4 ms·

Especially since Internet domain names were never set up to be consistent with trademark law (or heck, even the Yellow Pages), as they probably should have been

Especially since Internet domain names were never set up to be consistent with trademark law (or heck, even the Yellow Pages), as they probably should have been. “Domain” is a terrible name in the sense that it actually does a pretty bad job of splitting businesses into their true domains. Take moving companies. We have “Apple” and “United” in that market, and those names are clear enough as long as the grouping is something like “moving companies”. They coexist in markets where Apple computers and United Airlines are well known. In the old days, these would have had two different mentions in the Yellow Pages. Yet, can there reasonably be a “moving.apple” and “moving.united” alongside “computers.apple” and “airlines.united”? No, these well-established four companies have to compete for two logical domains, because consumers only seem to care about ".com". Companies fight over domain names that they shouldn’t need to care about, and artificial “value” is attributed to these names.

unethical_ban 11y ago
That's what gTLDs should do going forward, even if it will be hard to change the mindset of people.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Not really, because you can still have two companies with the same mark in the same market - as long as they're in different countries. To match trademarks, we'd need to use ccTLDs instead of gTLDs.
  - AnthonyMouse 11y ago
    That doesn't actually seem like a problem though. What's wrong with united.air.us and lloyds.bank.uk? Which actually makes the squatting problem much better because to squat on "foo" you need foo.air.us, foo.bank.us, foo.cars.us, foo.air.uk, foo.bank.uk, foo.cars.uk, foo.air.ca, foo.bank.ca...
    - icebraining 11y ago
      What's wrong with united.air.us and lloyds.bank.uk? Nothing, but those aren't the gTLDs that unethical_ban was talking about.
- junto 11y ago
  The Problem is that the multitude of new tlds means that they have more competition, increased supply, and prices will continue to drop.
jsprogrammer 11y ago
> “Domain” is a terrible name in the sense that it actually does a pretty bad job of splitting businesses into their true domains. DNS wasn't made to split businesses into their "true domains", but to provide global network name space. "Domain" refers to a network domain on the Internet, it doesn't have anything to do with businesses or their models. There is nothing stopping companies from publishing well-known IP addresses of their endpoints, if they desire to manage their network resources that way, and not participate in DNS if they don't like how it works. A company could even setup an alternative system if it so desired. >Especially since Internet domain names were never set up to be consistent with trademark law (or heck, even the Yellow Pages), as they probably should have been. Why should they have been? Why would we want a national commercial law database intimately tied into technical network infrastructure?

unethical_ban 11y ago

That's what gTLDs should do going forward, even if it will be hard to change the mindset of people.

icebraining 11y ago
Not really, because you can still have two companies with the same mark in the same market - as long as they're in different countries. To match trademarks, we'd need to use ccTLDs instead of gTLDs.
- AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  That doesn't actually seem like a problem though. What's wrong with united.air.us and lloyds.bank.uk? Which actually makes the squatting problem much better because to squat on "foo" you need foo.air.us, foo.bank.us, foo.cars.us, foo.air.uk, foo.bank.uk, foo.cars.uk, foo.air.ca, foo.bank.ca...
  - icebraining 11y ago
    What's wrong with united.air.us and lloyds.bank.uk? Nothing, but those aren't the gTLDs that unethical_ban was talking about.
junto 11y ago
The Problem is that the multitude of new tlds means that they have more competition, increased supply, and prices will continue to drop.

jsprogrammer 11y ago

> “Domain” is a terrible name in the sense that it actually does a pretty bad job of splitting businesses into their true domains. DNS wasn't made to split businesses into their "true domains", but to provide global network name space. "Domain" refers to a network domain on the Internet, it doesn't have anything to do with businesses or their models. There is nothing stopping companies from publishing well-known IP addresses of their endpoints, if they desire to manage their network resources that way, and not participate in DNS if they don't like how it works. A company could even setup an alternative system if it so desired. >Especially since Internet domain names were never set up to be consistent with trademark law (or heck, even the Yellow Pages), as they probably should have been. Why should they have been? Why would we want a national commercial law database intimately tied into technical network infrastructure?