5 ms·

ICANN’s First Test of Accountability

91 points by ayh 10y ago

nickodell 10y ago
I agree with the proposed remedy, but I wouldn't call this a test of accountability. If NTIA oversight of VeriSign didn't prevent this, I don't see how NTIA oversight of ICANN would.
byuu 10y ago
> Competition drives innovation and improves consumer choice through ensuring: (i) market-based pricing; (ii) a widely available variety of unrestricted TLDs; (iii) improved quality of service (e.g. highly available and reliable systems); and (iv) improved customer service. How did allowing corporations like Google to purchase generic gTLDs like .dev and refuse to allow the public access to any of them ensure these goals, especially (ii)? :/ Restricted gTLDs should have only been for trademarked company names, like .google or .microsoft
- tom-lord 10y ago
  > Restricted gTLDs should have only been for trademarked company names, like .google or .microsoft Unfortunately however, there are a lot of grey areas... To name a few: * Amazon have been in a long dispute with the Brazilian government, over the right to operate a .amazon TLD - as the Brazilians claim it should instead be related to the rainforest. * On the other hand, Amazon have secured TLDs such as .prime, which could also be disputed. Apple have won .apple, Sky have won .sky, ... the list goes on. * Sometimes, the conflicts can even be with foreign languages. For example, Ferrero are now the registry operator for .kinder - but as this is the German word for "children", it's been the cause for similar debate. Also, with regards to your concern that there is a lack of variety in available unrestricted TLDs - I disagree; if anything, there are far too many (there's hundreds!!).
  - byuu 10y ago
    > Unfortunately however, there are a lot of grey areas... Certainly. Ideally, I'd have left it as .com, .net, .org. > the Brazilians claim it should instead be related to the rainforest. How many TLDs does a rainforest need, anyway? :P > Apple have won .apple, Sky have won .sky, ... the list goes on. I'm certainly particularly interested in .dev, because I'd like to have a .dev domain. I think there's a lot more people who are developers that would want a .dev than apples that would want a .apple domain ;) (I actually use /etc/hosts to map byuu.dev to my VPS' IP when I'm setting up a new box before deploying it to the world.) > Also, with regards to your concern that there is a lack of variety in available unrestricted TLDs - I disagree; if anything, there are far too many (there's hundreds!!). Still wishing someone would buy .emu for people to use. Anyone have a few hundred thousand dollars lying around for a good cause? :D
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      > Certainly. Ideally, I'd have left it as .com, .net, .org. (And .edu?) Ideally, we would never have had more than one TLD; even before the new rounds of TLDs showed up, people found it annoying and confusing to have example.org and example.com go to two different places. Why did we need more than one TLD in the first place, other than as a license to mint money in the form of domain registration fees? I don't think it makes much sense as an organizational mechanism.
      - byuu 10y ago
        I suspect if there was a flat gTLD with no suffixes, everyone would have domain names that looked more like AOL screen names (lots of numbers after the names.) I'm okay with a few TLDs, but the original distinction is kind of vague. There's really no distinguishing characteristics between .com and .net, and even though for some reason .org became popular with open source, a lot of OSS sites (including mine) are not organizations. If not for Google, .dev would have been a great one for developer sites. What I don't like is the idea of adding an infinite number of gTLDs. It's bound to do nasty things: break a bunch of old URL matching regular expressions, collide with some poor businesses that made bad choices for their internal networks, etc.
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    Why does a rainforest even need a TLD?
    - tom-lord 10y ago
      Why does there even need to be such thing as a TLD? :P I'm guessing the idea is similar to .London, .NYC, .Amsterdam, ... i.e. it would be used for a geographic indicator/market.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  Yup. Thankfully Google lost .blog, which they intended to use solely for Blogger accounts. Automattic won instead, and made it an open registry that anyone could use.
- icebraining 10y ago
  Is it any different from purchasing a generic second-level domain like cars.com? What makes the top-level so special?
hackuser 10y ago
Dumb question: Why do we need generic TLDs at all? Why can't I associate any unique name I want with my IP addresses in my DNS records? Why shouldn't we use "https://ycombinator" https://ycombinator"? Is it due only to the legacy of DNS? I suspect I'm missing something obvious, but even a quick search didn't reveal the answer.
- startling 10y ago
  How do you decide which nameservers to trust about the "ycombinator" domain? What happens if I advertise a nameserver with that domain?
  - th-ai 10y ago
    If Named Data then no need to trust the server, because trust the data. The data is signed. Signed data is trusted and doesn't care what path it takes to go where it's wanted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_data_networking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_data_networking
    - icebraining 10y ago
      The same problem holds; what if multiple people sign data under the same namespace? You need some way of mapping a name to a single public key, so that you can check the signature. That's equivalent to a nameserver.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    Use root servers like we do now. I'm not asking about doing away with DNS completely, just TLDs.
    - startling 10y ago
      Got it. Then ICANN (or whoever) controls all websites, and is responsible for their infrastructure. That may or may not be better than what we have.
  - deleted 10y ago
malloryerik 10y ago
My "deplorable" Trump-voting attorney friend claims that an unaccountable ICANN spells the end of the internet as they supposedly will discriminate against certain users because of their political philosophy, as private organizations are not limited by the First Amendment. I'm blissfully ignorant of ICANN, etc. Can someone here give me an answer for my paranoid right-wing libertarian friend?
- guelo 10y ago
  Tell your friend to relax, it's not overly-PC liberals running ICANN, they're just run of the mill money grubbers.

