5 ms·

> Pay your fee once, and the domain stays active forever. Beyond domain squatters, who would benefit from that?

londons_explore 4y ago
It's part of the solution for a zero maintenance web presence. It means I could maybe publish my memoirs and family tree and have it still available in 500 years. It also makes web domains like other property - you don't purchase a nice watch and then expect it to be reassigned to someone else if you don't pay your annual watch renewals.
- Arainach 4y ago
  I do expect my property to be reassigned if I don't pay my property taxes. Eternal ownership allows those who had power and money in the past to continue to have that power indefinitely, and is very detrimental to society.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
    That should be minimized as long as a limited number of domains per person (excluding legal entities) are allowed in a limited number of tlds. Your property is both relatively scarce, limited, and requires significant service compared to random domains on some random tld.
    - quintushoratius 4y ago
      Domains may not experience scarcity per se, but desirableness quickly falls of as the strings get more random. Everyone would love to have a three- or four-letter domain but, like land, they're not making new characters for the ASCII alphabet.
      - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
        We could restrict those too. Any desirable length, words, numbers, etc, could just be treated like normal domains.
  - nly 4y ago
    If property prices always go up, in theory you could just finance the property to pay the taxes indefinitely
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    bad analogy. in effect you never own a TLD so its not a tax on ownership.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > It means I could maybe publish my memoirs and family tree and have it still available in 500 years. This usecase makes no sense at all. If you plan to have a server going after you're no longer able to maintain a server, your only option is to pay someone to manage your infrastructure and/or services. Once you're paying some company to manage your infrastructures, managing domains becomes a subitem in your invoice.
- hfsh 4y ago
  You don't expect the watch to hang around forever, either. You'll lose it, sell it, or it will break. We don't want a future with indestructible watches littering the streets.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    It could be "foo.tld2022", with YYYY registrable only in that year. Won't get in the way of future folks.
    - dane-pgp 4y ago
      For memorials, it could be as uniform as firstname.lastname.disambiguation.birthyear.deathyear with the requirement that each person could only register one domain under the birthyear.deathyear root. To get around the problem of a numeric TLD, I suggest using Roman numerals (and telling Myanmar it has to go back to using .bu).
- tialaramex 4y ago
  > It means I could maybe publish my memoirs and family tree and have it still available in 500 years. While I'm sure this would be great for your ego, it makes no actual sense. Very few documents from so long ago are available, not because it was somehow miraculously impossible to preserve documents but because overwhelmingly people don't give a shit. You are demanding that future people should give a shit, and they aren't going to oblige.
  - andrepd 4y ago
    ?? Writing down your memoirs is "demanding other people give a shit"? What an odd way to view things. I for one love to read historical documents and primary sources. I'm glad some people in ancient times had the foresight to record a bit of their lives in the hope that future generations might find it interesting.
    - quintushoratius 4y ago
      Permanent hosting costs money, so you are in effect demanding that future folks give a shit about you. You always have the option of committing your memoirs to stone, absorbing the long-term cost up front yourself.
    - rhodorhoades 4y ago
      Do you have any good memoirs you’d recommend? I’ve always found personal accounts and memoirs to be the best kind of writing. You get to read beneath the surface between the person they were, the person they wanted to be and the worldly circumstances they found themselves in.
    - hotpotamus 4y ago
      Do the math (I'm a bit lazy and not that great at it) to think about how many ancestors you have from 500 years ago (I know enough about math to know it's an exponential function), and then think about how long it would take to read all of their memoirs and you begin to realize the problem. Of course, go far back enough (I'm not sure if 500 years is enough) and mathematically speaking, the number of your ancestors will exceed the population of the world, which shows some other issues that you run into.
- lalopalota 4y ago
  that also implies forever hosting of content, not just the domain.
  - doodlesdev 4y ago
    Solvable through IPFS. When it comes to the domain, an onion v3 domain or unstoppable domains are good bets, although I really don't expect _any_ of our current computer infrastructure to exist within 500 years.
