13 ms·

I bought netflix.soy

410 points by stokesyio 6y ago

pbamotra 6y ago
unbox.com
yarinr 6y ago
I'm from Israel, and this is the first time I've heard about the .קום tld. I've never seen any website that uses it. The author mentioned that creating a new tld costs a minimum of 185k USD. This makes me wonder who would pay this kind of money for this completely useless tld.
- manquer 6y ago
  Perhaps government organizations ? Also not all TLD's cost 185k to create, ccTLD were given free to each country to mange for example, similarly language specific common gTLD may have had special provisions for some countries to manage perhaps.
- esnard 6y ago
  The applicant was actually Verisign. [0][1] [0]: https://icannwiki.org/.%D7%A7%D7%95%D6%B9%D7%9D https://icannwiki.org/.%D7%A7%D7%95%D6%B9%D7%9D [1]: https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1138 https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationde...
- tialaramex 6y ago
  If they managed it for only $185k I'm impressed, maybe if you did several on the same infrastructure. It's a gold mine offering. There was a long queue of people quite sure that .binglebongle would be the new .com. Sometimes it was a marginally less stupid plan, like we can be a regional alternative - and Russia even has one that's actually making money - it isn't taking over the world, but it's Cyrillic and was never intended to. But most gold mines never produce gold, they just suck up people's money and dreams and spit out the bones. The obscure brand TLDs are funnier. Not brands you've heard of like google, brands who are their own tiny corner of the non-IT world and figured they ought to have a TLD, so now they do to the tune of maybe six figures a year. The Kerry Group for example owns several, as do some US financial outfits. Why? Because nobody who knew this was a stupid idea was in the room when it got decided.
  - snazz 6y ago
    > The obscure brand TLDs are funnier. Not brands you've heard of like google, brands who are their own tiny corner of the non-IT world and figured they ought to have a TLD, so now they do to the tune of maybe six figures a year. While everyone here has certainly heard of Softbank, I find it amusing that they have their own TLD too (with sites like https://group.softbank/ https://group.softbank/).
    - r3dk1ng 6y ago
      > everyone here has certainly heard of softbank not until your comment had I heard of "softbank"
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    I'm pretty pissed off that some TLDs went to the exclusive use of corporations. I really wanted a domain with .fox but its taken by the media corporation which doesn't use it for anything.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Afaik most of the new TLDs are hosted by a few specialized ISPs that have enough DNS infrastructure to comply with ICANN's standards. Apart from tech companies, nobody wants to maintain DNS servers.
- ars 6y ago
  .קום is just .com transliterated into Hebrew letters, right? That actually seems quite useful, if people are typing not realizing the keyboard is set to Hebrew.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    That would only work if the Hebrew keyboard layout they were using had this mapping of letters. Most language layouts for non-Roman scripts don't optimize for phonetically approximating the corresponding English letters (presumably on a QWERTY layout). It appears that they don't match to the TLD letters here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard
    - yarinr 6y ago
      That's correct. Typing 'com' with the keyboard set to Hebrew results in 'בםצ' (which is not even pronounceable) not 'קום'. The Hebrew keyboard layout has no relation to QWERTY in terms of phonetics.
      - ars 6y ago
        There is a Hebrew phonetic keyboard layout: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard#Hebrew_on_standard_Latin-based_keyboards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard#Hebrew_on_stan... it's built in on Android, windows, Linux, etc. Usually used by non-native Hebrew speakers. > 'בםצ' (which is not even pronounceable) Sounds like a new snack from Osem :)
  - creatornator 6y ago
    If the keyboard was set to Hebrew then the subdomain would also be spelled out in the wrong characters, so the URL would be nonsense or go to a different site. Additionally, as people mentioned, the standard Hebrew layout is incompatible with QUERTY (I am a Hebrew speaker and have never heard of the phonetic Hebrew layout you linked to). Also when you type the URL the characters would be spelled out in the oppose right-to-left direction as .com.
- Ayesh 6y ago
  Many national TLD holders (ccTLDs) control a TLD in local language. .lk registry, for example, also controls .ලංකා and .இலங்கை (sounding "Lanka" "Ilangei" in Sinhalese and Tamil, the two other official languages in Sri Lanka), and they do not cost $185K. In fact, ccTLDs don't cost any money as far as I'm aware. DNS servers are run by the government funding but there is no cost to pay to ICANN.
waiseristy 6y ago
Strange that Netflix hasn't drunk the Registry cool-aid and bought their "all-encompassing" TLD package which registers their trademark across all TLD's for a special price. On top of that, I'm doubly surprised Google hasn't taken action and already put this domain on hold in preemption of selling Netflix one of these deals.
- gruez 6y ago
  >their "all-encompassing" TLD package which registers their trademark across all TLD's for a special price That's a thing? What's preventing a predatory registry from being a holdout and demanding exorbitant prices?
  - waiseristy 6y ago
    That is a thing for at least one Registry that I know of (and worked for), I don't know if Google does the same, but I don't believe there is anything stopping them (please correct me if I'm wrong).
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Google does not do the same.
      - waiseristy 6y ago
        Which makes me doubly surprised! It was my impression that this product offering was quite lucrative.
  - elliottinvent 6y ago
    Yeah: Domains Protected Marks List, e.g Donuts: https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection afaik there's nothing that requires registries to use a DPML and it doesn't really make sense unless they manage lots of TLDs, since the cost of adding your trademark to the DPML is usually a lot more than the cost of a single registration.
otterley 6y ago
26 years ago: https://www.wired.com/1994/10/mcdonalds/ https://www.wired.com/1994/10/mcdonalds/
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
gTLDs are nothing but a money play by ICANN and registrars and really make the internet a (slightly) more confusing and dangerous place. Within epsilon, all the money spent by companies on gTLDs is dead weight with no payoff in increased usability but only to prevent some naive user from being tricked. The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a “.com”
- interestica 6y ago
  > The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a “.com” You can't actually mean that? Country TLD? (Eg .CA) I'm actually pretty impressed by how the .CA registry (CIRA) has branded itself in Canada. There's even a bit more legitimacy for sites because it's clear they're operating in Canada (or have at least made an effort for Canadian representation).
  - Marsymars 6y ago
    Yeah, my default behaviour for any international company is to navigate to companyname.ca. Even if they don't use TLDs for their regional websites, it typically redirects to their Canadian site. (e.g. apple.ca redirects to apple.com/ca, microsoft.ca redirects to microsoft.com/en-ca, ikea.ca redirects to ikea.com/ca/en, etc.)
  - bscphil 6y ago
    Presumably OP is American and does business with American websites 99.9% of the time.
- XCSme 6y ago
  > The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a “.com” What about ".net"? It's a pretty old, established domain with many large companies using it (themeforest.net, cpanel.net, php.net, ovh.net, doubleclick.net) Also ".io" usually hosts legit internet businesses.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  > The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a “.com” Ha. Do you give these friends other advice of the same calibre? I wonder what they think of you. "If you've got a choice of brands, you can't go wrong with Trump, it's a sign of quality" "The smaller the house, the bigger the dog you want, if you've got a tiny apartment buy a Great Dane or a Newfoundland, that way it's cosy" "There's no such thing as too much salt. When cooking don't bother tasting it, just add twice as much as you think you need"
saagarjha 6y ago
