has shown that those with money will dominate a TLD in all namespaces available, thus rendering TLDs rather pointless. High levels of regulation would be required to achieve otherwise, and the global nature of the internet makes this difficult at best.
  • You're describing host naming in the early days of the Internet - ARPANET and so on.
    DNS was created with a hierarchial namespace to allow more names - pity the greedy bastards had to go and ruin it by registering ourgreatbigcorporation.*
    "If ignorance is bliss, may I never be happy.
  • The problem with the alternative roots (like PacificRoot, Atlantic Root, Alternic, etc...) is that the average idiot can't figure out how to change their DNS settings.

    Doesn't matter if you give them tutorials, or full description on how to do it. They are dumb as rocks! Most of these people go to AltaVista and type in "www.hotmail.com" to get to their hotmail account.

    I think that New.Net took a step in the right direction by offering a "moron-proof" plugin that automatically adjusts the settings so that dumbfucks the world over can view new TLDs.
  • I watched the recent Melbourne Australia ICANN meeting and came away with the impression that these people really don't give a flying fuck about you or me or anyone. VeriSign has the ICANN board by the balls and they are bought and paid for. The meeting was nothing but window-dressing! A show put on to entertain the masses.

    The real meetings take place behind closed doors with their laywers (Joe Sims and Louis Touton) and VeriSign / NSI. They are currently trying to rush through an agreement that would give NSI full control of the registry for dot com indefinitely! That's right kids.... forget about competition NSI owns your ass and will gladly sell you out for a buck.

    If you visit the ICANN Public Comment Boards [icann.org] you will see that a majority of the people are against this. Everyone things this is a REALLY BAD IDEA. But, the lawyers for ICANN continue to recommend this as the best course of action for the Internet as a whole. It really makes you wonder: 1) how much the ICANN board gets paid? and 2) how much VeriSign stock they own?

    Here are 3 quotes from recent ICANN meetings:

    1) The Names Council meeting in March 2001. Phillip Sheppard: "my apologies but we have run out of time... sorry no public comments"

    2) The Board Meeting in November 2000. Louis Touton: "you're here to observe... not to participate!"

    3) The Public Forum in March 2001. Vint Cerf: "The at large community exists - I mean, they're out there. The question is whether they have a role in ICANN."

    This should make all of you very afraid! They don't want you, and they don't need you! And they are going to make all the decisions without you goddammit! Support New.Net [new.net] and the alternative roots!

  • I don't think I've ever seen an allegedly representative body so disconnected from the group it represents.

    What about this [senate.gov] one....or perhaps this [house.gov] one.

  • Re:New TLD's (Score:3)

    by MindStalker ( 22827 ) <mindstalker@gma i l . com> on Thursday March 15, 2001 @10:00AM (#361418) Journal
    believe it or not, porn sites make money from paying customers. neither of which do much of thier buisness at libraries or schools
  • Forget ICANN... support new.net! [new.net]

  • Not likely (Score:3)

    by Shotgun ( 30919 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @09:28AM (#361420)
    public's dissatisfaction with the gTLD process is finally getting to them

    ICANN isn't responsive to the public. They're responsive to companies paying to register domains. More likely they're moving to stem the rising tide of alternate naming organizations.

  • High levels of regulation would be required to achieve otherwise, and the global nature of the internet makes this difficult at best.

    With it been lack of regulation (ever relaxation of regulation) which has left us with the mess of a pile of .misc's.
    It must be possible to return to the level of regulation which once existed though.
    A large part of the problem is most likely the reluctance of Americans to use their geographic TLD (and appropriate sub domains) even to the point of hijacking other countries domains (e.g. .la)
  • Maybe another level of hierarchy is more than the average consumer's (joe sixpack user) limited mental model capacity can handle?

    Maybe they have simply adapted their "mental model capacity" to meet the expectations of the "adverts".
    How do they cope with telephone numbers, especially in places like the US where there can be complex rules as to what you actually need to dial?
  • My school, umich.edu, also registered umich.com, umich.org, umich.net - and they are completely unused. What's the point then? It should just be "umich."

    Which could eaily clash with with some other entity elsewhere.
    The problem here is that domain names are being treated like "trademarks" when really they are closer to telephone numbers or even postal addresses.

    In other countries, such as Germany, where I guess they can't/don't want to use .edu, most of the universities have domain names like uni-freiburg.de. Using the country code actually makes more sense than using .edu.

