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Wireless spectrum isn't a great analogy for domain names. Spectrum is extremely scarce in practice, names aren't. There are hundreds of bits of entropy availabl

by zrm 7y ago

Wireless spectrum isn't a great analogy for domain names. Spectrum is extremely scarce in practice, names aren't. There are hundreds of bits of entropy available so we're never going to run out of domain names even in an individual TLD. Even good names aren't particularly scarce because there are so many TLDs. The real issue here is that once you start using a name, it becomes a dependency. You may not have any preference for example.org over example.us on day zero but you sure do after you've been using one of them for a decade. So the thing that works really well looks a lot like Namecoin, but not quite. You do want some modest annual maintenance cost per name just to discourage squatting on short/common names and cause people to return names to the available namespace once they're not using them anymore. What you don't want is for anybody to be able to ever cancel an active registration or change the terms or cost once a name is already registered. You could do that with blockchain like Namecoin, or you could do it through legislation or contracts. Either way, it shouldn't be possible for anybody to cancel or change the terms of a registration for a name that's already registered, and that's the biggest failing of the existing system.

bob1029 7y ago
Yes the spectrum is scarce in practice, but in theory it doesn't need to be. The problem in practice is that there are massive chunks of extremely useful spectra locked up in legacy telecommunications stacks that make the spectral efficiency of 4G look like an impossible feat by comparison. If we had a magic wand and could instantly put everything on a standardized global DSSS/CDMA-style scheme (across any arbitrary frequency ranges), I feel we would have far more to go around.
- zrm 7y ago
  That doesn't really change the comparison. It would be better if we made more efficient use of the wireless spectrum, but if we did then people would just replace more copper and fiber with wireless. The wireless spectrum would still be in contention as a scarce resource in a very practical sense. By contrast, people registering every possible domain name is never going to happen. Just the computational resources necessary to do that don't even exist in the world. What makes a name valuable isn't that names are rare, it's that people know your name. Things point to it. So we don't really need to ration them but we do need to make it so that once a name is yours, it stays yours. Nobody should be able to hold your own name hostage from you.

by zrm 7y ago

bob1029 7y ago

Yes the spectrum is scarce in practice, but in theory it doesn't need to be. The problem in practice is that there are massive chunks of extremely useful spectra locked up in legacy telecommunications stacks that make the spectral efficiency of 4G look like an impossible feat by comparison. If we had a magic wand and could instantly put everything on a standardized global DSSS/CDMA-style scheme (across any arbitrary frequency ranges), I feel we would have far more to go around.

zrm 7y ago
That doesn't really change the comparison. It would be better if we made more efficient use of the wireless spectrum, but if we did then people would just replace more copper and fiber with wireless. The wireless spectrum would still be in contention as a scarce resource in a very practical sense. By contrast, people registering every possible domain name is never going to happen. Just the computational resources necessary to do that don't even exist in the world. What makes a name valuable isn't that names are rare, it's that people know your name. Things point to it. So we don't really need to ration them but we do need to make it so that once a name is yours, it stays yours. Nobody should be able to hold your own name hostage from you.