Interestingly, I recently saw a couple a couple of google.* domains available on Google Domains, including some reasonable-sounding ones: IIRC, google.tech (edit: google.page), google.business, and google.camp. Tried to purchase them but they instantly became unavailable the moment I tried to do so. The cynic in me thinks that Google has a special check for those and renews it themselves if someone tries… More generally, however: all these TLDs are kind of stupid, and trying to make sure you own every single TLD for your business is similar to a protection racket where you have to pay just so something bad doesn't happen to you. Perhaps we should stop trying to make a billion of them.
- dheera 6y ago
  Even better yet, it would be interesting if we just abandoned TLDs. There is no reason why http://google/ http://google/ can't work, really, with a bunch of infrastructure changes.
  - ngold 6y ago
    With the super shady sale of .org it may be time to consider who these people are selling essentially nothing.
  - hoppla 6y ago
    DNS suffix, to name one.
  - p4bl0 6y ago
    I remember seeing a NIC that did this with their TLD. But I can't remember which one :/. I would love if someone finds it.
    - adamtulinius 6y ago
      I think it's pretty common. Our national NIC does it: http://dk http://dk redirects to their website.
      - 6y ago
gridlockd 6y ago
"Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? For that kind of money, I think ICANN, the registries and registrar sites have a massive responsibility to ensure that this never happens." No they don't. The same problem exists with subdomains, for example some users may visit "netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com" and not notice the issue. Meanwhile, using a weird TLD can raise suspicion even for legitimate sites. Get a dot com.
- Volundr 6y ago
  netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com isn't really the same though. If I own netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, I can create facebook.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, google.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, etc simply by creating new DNS records. No one but myself is involved, or even know they exist (unless I put links to them somewhere public). On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations.
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    Let me explain. The problem is that somebody malicious might impersonate another company through a domain name. So they send people emails with URLs like "netflix.user-support.com" where "user-support.com" is owned by the malicious actor. This is extremely common. I honestly don't see any other problem. How else would you get people to visit "netflix.soy", if not by the same mechanism? It doesn't matter who controls which part of the domain, users are either going to notice the odd parts of the domain, or they are not. The fact that one is a TLD and the other isn't doesn't really make a difference, at least for uncommon TLDs. > On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations. Yes, but that wouldn't do anything to solve the problem. It would only make things more expensive. I honestly don't see the issue with anybody owning "netflix.soy" unless they're malicious, but in that case owning "netflix.anything-else.com" would be just as bad, if not worse. Since we can't really prevent the latter case, preventing the former case is moot.
smitop 6y ago
If these companies notice, they can file a UDRP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Resolution_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Re...) request, on the basis that the domains infringe their trademarks, and were registered and used in "bad faith".
- gruez 6y ago
  >and were registered and used in "bad faith". How were they registered in bad faith? He's not extorting money from netfilx, nor is he trying to deceive people into thinking he's neflix.
  - DangitBobby 6y ago
    What's he trying to do with it?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    UDRP typically rules in favor of the holder of the unambiguous trademark in these kinds of cases. As an example, "Exxon Mobil" refers unambiguously to a single entity only, and has no other possible uses, so anyone registering exxonmobil.{anything} would lose if the company came after them. No one else has any right to that trademark, and ICANN enforces trademark rights on domains. If the trademark already existed when you bought the domain, and especially if it's widely used and ambiguous, you're gonna lose that domain if the company comes after you. Contrast this with the case of, e.g., McDonald, which is a widely used surname that predates the existence of the trademark. So long as you specifically aren't trying to cause confusion with the McDonalds restaurant trademark, you can use "mcdonalds" in a domain name.
    - 6y ago
amelius 6y ago
A Google domain name is lying on the ground. An IT guy walks past it. A friend asks: "Didn't you see the Google domain name there?" The IT guy replies: "I thought I saw something, but I must've imagined it. If there had been a Google domain on the ground, someone would've picked it up."
- gpanders 6y ago
  For anyone unfamiliar, this is a clever riff on a classic economics joke about the Efficient Market Hypothesis [1]. "Two economists are walking down the street and one of them notices what appears to be a $20 bill (or a $100 bill—the monetary amounts vary) on the sidewalk. “It’s not a real $20 bill,” the other economist declares. “If it were a real $20 bill, someone would have picked it up off the sidewalk already.” [1]: https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_it_were_a_real_20_bill/ https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_...
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    Except the $20 bill in this case is a $-10 bill (or whatever the domain name costs), as there is no profit to be made by registering a top company's trademark as a domain name.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Yup. It's more like lots of people were walking along and saw exactly what it was, and knew better than to touch it.
    - aaronharnly 6y ago
      Ha exactly — like a briefcase with $1million on the sidewalk. No way I’m touching that!
      - BolexNOLA 6y ago
        I too don’t want Javier Bardem hunting me down.
cooper12 6y ago
The whole framework arounds TLDs is very strange to me. One one hand, opening up all these gTLDs was supposed to alleviate problems with domain parking and name clashes (e.g. you could disambiguate your .blog from a .pizza restaurant). But all this did was shift the parking to other domains, some of which are ludicrously overpriced (anyone remember the .io hype?) Secondly, regardless of where your site is hosted, you're also bound by the registrar's laws/restrictions (especially for ccTLDs), which doesn't make sense for something that is purely a routing mechanism that translates a name to an IP. It'd be fine if domain names were plentiful, but domain hacks[0] also make people use TLDs without regard to considering their territory or any implications. The whole .org fiasco only proved further that this model with ICANN and for-profit registrars isn't tenable and a horrible fit for an open distributed internet. All these perverse incentives and political fuckery should not exist for something that is an essential part of a worldwide utility. I'd love if HNers could share any promising alternatives to our current DNS system. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack
symlinkk 6y ago
Fuck ICANN for pimping out the internet to make a quick buck. We need to replace them with an organization that is truly neutral and not for profit.
- moonchild 6y ago
  https://www.opennic.org/ https://www.opennic.org/
bobbiechen 6y ago
I was just talking to a friend yesterday about "domain hacks" (where you spell some word using the TLD) in the context of country-code TLDs. Those raise some interesting issues for political reasons [1, 2]. For the newer TLDs like .soy, .pizza, .restaurant, etc. I really can't imagine that these would be adopted quickly. Even to me, these are barely recognized as URLs at all. And the possibility for domain name confusion really skyrockets, as demonstrated by the submission. [1] https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-ly/ https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-ly/ [2] https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-level-domain/#1-the-chagossians-do-not-benefit-from-the-io-tld https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-...
qwertox 6y ago
> google.com in Hebrew! And I could actually buy it. It bloody worked. In a couple of weeks the follow-up "Google cancelled my Gmail account and won't tell me why"
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bioipbiop 6y ago
