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Do you not think some of these domain extensions are providing value to people (like incorporating a "cool" domain name into branding like crisp.chat, frame.wor
by phgn 6y ago
Do you not think some of these domain extensions are providing value to people (like incorporating a "cool" domain name into branding like crisp.chat, frame.work or magic.link)? You don't have to use their TLDs.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoWhen did DNS stop being a system for identifying servers, and start being a system for owning words?
- bombcar 6y agoSometime around pets dot com, back in the late 90s.
- throwaway3699 6y agoPets.com is a bad example because nobody would name a traditional store "Pets". But a TLD like "Google.com" is clearly representing a brand and not just a particular set of servers.
- falcor84 6y agoWhy would there be a distinction? Names have always been about "owning" an identity. The Brothers Grimms' Rumpelstiltskin would be just one historical example of the power attached to knowing and using a name.
- bluejekyll 6y agoI find this question confusing, because it’s always been somewhat about brand and word ownership. Like `mit.edu` or `ibm.com`. DNS is quite literally all about names, it’s what the N stands for. Can you give an example where name ownership was unimportant to folks using DNS?
- wizzwizz4 6y agoMIT and IBM are names they already had. But nobody owned edu. or com. – so why does somebody own space.? Why were we in a position where a private equity firm tried to buy org. for over a billion dollars, and nearly succeeded‽ DNS used to be a text file that people would pass around. Now… this. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
- bluejekyll 6y agoDNS was designed specifically as a replacement for /etc/hosts. It’s in the opening paragraphs of RFC 1034 about why a single file wasn’t viable anymore. Even for TLDs I think the problems/issues tends to be more about operations of the TLD, because it’s generally a little more work than just a zone under a TLD. But yes. Changing ownership of a TLD that’s operating under existing guidelines for all the domains that use it, is a bad thing. I’ll caveat that with, if it can no longer be operated by the group doing so it should change ownership, but the same protections for the zones inside it should be preserved in the sale.
- CydeWeys 6y agoFrom the very first moment of its existence, as in order to uniquely identify a server, the string you assign to it has to be unique. This naturally lent itself to a first-come/first-served allocation string, and thus, the registrant of each string became the sole owner of that string, allowing them and them only to point said string at their server(s). Absent that mechanism of sole control and global uniqueness, DNS doesn't work.
- walrus01 6y agoWhat makes a TLD that costs $45 or $75 or $200 a year any better or more valid than one that costs $12 or $15 a year? Because one private for-profit company holds the sole rights to register things on it, and can charge what they want? Why should ICANN be giving a license to private rent-seekers the ability to charge more than a fair profitable price for something that exists in a fully-automated software purchase/checkout/zone file entry work flow?