    Probably because "edu" is meaningless in German. They could have gone for freiburg.uni.de. Interestingly it has been known for the German postal service to deliver letters with just an email address on.
    Maybe most of .edu should actually be .edu.xy.us. with a few very well known organisations under also available as .edu.us.
  • DNS was created with a hierarchial namespace to allow more names - pity the greedy bastards had to go and ruin it by registering ourgreatbigcorporation.*

    Even bigger pity the people involved in running the system were unable to say NO. There is also the anyproductofGBC.* being registered as well.
    All it would have needed would have been a rule of "Is the entity requesting foobar.com a commercial entity trading internatinally called foobar, as a legal or recognised trading name?"
  • MOV for movie sites (the DotCom is running pretty thin because of movies)

    Or even ".mov.ent" or ".films.ent". You could also have ".tv.ent", ".actors.ent", ".characters.ent", etc.
  • Without a garbage dump where anything goes, the trash will just clutter up all the other TLDs.

    Problem is that a .alt or .misc was needed at least 5 years ago. i.e. before .com, .net & .org effectivly became said "garbage dump".
  • "...it would be much easier for schools and libraries to filter explicit porn..."

    Which is why, in the absence of legislative mandate, any profit-maximizing entity would either:

    1) Avoid .XXX domains like the plague; or
    2) Register both .xxx and .com / .net domains;

    Which puts you back at square one, as far as .com namespace is concerned.
  • I've had .biz in my dns for a long time. Any email that comes from .biz is spam. My mailer checks to see if the domain resolves and .biz doesn't but I much prefer to point .biz off into never never land where the lookup takes a real long time which just ties up resources on the spamers box.

    When .biz goes live, I have no reason to change this and I expect all email with .biz in it will still be spam.

    One thing that I think is interesting is .biz has rules to fight squatting. Too bad there are holes in them there rules.

    .pro is going to be a complete failure and I suspect will cause the current trademark confusion into the realm of personal confusion. Who is johnsmith.law.pro? Their current rules say there has to be a licensed professional lawyer named johnsmith to get the domain but that doen't fix the problem of which john smith gets the domain and they aren't smart enough to force all john smiths to share it.

    ICANN says the new tlds are experimental. Maybe they will can it after it failes but that hasn't happend in .com, .net, .org and the orignal source of the mess: .us

    If .us would get fixed and used then gtld could be global. most sites in .com are in the US and do not deal with any other countires.

    For what it is worth, I did go to the ICANN meeting and I did ask questions.
  • It came from a rule set out by the registry before nsi.

    There are at least two RFCs that disagree. One of the uses for .org is domains that do not belong other places.
  • Why support one set of greedy bastards vs another set? If one of these alternate nics want my support they can convince in the form of kickbacks.
  • http://slashdot.dot

    Saying that sounds like your stuttering.

    _ _ _
    I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.

  • Great, now there will be a plethora of website names in IBM extended ASCII D00dspeak that nobody's going to be able to type in.
  • TLDs are necessary because of the way DNS works. Basically a dns request for jack.spanner.example.com goes to the root name servers, asks for the holder of .com records, queries that server for the holder of example.com info, queries that server for either the record for jack.spanner or the dns that holds the spanner.example.com records. If there were no TLDs the root servers would have to hold every domain record for the whole inet, which would be like a return to the hosts file infrastructure. More info (which is undoubtedly more accurate than my fuzzy mumblings above ) here [linuxdoc.org].
  • I agree as well. Nothing pisses me off more than when I think I am going to a legitimate site, and end up seeing some animated gif of some chick and a horse. By excluding them to a couple of separate TLDs, it would be much easier for schools and libraries to filter explicit porn, instead of things like birth control and phycology material relating to sex.
  • I fail to see where it is written thet you would have to be a non-profit corporation to make use of the .org TLD. I checked a number of documents at the ICANN site (including the March 1 proposals regarding the domain registry restructuring) and they all refer to the term non-profit organization to describe to whom the .org TLD would be restricted.

    If you could cite where they refer to non-profit corporations, please let me know. I have .org domains that would belong to organizational but not corporate entities.
  • Okay, so Slashdot uses the term "non-profit corporation". The supposition here is that Slashdot is accurate. To that, I say if you trust Slashdot to be accurate, the joke's on you!