  Was driving to my local park when Android Auto directed me down a dark alley whereupon I was beaten by some hired goons.
stepanhruda 6y ago
> large sum of money No, they will file a dispute and get them at registration cost, because they own the trademark.
- popotamonga 6y ago
  Not always, i had for a few years the domain name of a top 10 website we all know, with a TLD for my country (.pt). I just kept it and did nothing with it and one day got a €30k offer.
CydeWeys 6y ago
Registering unambiguous trademark domains falls under the category of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes".
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  Could anything worse than losing out on the registration fees ever actually happen?
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Yes. You might have to deal with the hassle and expense of being sued. There's all downside and no upside to playing this particular stupid game.
    - Volundr 6y ago
      I mean technically, maybe, but it's extremely unlikely that they'd sue without sending a C&D first. And given the lack of damage even if they did it'd likely get dismissed quickly with him just giving up the domain. But... INAL and this is not legal advice.
      - CydeWeys 6y ago
        The biggest trouble people get themselves into with this kind of thing is if they, upon being contacted by the company, ask for money instead of immediately offering to transfer the domain to them free of charge. At that point it's trademark cybersquatting and they have your own words in the email as proof. Speaking from personal experience here: being on the end of any kind of notice with the threat of legal force, even if it's not a lawsuit yet, is the kind of stress you just don't need in your life.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    If you actually caused say, reputational damage, you could be stuck with a lawsuit for more than just turning over the domain.
david-cako 6y ago
Haha, I love the drawings.
Giorgi 6y ago
Fun article, however: ".coms are slowly becoming less relevant" no they don't. They are becoming more relevant if anything.
DangerousPie 6y ago
I don't really agree with the premise of this post. Why should Netflix or Google have to buy a domain for every stupid gTLD that someone paid a few $100k to create? The author makes it sound like that's somehow an oversight on their part. If anything, it's sad that they ended up having to own so many gTLDs just to prevent abuse.
- ryanwaggoner 6y ago
  I think that’s what he’s saying: that this system of hundreds of TLDs means that companies can easily miss one and that becomes a vector for phishing, etc. It sounded like he was blaming ICANN, not Netflix or Google.
ipsum2 6y ago
The netflix.soy image is fantastic.
fortran77 6y ago
I used to work for a Big Media Company. They used to scramble to by BigMediaCompany.<new tld> whenever there was a new tld. Then one day they stopped. The legal department decided that if someone were to buy it and use it in a way that infringed on their trademark, it would be cheaper/easier to sue or file an injunction. For a while it was an extortion game. A new .tld like ".mobi" or ".music" would start, and they'd offer the names to fortune 500 trademark holders for $$$$$.
half-kh-hacker 6y ago
I own 인스타그램.닷컴, and (actually!) use it to share photos with my Korean friends. But, uhh, I would certainly not decline if Facebook were to try to purchase it to make it reroute to Instagram.
- cmauniada 6y ago
  I really like the landing page. heh.
fareesh 6y ago
I wonder if there is any SEO magic to having those domains. Might be worthwhile to test it out?
dopylitty 6y ago
There's a terrible enterprise security product that can be configured by IT to quasi-MITM your company web traffic. Instead of relying on enterprises pushing their own trusted root certs and MITMing the whole session this terrible product redirects all traffic to (and I'm not kidding here) urls like "www.terriblesecuritycompanyname.com/www.originalurl.com" when the user accesses www.originalurl.com. So this "enterprise security" company encourages end users to put information such as passwords into www.terriblesecuritycompanyname.com/owa.office365.com for example. Of course everyone has SSO enabled for Office 365 but everyone is also used to SSO sometimes breaking and falling back to forms based auth so people have no issue typing their passwords into any page that looks somewhat legit as long as the URL is close to what they expect and has a little lock next to it. Anyway www.turriblesecuritycompanyname.com is available and I'm waiting for someone nefarious to purchase it and start sending phishing emails with links to www.turriblesecuritycompany.com/owa.office365.com embedded in them.
- jonahx 6y ago
  > redirects all traffic to (and I'm not kidding here) urls like "www.terriblesecuritycompanyname.com/www.originalurl.com" when the user accesses www.originalurl.com. What is the theoretical security feature they are selling by doing this?
  - snazz 6y ago
    The ability to block malware and phishing domains, insight to IT people about what sites are being visited, content filtering, etc. While most of this should be implemented in another way (like maybe a mandatory browser extension?), MITM is still the standard approach for many companies.
- ganstyles 6y ago
  It depends on which ethical framework you subscribe to, but if I were in your shoes using my ethical framework, it seems like the small cost to me to purchasing an available domain (making the assumption here it's a standard buy and it's not one of those "make an offer for $10k" domains...) to mitigate a lot of potential hurt to other people would make me lean toward just purchasing the domain myself, or at least making the correct people aware. An equally valid counterexample would be a framework where you didn't cause the harm, so you have no obligation to intervene.
nicoburns 6y ago
apple.beer is actually a pretty good domain name for a cider company. Not technically accurate of course, but pretty good from a marketing perspective.
TimTheTinker 6y ago
> Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? If I were a blackhat with money, I'd register the ".con" TLD. ... Sure hoping a whitehat gets it first.
- lstamour 6y ago
  At least it would be self-descriptive! :D
  - TimTheTinker 6y ago
    Another self-descriptive one would be .orc
- nkozyra 6y ago
  But it's not like a self service portal, it goes through review and would probably be rejected for obvious reasons. There are guidelines provided by icann http://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/comments-en.htm http://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/comments-en.htm
bambax 6y ago
> Truthully, I think its pretty bad that I was able to do this. It is not. The explosion of TLDs is bad. It's simply a racket. But, Google supported it. So if they happen to suffer some of the consequences... so be it.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Explosions of TLDs is bad!? Why?. It got rid of impossible to buy good sounding and short names, largely massive multi million dollar companies holding onto them. Explosions of TLDs literally has absolutely no downsides besides the security and phishing implications. It just wiped out the domain mafias and replaced it with a massive competitive marketplace.
  - echelon 6y ago
    Many of the gTLDs charge exorbitant yearly fees for "premium" domains as a means of recouping costs. I pay $300/yr for {myFirstName}.dev. It's extortion, and I might drop it. With many of the common domain suffixes now becoming TLDs, branding seems much more difficult since you have to buy multiple domains. Is it audiotech.com? audio.tech? tech.audio? Who knows. I don't think that I would call this better. My opinion is that Google wants to erode the open web and is using gTLD proliferation to make it confusing to consumers. Instead of remembering a URL, just Google for it.
    - fermienrico 6y ago
      I think it’s the opposite: if the market can bear premium prices and exorbitant fees, I’m fine with that. There is nothing asymmetric about it. Your company wants to sell $4000 purses? Go for it as far as you can find buyers. Louie Vuitton has. Luxury products are not exploitation.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      > I pay $300/yr for {myFirstName}.dev. It's extortion, and I might drop it. From where? Google? I just paid $12/yr for a .dev domain on Google Domains.
Multiplayer 6y ago
Does anyone aggregate access to all 1500 TLD's? Is there a guide available on which combination of registrars to use to query them all?
- Ayesh 6y ago
  Not all registries participate in the SRS registry protocol. Some of the lesser known ccTLDs must be registered by the individual authorities. It's not accurate to run a DNS query to determine whether the domain is available because one can own the domain, but decide not to set any DNS records.