CodesInChaos 4y ago
I don't see how squatters would benefit more from that than other people registering domains. If anything I'd expect them to prefer a recurring fee over a high upfront fee.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > I don't see how squatters would benefit more from that than other people registering domains. Registering a domain is not an issue to anyone. Some domain name registrars even offer multi-year subscription plans for those who don't want to bother with the 5minute work it takes to extend a subscription, and send out warnings months in advance to renew subscriptions.
  - jwilk 4y ago
    Which registrars offer that?
    - arinlen 4y ago
      > Which registrars offer that? I expect all of them, and I'd be very surprised if any domain name registrar didn't offered this feature. For example, both Namecheap and GoDaddy allow customers to extend domain registrations up to 10 years in one go.
      - tzs 4y ago
        If anyone is curious as to why it is 10 years nearly everywhere, that limit comes from ICANN. Network Solutions does offer a 100 year plan (and used to offer a 1000 year plan, but I just checked and that one is gone) but the way the implement is by registering for 10 years and then every year for the next 90 years adding a year. You only really have the domain registered for 10 years, and you are betting the Network Solutions will still be around for 90 more years, and Network Solutions is betting that the price they have to pay for domains in that TLD will not have gone up so much that the total cost of all those extensions is more than what they earned by having your initial large [1] upfront payment invested for 100 years. My recommendation: register your domain for 10 years. Don't turn on auto-renewal. Add an annual "Check my domain registration" item to your calendar. When that items come up each year either (1) add another year to your domain, or (2) check to see if it is near expiration and add years. [1] $1600 for 100 years of a random .com.
grumbel 4y ago
Require the domain name to be a UUID or include the date or something else that makes it unsquattable. The domain being actually forever is far more important than it being pretty. Most people will use a search engine for lookup anyway, but it's the forever domain name that is a first step in preventing links from getting broken. That said, this is not something I expect to happen in the regular Web, this seems to be a job for IPFS, blockchain or whatever. With plain HTTP, even if you have your forever domain, you'd still have the issue that the webserver it is pointing to can change, break or just disappear.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > Require the domain name to be a UUID or include the date or something else that makes it unsquattable. What's the benefit of a UUID over a raw IP address?
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Certificates?
    - arinlen 4y ago
      > Certificates? Not a technical requirement. Subject alternative name (SAN) certificates support IP addresses.
      - tialaramex 4y ago
        More clearly, "SAN certificates" aren't a thing. Since PKIX all certificates in the Web PKI were required to have the Internet's names on them as SANs. For several years now, web browsers only look at the SANs to make decisions. The Common Name from the X.500 system is only there for humans to look at, and for legacy software which still thinks that's a good idea decades after we explained why it isn't. Ideally we'd one day get rid of it (wastes bytes on the wire), but I won't hold my breath. Unlike the Common Name, which is arbitrary human text (so e.g. " oops.example" is a valid name despite that space at the start, as are "c-programming.example\0\0\0" and "Ł0Ł.example") the SANs are defined so that it's harder to screw up and a machine can reliably just bit-for-bit compare the data. There are two main kinds: IpAddress SANs are defined for the IPv4 or IPv6 address just as bits, you can't express 200.300.400.500 as an IpAddress, whereas that's a (stupid but) valid Common Name; DnsName SANs are defined using a restricted character set and as specifically the ASCII LDH DNS hostname subset, which makes it much less tempting to try to incorrectly write a Unicode name here, what's actually required is the ASCII LDH name, ie Punycode.
forgotpwd16 4y ago
As those domains will be expensive compared to common ones since it's expected you'll be paying the equivalent of a number of renewal years, squatting will be a much more expensive business to do.
saargrin 4y ago
i would like to have a permanent email for example .. a service for which i now pay godaddy though they dont actually do anything other than DNS
MerelyMortal 4y ago
Limit it to one per real person (not oganization etc)

It's part of the solution for a zero maintenance web presence. It means I could maybe publish my memoirs and family tree and have it still available in 500 years. It also makes web domains like other property - you don't purchase a nice watch and then expect it to be reassigned to someone else if you don't pay your annual watch renewals.