    I've looked at all the links on that older Slashdot article. The pages that are linked refer to the ICANN proposal that suggests restricting .org to non-profit organizations. Call me blind if you wish, but I'd really like to see where ICANN proposes restricting .org domains to corporations only.

    Would someone who insists that corporations alone would be permitted to use the org TLD please post a link to an ICANN page where ICANN (not some public respondent) states this!
  • .DOT was the absolute first new TLD. It was deployed by Christian Neilson around 1996 and predates all other efforts. It's available through the ORSC and TINC root zones.

  • new.net sucks. They've totally ignored prior claims on many of their TLD's. Support one of the alternate roots that actually want to build a better Internet.
  • There are quite a few alternate root server networks available. Try www.alternic.org or www.opennic.unrated.net, or http://www.pacificroot.com/ for example.

    And, unlike new.net, the others most of the time try to get along and not declare new .tld's that other people are already using.

    DO support alternate DNS systems. DO NOT support new.net, they're just another bunch of corporate weasels who don't give a shit about anyone other than themselves.
  • Is there any news about when ICANN will start allowing websites with charachters from other language sets. I don't want to go out and register hötmäïl.com, but I would like to register something with a special character.

    -----
  • it seems like they're making the right decision here. There really isn't any good reason why they should be holding this process up, there's been plenty of time for public discussion and I think it's time to get things moving now.

    My one chief concern is that this might set a bad precedent concerning how quickly they make policy decisions. Some of you might remember the article posted recently about refusing renewal or registration of .org domains to those who are not non-profits (it's also referenced in the above-referenced reports under Proposed Revision to VeriSign Agreements), there's been ALOT of negative feedback concerning this agreement... ICANN meets April 2 to discuss this proposal, should they decide to ram it through the same way they did with this proposal, we'd all be worse off.
  • See here [theregister.co.uk] at The Register [theregister.co.uk] for a summary of the shenanigans that the TopLevelDummies at ICANN were pulling at the Melbourne meet. (Putting ICANN into El Reg's search box gives a few other interesting recent stories.)

  • test (Score:1)

    by Rogain ( 91755 )
    test
  • This is just a scam, for Network Solutions, ICANN, or whoever will be in charge of registering these domains. This is just a tax for websites, if you have a valueable site, then to "protect" it you have to register your domain in a dozen or so TLDs. And just how is this supposed to help the supposed lack of domains. Do you think you can register microsoft.shop or napster.tv, etc and not get sued. These and any other more generic domains will be legally taken/stolen away by the companys owning the .com, .net, etc of that name. This is just so stupid. The only people drooling for a .shop domain, are cracksmoking marketingdroids.
  • Why are TLD's necessary, anyway? They seem to me that they are an unnecessary complication of the domain-naming convention. What is, after all, the point of having
    www.yadayada.com
    www.yadayada.org
    www.ya dayada.net, and
    www.yadayada.edu?

    Why not just have the domain name an alphanumeric string, and let these sites delineate themselves as

    yadayadaCorporation
    TheyadayadaFoundation
    ya dayadaNetworking, or
    yadayadaUniversity?

  • the Board still CAN make comments and hold this up for a long time

    well...

    (1) no one who follows ICANN would ever suggest that the board, which rubberstamps anything that comes its way, will "hold this up."

    (2) again and again, I've seen /. editors make remarks in which public input is presented as bad because it slows things down. ICANN's big problem is that the staff -- which includes the president -- runs amok, with no accountability whatsoever. it's a shame the board doesn't function as a mechanism for presenting public input; but the fact that it does not doesn't mean that the solution is for the staff to do whatever it wants.

    new gTLDs are a good thing. an ICANN dominated by an unaccountable staff is a bad thing. in the balance, i'd rather see accountability first and then new gTLDs. and it's not like the two are mutually exclusive.

  • Support OpenNIC!


    Claim your namespace.

  • The point about the wildcard in the DNS tool is a good one, well made.


    Claim your namespace.

  • Yes, indeedy. There are a number of alternate roots out there that operate very reliable DNS systems with an expanded namespace. For a list, see this page [unrated.net]. (That's www.opennic.glue [opennic.glue] for those of you using openDNS, though both will work, of course.) Some of these are real fly-by-night operations. Others are long-term, commercial ventures. Some are market-capitalist (such as name-space and pacroot, and, now, new.net), others are more anarchist (anarchyNIC, possibly ORSC), and still others are democratically organized (OpenNIC).