  - somehnguy 6y ago
    Wouldn't non-existent domains just return NXDOMAIN?
    - Ayesh 6y ago
      Yes, but so do registered domains without DNS records.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Run WHOIS at scale and store the results into a DB. gTLD operators are required to provide WHOIS services, and WHOIS tells you whether any given domain is registered or not. There are companies that will happily sell you this data in a more usable format.
rajacombinator 6y ago
Those domains can easily be seized by the respective companies, which is a bigger problem imo.
jamieweb 6y ago
A somewhat relevant project of mine, where you can test how good you are at spotting these sort of domains: https://www.jamieweb.net/apps/lookalike-domains-test/ https://www.jamieweb.net/apps/lookalike-domains-test/
brianswichkow 6y ago
Welcome the the club. These are my domains https://mythos.one/brianswichkow?q=my_domains https://mythos.one/brianswichkow?q=my_domains
spondyl 6y ago
One of my favourite shortcut domains is http://aws.moe http://aws.moe
krick 6y ago
> I actually paid for google.gi (gi for Gibraltar), only to get this email a few hours later They did refund you, I hope?
zelly 6y ago
If they wanted to, they could take it from you because they own the trademark.
three_seagrass 6y ago
>Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? For that kind of money, I think ICANN, the registries and registrar sites have a massive responsibility to ensure that this never happens. Which is why ICANN hasn't approved any new TLDs in years, and has a set of standards for registries and registrars to follow less they lose their licensing.
- Counterfactual 6y ago
  Meanwhile, you can use https://www.namebase.io/ https://www.namebase.io/ instead. (think GoDaddy + Coinbase, built on the Handshake protocol) [https://handshake.org/ https://handshake.org/]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ck2 6y ago
They can UDRP it from you in less than a week, but if you were trying to waste time (and money) guess there are worse things to do.
manifest23 6y ago
This is the first time in a couple years that I have seen a reference to myself while reading an article. Thanks for the surprise! > No. They're welcome to have them back anytime they want. They could probably do it pretty forcibly if I refused to budge too (see Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft).
- coopierez 6y ago
  Do you still have that Xbox?
jb775 6y ago
I attempted to do this in the past on namecheap for an Amazon domain based out of some obscure African country (domain was showing as available). The domain order failed, presumably due to reasons similar to authors Gibraltar example. I messaged namecheap live-chat support to ask why, and they basically said "we don't know why it failed, but even if it went through, if Amazon asks us to transfer ownership to them we'd go ahead and revoke your ownership"...which is BS kowtowing in my opinion.
pselbert 6y ago
There is a service ran by ICANN called the “trademark clearlinghouse”. It is a subscription service that trademark owners, e.g. Netflix, can use to be notified of any domain that is registered and may infringe on their trademark. It even allows for wildcard patterns in ongoing searches. How do I know this? Because i received a takedown notice regarding a domain I run to sell background job licenses (oban.dev). The business is entirely unrelated, but the clearinghouse alerting system still brought it to the trademark holder’s attention.
- jdsully 6y ago
  Was it from the Oban distillery? Trademark issues aside they make a great whisky.
  - pselbert 6y ago
    Indeed. It was from their parent company. I’m a fan of their scotch, so it’s a little bitter sweet.
chaps 6y ago
If anybody wants it, I compiled a list of Alexa's top 50 domains and their available TLDs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VaGA8344-13eGn9D1LAjC_xKXrLhAbzQZ2hCh3Agr9w/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VaGA8344-13eGn9D1LAj... Now with price!
ancarda 6y ago
Somewhat off-topic, tinyprojects.dev and netflix.soy both have DNSSEC, is this required for some of the newer TLDs (like how .dev has mandatory HTTPS preloading)? Just it's rare to see it in the wild.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  Nope. As for .dev, Google controls the tld and the HSTS list baked into Chrome.
intpbro 6y ago
“I was just a soy boy”
ieScHbOR 6y ago
I bought space.sex
wrycoder 6y ago
One winter day, my wife looked down the coast and noticed that the bell buoy that marked the entrance to Plum Island Sound was lying on the beach. This thing is enormous, about 30 ft long. We drove down and walked around it with some other curious people. Took some pictures. She thought that we ought to report it. I told her that many people would already have done that. A couple of days went by and there didn’t seem to be any action. So we finally called the Coast Guard. They said, “Wow, we didn’t know that, thanks very much!”
- sneak 6y ago
  The validity of this effect has been called into question, but for a long time, this was the "standard response" to situations like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
  - BolexNOLA 6y ago
    Yeah the Kitty Genovese (sp) story is an example right? Wasn’t that proven to be a myth or something?
    - flamtap 6y ago
      Yes, the popular story about the 30-odd bystanders was broadly unfounded. In fact there were two calls to the police.
    - DagAgren 6y ago
      Yes, just like Stockholm Syndrome, it was made up to cover up a bungled police response. Neither one is a real thing.
      - ohashi 6y ago
        Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#FBI_Law_Enforcement_Bulletin_(1999) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#FBI_Law_Enf... says it's rare but FBI seems to be saying it is a real thing.
snowwrestler 6y ago
These sorts of “I found a name collision” blog posts often use the possibility of phishing to justify their implication of alarm. I don’t really buy it, though. I mean, I know that phishing is a major problem, but I don’t buy that this discovery makes the problem of phishing any worse. There are an infinite number of ways to configure URLs to pass a glance test, which is the most you’ll get from most users.
sideproject 6y ago
Yesterday I was doing a search and found weblogs.app (remember them?) I thought - wow, I'll grab it. Then I thought, nah - who uses weblogs? But it's nice to find domains with easy-to-remember names. I've bought one too many domains in my life, which I've been moving to my new tool - https://newsy.co https://newsy.co
elliottinvent 6y ago
There have been some efforts to prevent this kind of thing like the Domains Protected Marks List [1] which allows a company to block a second level domain registration which is an exact or partial match of their registered trademark, at a cost. In this case, a company can block their trademark being registered in 241 TLDs administered by Donuts, Inc. Other registries have equivalents but it only really works for large TLD holders (like Donuts, Minds+Machines etc) where you can block registrations on dozens or hundreds of TLDs. 1. https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection
muliwuli 6y ago
did the same thing 2 years ago, scanned for available domains of known companies, bought pornhub.it and made redirect to actual pornhub.com to my surprise, there were around 200 clicks per day, mostly coming from italy of course. i didn't want to do anything malicious with it, so in the end i didn't extend. domain was snatched by someone else as soon as it expired.
Bayart 6y ago
As an aside, having your entire blog italicized might look « better » on the eye but it's incredibly laborious to read.
Jhsto 6y ago
The weird-looking symbols also go the other way around: if your language uses umlauts, you can score very good .com domains. For example, I have the equivalents to email.org, entrepreneur.com, and hacks.com in my native language. Some of these domains receive so much type-in traffic that they pay themselves in ad revenue each year.
catsdanxe 6y ago
I tried to register a google gtld before but namecheap wouldn't let me. I believe they have some phishing blacklist that they enforce.
einpoklum 6y ago
Soylent flix is people!
musicale 6y ago
> There was one left: netflix.soy (if you didn't click the link, soy means "I am" in Spanish) apparently netflix.tofu was already taken (tofu is the infinitive form of the verb "fu" in TLDish)
drinkcocacola 6y ago
My mom is unable to pronounce "Netflix" correctly (Spanish is her mother language), she always said something like "nesflis". So yeah, years ago I bought nesflis.com for her.