Arainach 4y ago
I do expect my property to be reassigned if I don't pay my property taxes. Eternal ownership allows those who had power and money in the past to continue to have that power indefinitely, and is very detrimental to society.
- omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
  That should be minimized as long as a limited number of domains per person (excluding legal entities) are allowed in a limited number of tlds. Your property is both relatively scarce, limited, and requires significant service compared to random domains on some random tld.
  - quintushoratius 4y ago
    Domains may not experience scarcity per se, but desirableness quickly falls of as the strings get more random. Everyone would love to have a three- or four-letter domain but, like land, they're not making new characters for the ASCII alphabet.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
      We could restrict those too. Any desirable length, words, numbers, etc, could just be treated like normal domains.
- nly 4y ago
  If property prices always go up, in theory you could just finance the property to pay the taxes indefinitely
- ekianjo 4y ago
  bad analogy. in effect you never own a TLD so its not a tax on ownership.
arinlen 4y ago
> It means I could maybe publish my memoirs and family tree and have it still available in 500 years. This usecase makes no sense at all. If you plan to have a server going after you're no longer able to maintain a server, your only option is to pay someone to manage your infrastructure and/or services. Once you're paying some company to manage your infrastructures, managing domains becomes a subitem in your invoice.
hfsh 4y ago
You don't expect the watch to hang around forever, either. You'll lose it, sell it, or it will break. We don't want a future with indestructible watches littering the streets.
- jefftk 4y ago
  It could be "foo.tld2022", with YYYY registrable only in that year. Won't get in the way of future folks.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    For memorials, it could be as uniform as firstname.lastname.disambiguation.birthyear.deathyear with the requirement that each person could only register one domain under the birthyear.deathyear root. To get around the problem of a numeric TLD, I suggest using Roman numerals (and telling Myanmar it has to go back to using .bu).
tialaramex 4y ago
> It means I could maybe publish my memoirs and family tree and have it still available in 500 years. While I'm sure this would be great for your ego, it makes no actual sense. Very few documents from so long ago are available, not because it was somehow miraculously impossible to preserve documents but because overwhelmingly people don't give a shit. You are demanding that future people should give a shit, and they aren't going to oblige.
- andrepd 4y ago
  ?? Writing down your memoirs is "demanding other people give a shit"? What an odd way to view things. I for one love to read historical documents and primary sources. I'm glad some people in ancient times had the foresight to record a bit of their lives in the hope that future generations might find it interesting.
  - quintushoratius 4y ago
    Permanent hosting costs money, so you are in effect demanding that future folks give a shit about you. You always have the option of committing your memoirs to stone, absorbing the long-term cost up front yourself.
  - rhodorhoades 4y ago
    Do you have any good memoirs you’d recommend? I’ve always found personal accounts and memoirs to be the best kind of writing. You get to read beneath the surface between the person they were, the person they wanted to be and the worldly circumstances they found themselves in.
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    Do the math (I'm a bit lazy and not that great at it) to think about how many ancestors you have from 500 years ago (I know enough about math to know it's an exponential function), and then think about how long it would take to read all of their memoirs and you begin to realize the problem. Of course, go far back enough (I'm not sure if 500 years is enough) and mathematically speaking, the number of your ancestors will exceed the population of the world, which shows some other issues that you run into.
lalopalota 4y ago
that also implies forever hosting of content, not just the domain.
- doodlesdev 4y ago
  Solvable through IPFS. When it comes to the domain, an onion v3 domain or unstoppable domains are good bets, although I really don't expect _any_ of our current computer infrastructure to exist within 500 years.