    When is ICANN going to realize that DNS is not rocket science? And when is the internet citizenry going to realize that they DO have a choice in their namespace? I mean, do you just accept all the defaults when you install an OS or an application? Of course not, you choose the options that are right for your needs and purposes. The choice of namespace should be the same way.


    My 2 cents.


    Claim your namespace.

  • Setting time-limits for these kinds of debates could make it easier to ram controversial decisions through the board before opponents can organize.

    We've seen ICANN abuse its authority before; who is limiting the debate on issues really going to help?

  • Actually, I'm sorry I ever spoke poorly of them... (Score:4)

    by wunderhorn1 ( 114559 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @09:06AM (#361451)
    ...after reading this resolution:

    Whereas:

    Mike Roberts today completes his service as ICANN's first President and Chief Executive Office...

    As a direct result of his efforts ICANN as now universally acclaimed as "not as bad as it could be";

    I mean, hey, at least they don't take themselves too seriously up there in their cathedral!

  • There is no need for more top level domains. The "great domain speculation boom" is over. I'll bet that most of the domain names held by speculators aren't renewed the next time around.

    TLD confusion is very real. I own Downside.com [downside.com], which has financial information. I get misaddressed mail intended for:

    • downside.net [downside.net], a grunge band on Long Island (they don't generate much mail),
    • downside.ws [downside.ws], which despite being in the Western Samoa TLD, is actually a band in California (who signed up with one of those branded E-mail services, offering their fans free E-mail ("name@downside.ws"), so they generate a fair amount of mail),
    • downside.org [downside.org], which redirects to downside.ws [downside.ws],
    • downside.co.uk [downside.co.uk], Downside School and Abbey, a monastery in England (where all the students have individual E-mail addresses).

    At first, I just ignored the misaddressed stuff, but I was getting misaddressed mail like "Why don't you answer my E-mail? Don't you love me any more?", and similar outpourings of teen angst.

    So I routed incoming mail through SpamCop [spamcop.net] to bounce the drivel. The worst problem was students at Downside School signing up for mailing lists using "downside.com". All that stuff just bounces now.

    So that's what it's like when you have a good name shared by different sites in different TLDs. (I've trademarked "DOWNSIDE", so I don't have to worry about that problem.) It's confusing.

  • Honestly... http://pie.shop has been resolving for me and millions of other people for quite a while now. If you're a DNS server admin, enabling their domains is easy as a breeze. If you don't have the power to change your DNS server, you can either modify your resolv.conf on a unix system, or download a plugin for windows.

    If you ask me, it surely beats waiting for ICANN and their ridiculous prices/timeframes. After all, they have no friggin power over the free Internet whatsoever! They just like to think that, because big corps are behind it.

    New.net has organizations like @Home, Earthlink, and mp3.com supporting them. I'd say we need to hurry up and put ICANN out of business while it still doesn't have its hands on our throats.

    It's really no sweat to activate it. Try it today. http://www.new.net/ [new.net]

  • Like USENET, DNS needs a .ALT top level domain

    OpenNIC [unrated.net] already has the .null TLD, which is similar to the alt.* hierarchy of Usenet. The .parody domain could cut down on reverse domain name hijacking by parody targets.


    All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
  • Ever since I realized that command.com was a domain [command.com] as well as a shell, I've envisioned TLDs that parallel filename extensions. For example, NetNames.pl [netnames.pl] already sells Perl-related domains; see also St. Pierre and Miquelon [iana.org]. Shell-related sites go in St. Helena [iana.org], audio goes in australia [iana.org] or a new .mp3 domain, etc.

    MOV for movie sites

    Apple would love this [apple.com].


    All your hallucinogen [pineight.com] are belong to us.
  • a .dot TLD
    --
  • The whole point of a TLD is to provide a central authority to keep track of a set of names.

    That was the original intent. Today there's not much hierarchy. Whatever server "knows" .com has a more or less complete list of all the domain names. Ok, there's .edu, .net, .org, .mil, and country names, but .com is so much larger than effectively one database holds all the names.

    When talking about things "ought to be", I'm suprised that so little is mentioned about introducing more heirarchy. Maybe another level of hierarchy is more than the average consumer's (joe sixpack user) limited mental model capacity can handle?

    About the speed-up... does anyone else see this as an attempt to bypass the growing pressure they're under for having made such arbitrary decisions without any accountability for the basis behind them?

    Maybe I'm overly suspicious... ICANN's got such a clean record, I'm sure they'd never do anything like...