410 points by stokesyio 6y ago

unbox.com

I'm from Israel, and this is the first time I've heard about the .קום tld. I've never seen any website that uses it. The author mentioned that creating a new tld costs a minimum of 185k USD. This makes me wonder who would pay this kind of money for this completely useless tld.

manquer 6y ago
Perhaps government organizations ? Also not all TLD's cost 185k to create, ccTLD were given free to each country to mange for example, similarly language specific common gTLD may have had special provisions for some countries to manage perhaps.
esnard 6y ago
The applicant was actually Verisign. [0][1] [0]: https://icannwiki.org/.%D7%A7%D7%95%D6%B9%D7%9D https://icannwiki.org/.%D7%A7%D7%95%D6%B9%D7%9D [1]: https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationdetails/1138 https://gtldresult.icann.org/applicationstatus/applicationde...
tialaramex 6y ago
If they managed it for only $185k I'm impressed, maybe if you did several on the same infrastructure. It's a gold mine offering. There was a long queue of people quite sure that .binglebongle would be the new .com. Sometimes it was a marginally less stupid plan, like we can be a regional alternative - and Russia even has one that's actually making money - it isn't taking over the world, but it's Cyrillic and was never intended to. But most gold mines never produce gold, they just suck up people's money and dreams and spit out the bones. The obscure brand TLDs are funnier. Not brands you've heard of like google, brands who are their own tiny corner of the non-IT world and figured they ought to have a TLD, so now they do to the tune of maybe six figures a year. The Kerry Group for example owns several, as do some US financial outfits. Why? Because nobody who knew this was a stupid idea was in the room when it got decided.
- snazz 6y ago
  > The obscure brand TLDs are funnier. Not brands you've heard of like google, brands who are their own tiny corner of the non-IT world and figured they ought to have a TLD, so now they do to the tune of maybe six figures a year. While everyone here has certainly heard of Softbank, I find it amusing that they have their own TLD too (with sites like https://group.softbank/ https://group.softbank/).
  - r3dk1ng 6y ago
    > everyone here has certainly heard of softbank not until your comment had I heard of "softbank"
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  I'm pretty pissed off that some TLDs went to the exclusive use of corporations. I really wanted a domain with .fox but its taken by the media corporation which doesn't use it for anything.
- foepys 6y ago
  Afaik most of the new TLDs are hosted by a few specialized ISPs that have enough DNS infrastructure to comply with ICANN's standards. Apart from tech companies, nobody wants to maintain DNS servers.
ars 6y ago
.קום is just .com transliterated into Hebrew letters, right? That actually seems quite useful, if people are typing not realizing the keyboard is set to Hebrew.
- vinay427 6y ago
  That would only work if the Hebrew keyboard layout they were using had this mapping of letters. Most language layouts for non-Roman scripts don't optimize for phonetically approximating the corresponding English letters (presumably on a QWERTY layout). It appears that they don't match to the TLD letters here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard
  - yarinr 6y ago
    That's correct. Typing 'com' with the keyboard set to Hebrew results in 'בםצ' (which is not even pronounceable) not 'קום'. The Hebrew keyboard layout has no relation to QWERTY in terms of phonetics.
    - ars 6y ago
      There is a Hebrew phonetic keyboard layout: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard#Hebrew_on_standard_Latin-based_keyboards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard#Hebrew_on_stan... it's built in on Android, windows, Linux, etc. Usually used by non-native Hebrew speakers. > 'בםצ' (which is not even pronounceable) Sounds like a new snack from Osem :)
- creatornator 6y ago
  If the keyboard was set to Hebrew then the subdomain would also be spelled out in the wrong characters, so the URL would be nonsense or go to a different site. Additionally, as people mentioned, the standard Hebrew layout is incompatible with QUERTY (I am a Hebrew speaker and have never heard of the phonetic Hebrew layout you linked to). Also when you type the URL the characters would be spelled out in the oppose right-to-left direction as .com.
Ayesh 6y ago
Many national TLD holders (ccTLDs) control a TLD in local language. .lk registry, for example, also controls .ලංකා and .இலங்கை (sounding "Lanka" "Ilangei" in Sinhalese and Tamil, the two other official languages in Sri Lanka), and they do not cost $185K. In fact, ccTLDs don't cost any money as far as I'm aware. DNS servers are run by the government funding but there is no cost to pay to ICANN.

waiseristy 6y ago

Strange that Netflix hasn't drunk the Registry cool-aid and bought their "all-encompassing" TLD package which registers their trademark across all TLD's for a special price. On top of that, I'm doubly surprised Google hasn't taken action and already put this domain on hold in preemption of selling Netflix one of these deals.

gruez 6y ago
>their "all-encompassing" TLD package which registers their trademark across all TLD's for a special price That's a thing? What's preventing a predatory registry from being a holdout and demanding exorbitant prices?
- waiseristy 6y ago
  That is a thing for at least one Registry that I know of (and worked for), I don't know if Google does the same, but I don't believe there is anything stopping them (please correct me if I'm wrong).
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Google does not do the same.
    - waiseristy 6y ago
      Which makes me doubly surprised! It was my impression that this product offering was quite lucrative.
- elliottinvent 6y ago
  Yeah: Domains Protected Marks List, e.g Donuts: https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection afaik there's nothing that requires registries to use a DPML and it doesn't really make sense unless they manage lots of TLDs, since the cost of adding your trademark to the DPML is usually a lot more than the cost of a single registration.

otterley 6y ago

26 years ago: https://www.wired.com/1994/10/mcdonalds/ https://www.wired.com/1994/10/mcdonalds/

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

gTLDs are nothing but a money play by ICANN and registrars and really make the internet a (slightly) more confusing and dangerous place. Within epsilon, all the money spent by companies on gTLDs is dead weight with no payoff in increased usability but only to prevent some naive user from being tricked. The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a “.com”

interestica 6y ago
> The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a “.com” You can't actually mean that? Country TLD? (Eg .CA) I'm actually pretty impressed by how the .CA registry (CIRA) has branded itself in Canada. There's even a bit more legitimacy for sites because it's clear they're operating in Canada (or have at least made an effort for Canadian representation).
- Marsymars 6y ago
  Yeah, my default behaviour for any international company is to navigate to companyname.ca. Even if they don't use TLDs for their regional websites, it typically redirects to their Canadian site. (e.g. apple.ca redirects to apple.com/ca, microsoft.ca redirects to microsoft.com/en-ca, ikea.ca redirects to ikea.com/ca/en, etc.)
- bscphil 6y ago
  Presumably OP is American and does business with American websites 99.9% of the time.
XCSme 6y ago
> The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a “.com” What about ".net"? It's a pretty old, established domain with many large companies using it (themeforest.net, cpanel.net, php.net, ovh.net, doubleclick.net) Also ".io" usually hosts legit internet businesses.
tialaramex 6y ago
> The advice I give my non-techie friends is avoid going to any business website that is not a “.com” Ha. Do you give these friends other advice of the same calibre? I wonder what they think of you. "If you've got a choice of brands, you can't go wrong with Trump, it's a sign of quality" "The smaller the house, the bigger the dog you want, if you've got a tiny apartment buy a Great Dane or a Newfoundland, that way it's cosy" "There's no such thing as too much salt. When cooking don't bother tasting it, just add twice as much as you think you need"

saagarjha 6y ago

Interestingly, I recently saw a couple a couple of google.* domains available on Google Domains, including some reasonable-sounding ones: IIRC, google.tech (edit: google.page), google.business, and google.camp. Tried to purchase them but they instantly became unavailable the moment I tried to do so. The cynic in me thinks that Google has a special check for those and renews it themselves if someone tries… More generally, however: all these TLDs are kind of stupid, and trying to make sure you own every single TLD for your business is similar to a protection racket where you have to pay just so something bad doesn't happen to you. Perhaps we should stop trying to make a billion of them.