CodesInChaos 4y ago

I don't see how squatters would benefit more from that than other people registering domains. If anything I'd expect them to prefer a recurring fee over a high upfront fee.

arinlen 4y ago
> I don't see how squatters would benefit more from that than other people registering domains. Registering a domain is not an issue to anyone. Some domain name registrars even offer multi-year subscription plans for those who don't want to bother with the 5minute work it takes to extend a subscription, and send out warnings months in advance to renew subscriptions.
- jwilk 4y ago
  Which registrars offer that?
  - arinlen 4y ago
    > Which registrars offer that? I expect all of them, and I'd be very surprised if any domain name registrar didn't offered this feature. For example, both Namecheap and GoDaddy allow customers to extend domain registrations up to 10 years in one go.
    - tzs 4y ago
      If anyone is curious as to why it is 10 years nearly everywhere, that limit comes from ICANN. Network Solutions does offer a 100 year plan (and used to offer a 1000 year plan, but I just checked and that one is gone) but the way the implement is by registering for 10 years and then every year for the next 90 years adding a year. You only really have the domain registered for 10 years, and you are betting the Network Solutions will still be around for 90 more years, and Network Solutions is betting that the price they have to pay for domains in that TLD will not have gone up so much that the total cost of all those extensions is more than what they earned by having your initial large [1] upfront payment invested for 100 years. My recommendation: register your domain for 10 years. Don't turn on auto-renewal. Add an annual "Check my domain registration" item to your calendar. When that items come up each year either (1) add another year to your domain, or (2) check to see if it is near expiration and add years. [1] $1600 for 100 years of a random .com.

grumbel 4y ago

Require the domain name to be a UUID or include the date or something else that makes it unsquattable. The domain being actually forever is far more important than it being pretty. Most people will use a search engine for lookup anyway, but it's the forever domain name that is a first step in preventing links from getting broken. That said, this is not something I expect to happen in the regular Web, this seems to be a job for IPFS, blockchain or whatever. With plain HTTP, even if you have your forever domain, you'd still have the issue that the webserver it is pointing to can change, break or just disappear.

arinlen 4y ago
> Require the domain name to be a UUID or include the date or something else that makes it unsquattable. What's the benefit of a UUID over a raw IP address?
- kube-system 4y ago
  Certificates?
  - arinlen 4y ago
    > Certificates? Not a technical requirement. Subject alternative name (SAN) certificates support IP addresses.
    - tialaramex 4y ago
      More clearly, "SAN certificates" aren't a thing. Since PKIX all certificates in the Web PKI were required to have the Internet's names on them as SANs. For several years now, web browsers only look at the SANs to make decisions. The Common Name from the X.500 system is only there for humans to look at, and for legacy software which still thinks that's a good idea decades after we explained why it isn't. Ideally we'd one day get rid of it (wastes bytes on the wire), but I won't hold my breath. Unlike the Common Name, which is arbitrary human text (so e.g. " oops.example" is a valid name despite that space at the start, as are "c-programming.example\0\0\0" and "Ł0Ł.example") the SANs are defined so that it's harder to screw up and a machine can reliably just bit-for-bit compare the data. There are two main kinds: IpAddress SANs are defined for the IPv4 or IPv6 address just as bits, you can't express 200.300.400.500 as an IpAddress, whereas that's a (stupid but) valid Common Name; DnsName SANs are defined using a restricted character set and as specifically the ASCII LDH DNS hostname subset, which makes it much less tempting to try to incorrectly write a Unicode name here, what's actually required is the ASCII LDH name, ie Punycode.

forgotpwd16 4y ago

As those domains will be expensive compared to common ones since it's expected you'll be paying the equivalent of a number of renewal years, squatting will be a much more expensive business to do.

saargrin 4y ago

i would like to have a permanent email for example .. a service for which i now pay godaddy though they dont actually do anything other than DNS

MerelyMortal 4y ago

Limit it to one per real person (not oganization etc)