  • Now that alot of people have seemed to realize that a fancy generic name (or highly specific one for that matter) and a few banner ads aren't going to change the world/cure cancer/make everybody involved gobs of money/etc err, what does this matter? Can people really hold names hostage for thousands or millions of dollars now, if the entire e-commerce thing is bullshit?

    Well, mabye not entirly bullshit, but hell, CONTENT QUALITY over everything else, right? Tomshardware.com hardly a fancy ass name with that cybersquatters would think of taking up, but hell, over 20 millions unique visitors a month.

    Hardocp.com Heh, once again, not exactly a rare top notch get it now name, who would have thought it would be THAT successful? (no offense intended, those guys totaly rock;)

    ars-technica.com Heya, Latin for ya, I don't exactly see very many people cybersquatting all possible Latin names1

    Slashdot.org err, need I say more?

    www.mp3.com Hey, here is a good example of a good name being USED for something nice! I typed it in one day expecting to find another lameo MP3 top 10 massive link page, but I was pleasently surprised when it turned out to be chalked full of high quality content, and lots of it too!

    Without all the cybersquatting, it turns out that TLD are hardly in need. In fact, there are ALOT of good names out there that nobody is currently using, or are being mothballed because a great idea never got off the ground. The only use for TLD that I could see is content filtering, and with there being no .sex domain (which I would have loved, because I could then have clicked a button in the browser and filtered out ALL content from it therefore getting rid of those damn pr0n pop up banners, yippy!) there is really NO point in there being any more TLDs!

  • I suggested these two TLD's last year when they had that big thing going...

    MOV for movie sites (the DotCom is running pretty thin because of movies)
    and XXX for pr0n sites (cuz they are taking up a bunch of the DotComs as well).
  • .CBN for CowboyNeal?
  • Was it just me, or was that report absolutely incomprehensible?

    Can anybody lay out the practical upshots? Are there any practical upshots?

    --

  • I agree; however this isn't about filtering porn. This is about taking a certain amount of control away from the com, org, and net domains.

    Originally I was all for the idea until I discovered that there wasn't going to be a .music one, like I read very early on in the process. At this point I'm not concerned with it much, except to say that it's a good thing to create more TLD's.

  • and XXX for pr0n sites (cuz they are taking up a bunch of the DotComs as well).

    Cool! Now HotWetSluts.com can be put to LEGITIMATE use. :)

  • .ORG are effectively to be stolen from the legal owners.

    ICANN knew this Top Level Domain was being used by individuals, families, small clubs, town communities and small businesses (.COM and .NET had gone). Many, hopefully, are profitable.

    ICANN allowed this type of use - without complaint.

    To all intents and purposes, they endorse this use as generic TLD.

    Non-profit use has never been mentioned for .ORG TLD.

    Why did ICANN not inform .ORG owners that their identity is in danger of being stolen from them? It is easy to do email merge posting with all contact addresses on registry. Obviously, they did not want any objections to their plans.

    ICANN are deliberately holding up new TLDs. Domains are a limitless resource - yet ICANN made them scarce.

    They and their predecessors are responsible for most the problems. To protect big business interests, they did not open up enough TLD.

    They know the answer for trademarks. The USPTO and DoC do not deny that name.class.country.reg need be legal requirements for all trademarks. Visit my site if you do not believe me. They must have always known.

    WIPO.org.uk [wipo.org.uk] - no connection with, and wishes to be totally disassociated from, the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO.ORG - part of UN, paid for (owned) by big business.
  • I should have said about WIPO - "World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO.ORG - part of UN, paid for (owned?) by big business."

    I left out the ?

    Rather than questioning their ownership, it almost looked like I was accusing them.

    I would not wish to give their lawyers anything to bully me with ;-)

  • Imagine.. (Score:3)

    by PHr0D ( 212586 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @08:52AM (#361466) Homepage
    Imagine a world without ICANN. A world Whereas, an Ad Hoc Group on Numbering and Addressing was not convened for discussion of these issues.. A world without TLD's.. Just the word.. no 'dot' anything..

    Well heck, I think we should just stick to IP numbers, and limit the influx of spam clicking mouthbreathers, but then again, I may be an elitist pig..

    --------------------------------------
  • Imagine.. (Score:4)
    by PHr0D on Thursday March 15, @11:52AM PDT (#12)
    (User #212586 Info) http://www.bugshit.com
    Well heck, I think we should just stick to IP numbers, and limit the influx of spam clicking mouthbreathers, but then again, I may be an elitist pig..