dheera 6y ago
Even better yet, it would be interesting if we just abandoned TLDs. There is no reason why http://google/ http://google/ can't work, really, with a bunch of infrastructure changes.
- ngold 6y ago
  With the super shady sale of .org it may be time to consider who these people are selling essentially nothing.
- hoppla 6y ago
  DNS suffix, to name one.
- p4bl0 6y ago
  I remember seeing a NIC that did this with their TLD. But I can't remember which one :/. I would love if someone finds it.
  - adamtulinius 6y ago
    I think it's pretty common. Our national NIC does it: http://dk http://dk redirects to their website.
    - 6y ago

gridlockd 6y ago

"Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? For that kind of money, I think ICANN, the registries and registrar sites have a massive responsibility to ensure that this never happens." No they don't. The same problem exists with subdomains, for example some users may visit "netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com" and not notice the issue. Meanwhile, using a weird TLD can raise suspicion even for legitimate sites. Get a dot com.

Volundr 6y ago
netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com isn't really the same though. If I own netflix.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, I can create facebook.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, google.trustworthy-sounding-domain.com, etc simply by creating new DNS records. No one but myself is involved, or even know they exist (unless I put links to them somewhere public). On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  Let me explain. The problem is that somebody malicious might impersonate another company through a domain name. So they send people emails with URLs like "netflix.user-support.com" where "user-support.com" is owned by the malicious actor. This is extremely common. I honestly don't see any other problem. How else would you get people to visit "netflix.soy", if not by the same mechanism? It doesn't matter who controls which part of the domain, users are either going to notice the odd parts of the domain, or they are not. The fact that one is a TLD and the other isn't doesn't really make a difference, at least for uncommon TLDs. > On the other hand, someone owns and operates .soy, and has to actually approve new domains getting created. Part of that process could be a step that automatically screens for scammy looking registrations. Yes, but that wouldn't do anything to solve the problem. It would only make things more expensive. I honestly don't see the issue with anybody owning "netflix.soy" unless they're malicious, but in that case owning "netflix.anything-else.com" would be just as bad, if not worse. Since we can't really prevent the latter case, preventing the former case is moot.

smitop 6y ago

If these companies notice, they can file a UDRP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Resolution_Policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-Re...) request, on the basis that the domains infringe their trademarks, and were registered and used in "bad faith".

gruez 6y ago
>and were registered and used in "bad faith". How were they registered in bad faith? He's not extorting money from netfilx, nor is he trying to deceive people into thinking he's neflix.
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  What's he trying to do with it?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  UDRP typically rules in favor of the holder of the unambiguous trademark in these kinds of cases. As an example, "Exxon Mobil" refers unambiguously to a single entity only, and has no other possible uses, so anyone registering exxonmobil.{anything} would lose if the company came after them. No one else has any right to that trademark, and ICANN enforces trademark rights on domains. If the trademark already existed when you bought the domain, and especially if it's widely used and ambiguous, you're gonna lose that domain if the company comes after you. Contrast this with the case of, e.g., McDonald, which is a widely used surname that predates the existence of the trademark. So long as you specifically aren't trying to cause confusion with the McDonalds restaurant trademark, you can use "mcdonalds" in a domain name.
  - 6y ago

amelius 6y ago

A Google domain name is lying on the ground. An IT guy walks past it. A friend asks: "Didn't you see the Google domain name there?" The IT guy replies: "I thought I saw something, but I must've imagined it. If there had been a Google domain on the ground, someone would've picked it up."

gpanders 6y ago
For anyone unfamiliar, this is a clever riff on a classic economics joke about the Efficient Market Hypothesis [1]. "Two economists are walking down the street and one of them notices what appears to be a $20 bill (or a $100 bill—the monetary amounts vary) on the sidewalk. “It’s not a real $20 bill,” the other economist declares. “If it were a real $20 bill, someone would have picked it up off the sidewalk already.” [1]: https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_it_were_a_real_20_bill/ https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/if_...
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Except the $20 bill in this case is a $-10 bill (or whatever the domain name costs), as there is no profit to be made by registering a top company's trademark as a domain name.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Yup. It's more like lots of people were walking along and saw exactly what it was, and knew better than to touch it.
  - aaronharnly 6y ago
    Ha exactly — like a briefcase with $1million on the sidewalk. No way I’m touching that!
    - BolexNOLA 6y ago
      I too don’t want Javier Bardem hunting me down.

cooper12 6y ago

The whole framework arounds TLDs is very strange to me. One one hand, opening up all these gTLDs was supposed to alleviate problems with domain parking and name clashes (e.g. you could disambiguate your .blog from a .pizza restaurant). But all this did was shift the parking to other domains, some of which are ludicrously overpriced (anyone remember the .io hype?) Secondly, regardless of where your site is hosted, you're also bound by the registrar's laws/restrictions (especially for ccTLDs), which doesn't make sense for something that is purely a routing mechanism that translates a name to an IP. It'd be fine if domain names were plentiful, but domain hacks[0] also make people use TLDs without regard to considering their territory or any implications. The whole .org fiasco only proved further that this model with ICANN and for-profit registrars isn't tenable and a horrible fit for an open distributed internet. All these perverse incentives and political fuckery should not exist for something that is an essential part of a worldwide utility. I'd love if HNers could share any promising alternatives to our current DNS system. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack

symlinkk 6y ago

Fuck ICANN for pimping out the internet to make a quick buck. We need to replace them with an organization that is truly neutral and not for profit.

moonchild 6y ago
https://www.opennic.org/ https://www.opennic.org/

bobbiechen 6y ago

I was just talking to a friend yesterday about "domain hacks" (where you spell some word using the TLD) in the context of country-code TLDs. Those raise some interesting issues for political reasons [1, 2]. For the newer TLDs like .soy, .pizza, .restaurant, etc. I really can't imagine that these would be adopted quickly. Even to me, these are barely recognized as URLs at all. And the possibility for domain name confusion really skyrockets, as demonstrated by the submission. [1] https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-ly/ https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-ly/ [2] https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-level-domain/#1-the-chagossians-do-not-benefit-from-the-io-tld https://www.thewebmaster.com/hosting/2016/feb/27/io-tld-top-...

qwertox 6y ago

> google.com in Hebrew! And I could actually buy it. It bloody worked. In a couple of weeks the follow-up "Google cancelled my Gmail account and won't tell me why"

deleted 6y ago
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bioipbiop 6y ago
Was driving to my local park when Android Auto directed me down a dark alley whereupon I was beaten by some hired goons.

stepanhruda 6y ago

> large sum of money No, they will file a dispute and get them at registration cost, because they own the trademark.

popotamonga 6y ago
Not always, i had for a few years the domain name of a top 10 website we all know, with a TLD for my country (.pt). I just kept it and did nothing with it and one day got a €30k offer.