91 points by ayh 10y ago

I agree with the proposed remedy, but I wouldn't call this a test of accountability. If NTIA oversight of VeriSign didn't prevent this, I don't see how NTIA oversight of ICANN would.

byuu 10y ago

> Competition drives innovation and improves consumer choice through ensuring: (i) market-based pricing; (ii) a widely available variety of unrestricted TLDs; (iii) improved quality of service (e.g. highly available and reliable systems); and (iv) improved customer service. How did allowing corporations like Google to purchase generic gTLDs like .dev and refuse to allow the public access to any of them ensure these goals, especially (ii)? :/ Restricted gTLDs should have only been for trademarked company names, like .google or .microsoft

tom-lord 10y ago
> Restricted gTLDs should have only been for trademarked company names, like .google or .microsoft Unfortunately however, there are a lot of grey areas... To name a few: * Amazon have been in a long dispute with the Brazilian government, over the right to operate a .amazon TLD - as the Brazilians claim it should instead be related to the rainforest. * On the other hand, Amazon have secured TLDs such as .prime, which could also be disputed. Apple have won .apple, Sky have won .sky, ... the list goes on. * Sometimes, the conflicts can even be with foreign languages. For example, Ferrero are now the registry operator for .kinder - but as this is the German word for "children", it's been the cause for similar debate. Also, with regards to your concern that there is a lack of variety in available unrestricted TLDs - I disagree; if anything, there are far too many (there's hundreds!!).
- byuu 10y ago
  > Unfortunately however, there are a lot of grey areas... Certainly. Ideally, I'd have left it as .com, .net, .org. > the Brazilians claim it should instead be related to the rainforest. How many TLDs does a rainforest need, anyway? :P > Apple have won .apple, Sky have won .sky, ... the list goes on. I'm certainly particularly interested in .dev, because I'd like to have a .dev domain. I think there's a lot more people who are developers that would want a .dev than apples that would want a .apple domain ;) (I actually use /etc/hosts to map byuu.dev to my VPS' IP when I'm setting up a new box before deploying it to the world.) > Also, with regards to your concern that there is a lack of variety in available unrestricted TLDs - I disagree; if anything, there are far too many (there's hundreds!!). Still wishing someone would buy .emu for people to use. Anyone have a few hundred thousand dollars lying around for a good cause? :D
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > Certainly. Ideally, I'd have left it as .com, .net, .org. (And .edu?) Ideally, we would never have had more than one TLD; even before the new rounds of TLDs showed up, people found it annoying and confusing to have example.org and example.com go to two different places. Why did we need more than one TLD in the first place, other than as a license to mint money in the form of domain registration fees? I don't think it makes much sense as an organizational mechanism.
    - byuu 10y ago
      I suspect if there was a flat gTLD with no suffixes, everyone would have domain names that looked more like AOL screen names (lots of numbers after the names.) I'm okay with a few TLDs, but the original distinction is kind of vague. There's really no distinguishing characteristics between .com and .net, and even though for some reason .org became popular with open source, a lot of OSS sites (including mine) are not organizations. If not for Google, .dev would have been a great one for developer sites. What I don't like is the idea of adding an infinite number of gTLDs. It's bound to do nasty things: break a bunch of old URL matching regular expressions, collide with some poor businesses that made bad choices for their internal networks, etc.
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  Why does a rainforest even need a TLD?
  - tom-lord 10y ago
    Why does there even need to be such thing as a TLD? :P I'm guessing the idea is similar to .London, .NYC, .Amsterdam, ... i.e. it would be used for a geographic indicator/market.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Yup. Thankfully Google lost .blog, which they intended to use solely for Blogger accounts. Automattic won instead, and made it an open registry that anyone could use.
icebraining 10y ago
Is it any different from purchasing a generic second-level domain like cars.com? What makes the top-level so special?

hackuser 10y ago

Dumb question: Why do we need generic TLDs at all? Why can't I associate any unique name I want with my IP addresses in my DNS records? Why shouldn't we use "https://ycombinator" https://ycombinator"? Is it due only to the legacy of DNS? I suspect I'm missing something obvious, but even a quick search didn't reveal the answer.

startling 10y ago
How do you decide which nameservers to trust about the "ycombinator" domain? What happens if I advertise a nameserver with that domain?
- th-ai 10y ago
  If Named Data then no need to trust the server, because trust the data. The data is signed. Signed data is trusted and doesn't care what path it takes to go where it's wanted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_data_networking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named_data_networking
  - icebraining 10y ago
    The same problem holds; what if multiple people sign data under the same namespace? You need some way of mapping a name to a single public key, so that you can check the signature. That's equivalent to a nameserver.
- hackuser 10y ago
  Use root servers like we do now. I'm not asking about doing away with DNS completely, just TLDs.
  - startling 10y ago
    Got it. Then ICANN (or whoever) controls all websites, and is responsible for their infrastructure. That may or may not be better than what we have.
- deleted 10y ago

malloryerik 10y ago

My "deplorable" Trump-voting attorney friend claims that an unaccountable ICANN spells the end of the internet as they supposedly will discriminate against certain users because of their political philosophy, as private organizations are not limited by the First Amendment. I'm blissfully ignorant of ICANN, etc. Can someone here give me an answer for my paranoid right-wing libertarian friend?

guelo 10y ago
Tell your friend to relax, it's not overly-PC liberals running ICANN, they're just run of the mill money grubbers.