    ... He says as he gives his URL in ol' dot-commie form. haha. 63.236.12.63 [63.236.12.163]

    -Andrew
  • Yeah, really. I was just going to say something like this. My school, umich.edu, also registered umich.com, umich.org, umich.net - and they are completely unused. What's the point then? It should just be "umich." Similarly, we should just have "slashdot", "dell", etc. Is it really necessary to see from a domain name if an origanization is non-profit, educational?

    The distinction between .com and .everythingelse doesn't even mean anything anymore. Slashdot isn't even nonprofit, and they still prefer to use .org. There's no point! The only place I'd almost like to see a new TLD is for .xxx. I think filtering based on that is not such a terrible idea, for parents who want to do that.

    In other countries, such as Germany, where I guess they can't/don't want to use .edu, most of the universities have domain names like uni-freiburg.de. Using the country code actually makes more sense than using .edu. And, there's still no reason why uni-freiburg by itslef shouldn't be enough.

    The technical changes required to do this, from what little I understand, would simply be to change the behavior of root servers and other DNS servers a little bit. All root servers could have info on all TLDs (no-longer the three letter ones) and they could be contacted at random. Or they could be split up, names starting with a-d go to one server...

  • Is there any news about when ICANN will start allowing websites with charachters from other language sets. I don't want to go out and register hötmäïl.com, but I would like to register something with a special character.


    Look. We all know that you just want to register www.HAXØR.com or www.rØØt3d.net or something.

    Give it up.

  • Actually, new.net will provide alternative DNS from mid-March (oh.. today is..). You can see their technical support page:

    http://www.new.net/help_isp_info.tp [new.net]

    And they provided a extra www.yourname.shop.new.net for global compatibility. So, you did actually get 2 name from them


  • I think ICANN, I think ICANN, I THINK ICANN...(faster and faster)
  • The ICANN BoD called their meeting a half hour early and no one knew about it. They took care of the most controversial discussions during that half hour so no one heard it unless they just happened to show up early.

    They later voted to allow the president to sign new gTLD contracts without further board review or public comments even though many of the appendices are still not even posted.

    They have done something really interesting here and it will be just as interesting to see how the comments on this board go.

    ICANN has paved the way for duplicated TLDs by accepting applications for duplicates and selecting .biz to go into the USG root.

    Next comes new.net with 17 colliders out of the 20 TLDs they "introduced." Who is to say what litigation might come out of this. There is already one that has been publicized "warren.family" that was registered at the PacificRoot in December and another "warren.family" registered last week at new.net. Hmmmm...

    Now who is to say that someone somewhere will not decide to set up duplicates of .com, .net and .org? Where would the argument from DoC go? They did it first. Why should anyone else not be able to do the same thing? New.net did it and people don't seem to care.

    The net is now fractured, folks. It's chaotic and will become even more so. Why? because ICANN refuses to recognize that there is more than just one root and that it is THE NAME SPACE that is singular, not the root. Things were coming along fine until ICANN pulled this bonehead stunt. The roots were coming together and cooperating to eliminate collisions. Will they bother now? New.net pays lip service to talking with other TLD holders, but that is not what they are doing, FYI. They just "take" them like ICANN does. More fracture. No respect for registrants. No respect for users. No respect for the DNS.

    Geez! If they would only pay attention! The monster has grown now and it will be a monumental task to try to bring order out of chaos. ICANN isn't about to do it. Maybe another organization will. There are some who do care about the DNS and are working on it...

    Leah Gallegos
  • "We going to make this important decision really quickly, so we're only going to give ourselves a week to find ways to not avoid making it."

    I don't think I've ever seen an allegedly representative body so disconnected from the group it represents.


    --
    #include "stdio.h"
  • The addition of the urlspace to the domain name can be very natural, and can become part of the common idiom for describing domain names. For example, poems-jane.com would be pronounced:

    poems.com in uspace jane

    This idiom is very short and natural sounding

     The word calculus is short and natural sounding. That doesn't make it easy to comprehend. I'm all for finding new solutions and thinking outside of the box, but the attraction to names like "sports.com" or "pets.com" is that they're easy to remember. Someone hears a name and types it in later. The urlspace idea requires someone to remember a domain (which is probably related, but not the intended target) and then parse and insert additional info. You're asking a lot of the typical web user.