CydeWeys 6y ago

Registering unambiguous trademark domains falls under the category of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes".

RandallBrown 6y ago
Could anything worse than losing out on the registration fees ever actually happen?
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  Yes. You might have to deal with the hassle and expense of being sued. There's all downside and no upside to playing this particular stupid game.
  - Volundr 6y ago
    I mean technically, maybe, but it's extremely unlikely that they'd sue without sending a C&D first. And given the lack of damage even if they did it'd likely get dismissed quickly with him just giving up the domain. But... INAL and this is not legal advice.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      The biggest trouble people get themselves into with this kind of thing is if they, upon being contacted by the company, ask for money instead of immediately offering to transfer the domain to them free of charge. At that point it's trademark cybersquatting and they have your own words in the email as proof. Speaking from personal experience here: being on the end of any kind of notice with the threat of legal force, even if it's not a lawsuit yet, is the kind of stress you just don't need in your life.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  If you actually caused say, reputational damage, you could be stuck with a lawsuit for more than just turning over the domain.

david-cako 6y ago

Haha, I love the drawings.

Giorgi 6y ago

Fun article, however: ".coms are slowly becoming less relevant" no they don't. They are becoming more relevant if anything.

DangerousPie 6y ago

I don't really agree with the premise of this post. Why should Netflix or Google have to buy a domain for every stupid gTLD that someone paid a few $100k to create? The author makes it sound like that's somehow an oversight on their part. If anything, it's sad that they ended up having to own so many gTLDs just to prevent abuse.

ryanwaggoner 6y ago
I think that’s what he’s saying: that this system of hundreds of TLDs means that companies can easily miss one and that becomes a vector for phishing, etc. It sounded like he was blaming ICANN, not Netflix or Google.

ipsum2 6y ago

The netflix.soy image is fantastic.

fortran77 6y ago

I used to work for a Big Media Company. They used to scramble to by BigMediaCompany.<new tld> whenever there was a new tld. Then one day they stopped. The legal department decided that if someone were to buy it and use it in a way that infringed on their trademark, it would be cheaper/easier to sue or file an injunction. For a while it was an extortion game. A new .tld like ".mobi" or ".music" would start, and they'd offer the names to fortune 500 trademark holders for $$$$$.

half-kh-hacker 6y ago

I own 인스타그램.닷컴, and (actually!) use it to share photos with my Korean friends. But, uhh, I would certainly not decline if Facebook were to try to purchase it to make it reroute to Instagram.

cmauniada 6y ago
I really like the landing page. heh.

fareesh 6y ago

I wonder if there is any SEO magic to having those domains. Might be worthwhile to test it out?

dopylitty 6y ago

There's a terrible enterprise security product that can be configured by IT to quasi-MITM your company web traffic. Instead of relying on enterprises pushing their own trusted root certs and MITMing the whole session this terrible product redirects all traffic to (and I'm not kidding here) urls like "www.terriblesecuritycompanyname.com/www.originalurl.com" when the user accesses www.originalurl.com. So this "enterprise security" company encourages end users to put information such as passwords into www.terriblesecuritycompanyname.com/owa.office365.com for example. Of course everyone has SSO enabled for Office 365 but everyone is also used to SSO sometimes breaking and falling back to forms based auth so people have no issue typing their passwords into any page that looks somewhat legit as long as the URL is close to what they expect and has a little lock next to it. Anyway www.turriblesecuritycompanyname.com is available and I'm waiting for someone nefarious to purchase it and start sending phishing emails with links to www.turriblesecuritycompany.com/owa.office365.com embedded in them.

jonahx 6y ago
> redirects all traffic to (and I'm not kidding here) urls like "www.terriblesecuritycompanyname.com/www.originalurl.com" when the user accesses www.originalurl.com. What is the theoretical security feature they are selling by doing this?
- snazz 6y ago
  The ability to block malware and phishing domains, insight to IT people about what sites are being visited, content filtering, etc. While most of this should be implemented in another way (like maybe a mandatory browser extension?), MITM is still the standard approach for many companies.
ganstyles 6y ago
It depends on which ethical framework you subscribe to, but if I were in your shoes using my ethical framework, it seems like the small cost to me to purchasing an available domain (making the assumption here it's a standard buy and it's not one of those "make an offer for $10k" domains...) to mitigate a lot of potential hurt to other people would make me lean toward just purchasing the domain myself, or at least making the correct people aware. An equally valid counterexample would be a framework where you didn't cause the harm, so you have no obligation to intervene.

nicoburns 6y ago

apple.beer is actually a pretty good domain name for a cider company. Not technically accurate of course, but pretty good from a marketing perspective.

TimTheTinker 6y ago

> Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? If I were a blackhat with money, I'd register the ".con" TLD. ... Sure hoping a whitehat gets it first.

lstamour 6y ago
At least it would be self-descriptive! :D
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  Another self-descriptive one would be .orc
nkozyra 6y ago
But it's not like a self service portal, it goes through review and would probably be rejected for obvious reasons. There are guidelines provided by icann http://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/comments-en.htm http://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/comments-en.htm

bambax 6y ago

> Truthully, I think its pretty bad that I was able to do this. It is not. The explosion of TLDs is bad. It's simply a racket. But, Google supported it. So if they happen to suffer some of the consequences... so be it.

fermienrico 6y ago
Explosions of TLDs is bad!? Why?. It got rid of impossible to buy good sounding and short names, largely massive multi million dollar companies holding onto them. Explosions of TLDs literally has absolutely no downsides besides the security and phishing implications. It just wiped out the domain mafias and replaced it with a massive competitive marketplace.
- echelon 6y ago
  Many of the gTLDs charge exorbitant yearly fees for "premium" domains as a means of recouping costs. I pay $300/yr for {myFirstName}.dev. It's extortion, and I might drop it. With many of the common domain suffixes now becoming TLDs, branding seems much more difficult since you have to buy multiple domains. Is it audiotech.com? audio.tech? tech.audio? Who knows. I don't think that I would call this better. My opinion is that Google wants to erode the open web and is using gTLD proliferation to make it confusing to consumers. Instead of remembering a URL, just Google for it.
  - fermienrico 6y ago
    I think it’s the opposite: if the market can bear premium prices and exorbitant fees, I’m fine with that. There is nothing asymmetric about it. Your company wants to sell $4000 purses? Go for it as far as you can find buyers. Louie Vuitton has. Luxury products are not exploitation.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    > I pay $300/yr for {myFirstName}.dev. It's extortion, and I might drop it. From where? Google? I just paid $12/yr for a .dev domain on Google Domains.

Multiplayer 6y ago

Does anyone aggregate access to all 1500 TLD's? Is there a guide available on which combination of registrars to use to query them all?

Ayesh 6y ago
Not all registries participate in the SRS registry protocol. Some of the lesser known ccTLDs must be registered by the individual authorities. It's not accurate to run a DNS query to determine whether the domain is available because one can own the domain, but decide not to set any DNS records.
- somehnguy 6y ago
  Wouldn't non-existent domains just return NXDOMAIN?
  - Ayesh 6y ago
    Yes, but so do registered domains without DNS records.
CydeWeys 6y ago
Run WHOIS at scale and store the results into a DB. gTLD operators are required to provide WHOIS services, and WHOIS tells you whether any given domain is registered or not. There are companies that will happily sell you this data in a more usable format.

rajacombinator 6y ago

Those domains can easily be seized by the respective companies, which is a bigger problem imo.

jamieweb 6y ago

A somewhat relevant project of mine, where you can test how good you are at spotting these sort of domains: https://www.jamieweb.net/apps/lookalike-domains-test/ https://www.jamieweb.net/apps/lookalike-domains-test/

brianswichkow 6y ago

Welcome the the club. These are my domains https://mythos.one/brianswichkow?q=my_domains https://mythos.one/brianswichkow?q=my_domains

spondyl 6y ago

One of my favourite shortcut domains is http://aws.moe http://aws.moe

krick 6y ago

> I actually paid for google.gi (gi for Gibraltar), only to get this email a few hours later They did refund you, I hope?

zelly 6y ago

If they wanted to, they could take it from you because they own the trademark.

three_seagrass 6y ago

>Did you know it costs a minimum of $185,000 to create your own domain name ending? For that kind of money, I think ICANN, the registries and registrar sites have a massive responsibility to ensure that this never happens. Which is why ICANN hasn't approved any new TLDs in years, and has a set of standards for registries and registrars to follow less they lose their licensing.

Counterfactual 6y ago
Meanwhile, you can use https://www.namebase.io/ https://www.namebase.io/ instead. (think GoDaddy + Coinbase, built on the Handshake protocol) [https://handshake.org/ https://handshake.org/]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ck2 6y ago

They can UDRP it from you in less than a week, but if you were trying to waste time (and money) guess there are worse things to do.

manifest23 6y ago

This is the first time in a couple years that I have seen a reference to myself while reading an article. Thanks for the surprise! > No. They're welcome to have them back anytime they want. They could probably do it pretty forcibly if I refused to budge too (see Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft).

coopierez 6y ago
Do you still have that Xbox?

jb775 6y ago

I attempted to do this in the past on namecheap for an Amazon domain based out of some obscure African country (domain was showing as available). The domain order failed, presumably due to reasons similar to authors Gibraltar example. I messaged namecheap live-chat support to ask why, and they basically said "we don't know why it failed, but even if it went through, if Amazon asks us to transfer ownership to them we'd go ahead and revoke your ownership"...which is BS kowtowing in my opinion.

pselbert 6y ago

There is a service ran by ICANN called the “trademark clearlinghouse”. It is a subscription service that trademark owners, e.g. Netflix, can use to be notified of any domain that is registered and may infringe on their trademark. It even allows for wildcard patterns in ongoing searches. How do I know this? Because i received a takedown notice regarding a domain I run to sell background job licenses (oban.dev). The business is entirely unrelated, but the clearinghouse alerting system still brought it to the trademark holder’s attention.

jdsully 6y ago
Was it from the Oban distillery? Trademark issues aside they make a great whisky.
- pselbert 6y ago
  Indeed. It was from their parent company. I’m a fan of their scotch, so it’s a little bitter sweet.

chaps 6y ago

If anybody wants it, I compiled a list of Alexa's top 50 domains and their available TLDs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VaGA8344-13eGn9D1LAjC_xKXrLhAbzQZ2hCh3Agr9w/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VaGA8344-13eGn9D1LAj... Now with price!

ancarda 6y ago

Somewhat off-topic, tinyprojects.dev and netflix.soy both have DNSSEC, is this required for some of the newer TLDs (like how .dev has mandatory HTTPS preloading)? Just it's rare to see it in the wild.

ComputerGuru 6y ago
Nope. As for .dev, Google controls the tld and the HSTS list baked into Chrome.

intpbro 6y ago

“I was just a soy boy”

ieScHbOR 6y ago

I bought space.sex

wrycoder 6y ago

One winter day, my wife looked down the coast and noticed that the bell buoy that marked the entrance to Plum Island Sound was lying on the beach. This thing is enormous, about 30 ft long. We drove down and walked around it with some other curious people. Took some pictures. She thought that we ought to report it. I told her that many people would already have done that. A couple of days went by and there didn’t seem to be any action. So we finally called the Coast Guard. They said, “Wow, we didn’t know that, thanks very much!”

sneak 6y ago
The validity of this effect has been called into question, but for a long time, this was the "standard response" to situations like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
- BolexNOLA 6y ago
  Yeah the Kitty Genovese (sp) story is an example right? Wasn’t that proven to be a myth or something?
  - flamtap 6y ago
    Yes, the popular story about the 30-odd bystanders was broadly unfounded. In fact there were two calls to the police.
  - DagAgren 6y ago
    Yes, just like Stockholm Syndrome, it was made up to cover up a bungled police response. Neither one is a real thing.
    - ohashi 6y ago
      Source? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#FBI_Law_Enforcement_Bulletin_(1999) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#FBI_Law_Enf... says it's rare but FBI seems to be saying it is a real thing.

snowwrestler 6y ago

These sorts of “I found a name collision” blog posts often use the possibility of phishing to justify their implication of alarm. I don’t really buy it, though. I mean, I know that phishing is a major problem, but I don’t buy that this discovery makes the problem of phishing any worse. There are an infinite number of ways to configure URLs to pass a glance test, which is the most you’ll get from most users.

sideproject 6y ago

Yesterday I was doing a search and found weblogs.app (remember them?) I thought - wow, I'll grab it. Then I thought, nah - who uses weblogs? But it's nice to find domains with easy-to-remember names. I've bought one too many domains in my life, which I've been moving to my new tool - https://newsy.co https://newsy.co

elliottinvent 6y ago

There have been some efforts to prevent this kind of thing like the Domains Protected Marks List [1] which allows a company to block a second level domain registration which is an exact or partial match of their registered trademark, at a cost. In this case, a company can block their trademark being registered in 241 TLDs administered by Donuts, Inc. Other registries have equivalents but it only really works for large TLD holders (like Donuts, Minds+Machines etc) where you can block registrations on dozens or hundreds of TLDs. 1. https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection https://donuts.domains/what-we-do/brand-protection

muliwuli 6y ago

did the same thing 2 years ago, scanned for available domains of known companies, bought pornhub.it and made redirect to actual pornhub.com to my surprise, there were around 200 clicks per day, mostly coming from italy of course. i didn't want to do anything malicious with it, so in the end i didn't extend. domain was snatched by someone else as soon as it expired.

Bayart 6y ago

As an aside, having your entire blog italicized might look « better » on the eye but it's incredibly laborious to read.

Jhsto 6y ago

The weird-looking symbols also go the other way around: if your language uses umlauts, you can score very good .com domains. For example, I have the equivalents to email.org, entrepreneur.com, and hacks.com in my native language. Some of these domains receive so much type-in traffic that they pay themselves in ad revenue each year.

catsdanxe 6y ago

I tried to register a google gtld before but namecheap wouldn't let me. I believe they have some phishing blacklist that they enforce.

einpoklum 6y ago

Soylent flix is people!

musicale 6y ago

> There was one left: netflix.soy (if you didn't click the link, soy means "I am" in Spanish) apparently netflix.tofu was already taken (tofu is the infinitive form of the verb "fu" in TLDish)

drinkcocacola 6y ago

My mom is unable to pronounce "Netflix" correctly (Spanish is her mother language), she always said something like "nesflis". So yeah, years ago I bought nesflis.com for her.