    I also don't expect the proprieter of FuzzyPets to want to advertise "pets.com in uspace fuzzy" and mention a competitor's name, possibly steering interested clients away.
  • 'Kay, here's a stupid question buried in someone else's post that noone will probably see or pay attention to, but: Do we need ICANN or any "Official" organizing body or any "Official" TLDs? I mean, pipes are pipes, right, they don't know what flows through them. All this protocol is just that - a way we organize a ton of disparate digital data from millions of different sources to lump it all into one organ and call it the World Wide Web or the Internet (okay I remember hearing somewhere those are really different things but I don't remember why). But at the most basic level all that stuff is plain and simple nothing more than a phone book. So say I set up my OWN phone book with its own set of rules (where for example all snappy names were replaced with a numeric code)... If I had the computing power to deal with the incoming traffic and route it to the appropriate line, could I create my own internet within the internet? Would that be feasible? Possible? Legal? I guess what I'm asking is this: Do I HAVE to have a registered url under one or more of the possible TLD's in order to have a bank of data that's accessible by the the internet (I mean, using the information conduits the internet uses)? Or does having all that just connect me to the nifty super-phone book that represents what we call Ye Olde Internet? I don't even have the right language for the devices so don't laugh at me but if I gave a "router" (?) an "unlisted" number - a valid number to a "server" (?) accessible by phone/"network line" (oh go ahead and laugh) but not officially registered in the conventional URL sense, would it be able to call that computer up? Could you make existing browser software do this or would you need to invent something new? What would you lose creating a privately indexed network like this besides a connection to every yahoo with a dial-up account?

  • Sorting through the muck (Score:3)

    by deran9ed ( 300694 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @08:59AM (#361476) Homepage

    Whereas, comments from the public have been received on a web-based public comment forum and at a Public Forum held on 12 March 2001;
    Taking this out of context, I don't recall myself or anyone I know of posting any kind of public opinion of any kind in relevance to TLD's. Maybe what ICANN should have done is sent an email to existing domain owners in order to get some form of feedback in regards to new TLD's

    RESOLVED [01.25] that the Board shall be notified of the complete posting of the agreement and appendices for any of the four unsponsored top-level domains (.biz, .info, .name, and .pro) and after that notification seven days shall be allowed for Board members to make any additional comments to the President and General Counsel;
    This does not mean that the new TLD's will be out and about within 7 days, what it means is when all board member have made any comments, the board is then allowed an additional 7 days to add comments. Whats not known is if any board members point out a problem or deficiency [deficiency.org], if the board goes back through the entire procedure again.

    I used to work at Register.com [register.com] and remember whenever ICANN made some noise the CEO and others would quickly brainstorm with lawyers in order to understand some of the enigmatic policies ICANN would sometimes introduce. Knowing more or less what ICANN is and what ICANN does, I feel bad for the non-profit organization, as they have to deal with what I call "brats on the Internet".

    This ruling though will not speed up the introduction of the new TLD's though =\

    AntiOffline.com vs. Register.com [antioffline.com]
  • Relics from an era long gone. For a different take see: http://www.possibility.com/urlspace/
  • All good points. Unfortunately a perfect solution was not an option :-)
  • Actually, it might not be a bad thing if the propsed top-level domains never show up...

    Virtually everyone who has registered a domain name understands the 'problems' regarding name availabilty - squatters and pornagraphers own an obscene number of names.

    To be perfectly clear, ICAAN has exercised extremely poor judgement in its approach to the new TLDs. Even if the new TLDs are implemented tomorrow, domain name availabilty would not improve because:

    • There are no TLDs proposed for porn sites - and even if there were, do you think the owners of those sites would simply give up the '.com', '.org'. and '.net' names they already own?
    • Several variations of my name are owned by squatters. The new TLDs simply give them new hunting grounds. ICAAN has not, after all, proposed enforcing restrictions on the new TLDs, so before long, squatters will be selling people their own '.names'.
    • Even if TLDs existed for every disparate group currently on the net, ICAAN does not have the spine to divest name holders of 'inappropriate' TLDs. Does anyone think the DNSO would force Rob to give up '.org' in favor of '.geek'?
    I say, screw ICAAN. This process is as irrelevant now as it was when they unveiled the new (useless) names.

  • Free gTLD Registration! (Score:4)

    by oooga ( 307220 ) <oooga@NoSPAm.usa.net> on Thursday March 15, 2001 @09:02AM (#361480)
    Wouldn't it be cool if gTLDs could be registered just like domain names? It'd work like this. Say I wanted a domain name, say oooga.com. Then I'd just register it, and pay the 12 bucks. But say I wanted oooga.freellamarides. I'd register .freellamarides for maybe 35 bucks, and also oooga.freellamarides for 12. Then, when ever anybody else registered anything at .freellamarides, I'd get maybe a 1 cent royalty for coming up with it, which could go towards the InterNic fees.
  • The IETF doesn't enforce DNS standards, ICANN do (for the official gTLDs, that is).
  • Remember that this is a testbed only, and that if this test goes well ICANN will open for more (possibly many more) new gTLDs later on.

    (disclaimer: I work for the company that will operate .name [theglobalname.org] - the TLD intended primarily for personal names)

  • Except you're wrong: Neither Network Solutions nor ICANN will be in charge of registering the domains - separate companies were awarded the new TLDs (including the company I work for, that will be responsible for .name [theglobalname.org]), and while .info and .biz are almost free of restrictions, .museum, .aero, .pro, .coop and .name all have restrictions:

    • .museum is for museums only .aero is for the aerospace industry and airliners etc. .pro is only for professionals of different kinds, such as MDs etc. .coop is only for organizations organized as cooperatives .name is only for registering personal names, nicknames or names of fictional characters

    Yes, I'm sure people will find ways of abusing it, but it should go a long way.

    And have you ever tried finding a domain name under .com lately? Even one that doesn't crash with a trademark? Try any word from your dictionary - even the most obscure you can find. It's likely taken. And it's likely taken prefixed and postfixed with tons of common combinations of letters and digits.

  • Actually, I'm one of the co-founders of the company that got .name (see GNRs website [theglobalname.org]), and if someone registers your ..name, and they don't have a legitimate interest in it, they will lose it. I'm not sure if that appendix to the contract has been published for .name yet, but all the new TLDs have been required to write and publish and appendix that specifies in details what restrictions will be enforced, and how disputes shall be handled. The appendices are published on ICANNs pages [icann.org].

    I'm not going to say too much about it here, but in .name's case, there will be clear restrictions favoring people that either register their own personal name, or a name they have a strong relation or ownership to (and which they must be able to document, if disputed). Look out for Appendix L on the page above - it shouldn't be too long before it is published for .name too.

  • If they just delay a few more months... (Score:3)

    by JohnSmith1138 ( 313010 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @09:12AM (#361485)
    There will only be about 25 companies left with domain names anyway. We won't even need new names.

  • That's not even something that would be within ICANN's power to do. The set of valid characters for domain names, hostnames, and TLDs is part of the DNS specification.

    So, the IETF would need to change the DNS spec to allow ICANN to engage in such silliness.

  • the only problem i see with that is the XXX in reality was stolen by the porn industry, it is actually Amsterdam's official symbol. i was oblivious to this up until a few months ago when i went there, and was amazed to see XXX on the poles lining the streets.
  • oh what's this? a quick visit to http://www.amsterdam.nl/ [amsterdam.nl] just shut you up. try to research your flames a little better.
  • further, here [amsterdam.nl] is the city hall-ish page, and what's that on the back wall?
  • funny you should post that, since that's EXACTLY what i was talking about when i said "poles lining the streets"..

    thanx!

  • ICANN can't, but youcann.org can... (Score:4)

    by Angel's Fall ( 324528 ) on Thursday March 15, 2001 @09:56AM (#361491)
    Wired ran a story about this a couple of months back, and I checked it out. It's as easy as replacing your ISP's DNS addresses with ones they provide (well, for me anyway).

    http://www.youcann.org [youcann.org]

    It's not much use unless people start using it, but it opens your eyes as to how the system works. ICANN only has authority if people let them have it. Who said the internet needs to be forced into a top-down design model, anyway?
  • So if joe user points his browser to that site, Joe's computer asks Joe's ISP's DNS server, who asks... what?

    The whole point of a TLD is to provide a central authority to keep track of a set of names.

    --

  • yea, .xxx is a great idea because companies new to the net need to register names like wetpussy.com and fatfuckers.net....you fat fuck! at 15 bucks a pop they'll buy analadventures.md
  • what are you the goddamn internet police? You can take porn out of the internet, that's like trying to filter piss out of a swimming pool.....drain the lake!

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