5 ms·

The concept of top level domains seems a bit outdated. I can only guess that under the new system "store.apple.com" will become "store.apple", "myname.blogger.

The concept of top level domains seems a bit outdated. I can only guess that under the new system "store.apple.com" will become "store.apple", "myname.blogger.com" will become "myname.blog", etc. So why not go the other way and just drop TLDs altogether? I know there are a few cases where a ".net" domain would clash with a ".com", but the people in those cases are already used to the conflict, so let them work it out which one keeps the TLD in their name and which one becomes TLD-less. The way it's going seems like a money grab by ICANN.

forgotusername 14y ago
Namespaces exist for a reason. For example, what do you call your network printer after http://canon http://canon gets reserved by the printer manufacturer? Same with http://epson http://epson, whatever. And is http://printer1/ http://printer1/ safe? Only until someone writes a paragraph justification and shows up with $1m. The entire process is a money grabbing farce.
- icebraining 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local
  - Chlorus 14y ago
    .local causes chaos if you're running Bonjour/Avahi on the same network
    - icebraining 14y ago
      You just need to configure them as static mappings in /etc/avahi/hosts. http://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi.hosts http://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi.hosts
  - forgotusername 14y ago
    Why should I have to type "canon.local" for my printer name, just in order to avoid an advert to buy a new printer? This destroys any sense of user preference in favor of large corporations pushing their shit further into your face even when you explicitly don't want it. I've worked at many places where http://search/ http://search/ was the Intranet search facility. Not now though, nope. Now your IT department will be under pressure to accept Big Search's latest site-integrated intranet search which they conveniently started marketing around the time they broke all your local URLs.
    - nikcub 14y ago
      The good thing about DNS is that the user controls it. You can set it to whatever you want. Enough people set it one way and it becomes a standard that no board can decide against.
      - because 14y ago
        Exactly. What's needed is more public education. DNS is a basic thing all users should know about. You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. They might not be able to explain how it works or what it stands for, but they know what it is and they know they need it for applications to run smoothly. Same should be true of DNS. Mozilla, not to mention Adobe, can coordinate millions of people to all download the same program (Firefox, Flash plugin). People can be taught how to control their own DNS, e.g. how to choose a DNS server. But ICANN likes users to remain ignorant. They want everyone to use their root server without ever thinking about it. Well, that server is about to become overrun with needless tld's.
        icebraining 14y ago
        You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. People in NY were asked what their browser was and the most common reply was "Google" - and this was before Chrome had any kind of share. People are completely ignorant when it comes to technology.
- ejdyksen 14y ago
  Does owning a gTLD entitle you to use the top of your namespace for anything other than NS/SOA records? Put another way, if I'm Microsoft, can I put my website at http://microsoft http://microsoft? Or do I have to use http://www.microsoft http://www.microsoft? I've looked to see if there is a policy from ICANN on this, but I can't find one. Historically, TLDs did not themselves point to hosts (or have other things like MX or TXT records).
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Some ccTLDs do have A records, though, like http://ac http://ac
    - franze 14y ago
      great example!!! i just tried to submit http://ac/ to hackernews. guess what? it didn't work.
      - Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
        Yeah, it's common to have bad url or email address validation. Many sites do not accept short email addresses at all. As example a @bc.de (space is there intentionally). When it becomes a @ bc then it's interesting to see how many sites will fail with that.
      - because 14y ago
        What browser are you using? This worked in my browser.
      - Cyranix 14y ago
        I believe that TLDs with A records should resolve correctly if you add a period to the end, as in "http://ac. http://ac.. As I recall, this came up when the "http://to. http://to. link shortener [no longer available] was discussed a while ago.
    - ajasmin 14y ago
      With the current trend of combining the address and search bar I doubt browsers will let you go to e.g. http://lol http://lol when you type "lol" in the bar. In fact I just checked that typing "ac" in the Chrome omnibox makes a Google search for "ac" as I would expect. So the value of having an A record on a TLD is limited. Edit: Somehow I missed the bar on top of the search results that says "Did you mean to go to http://ac http://ac " so there's some value after all.
Andrenid 14y ago
I've been preaching for years that we need to get rid of TLDs. If we truly want the web to be a global/borderless place, get rid of the extensions and let us do http://companyname/ http://companyname/ (I know it currently can't work like that, but I'm sure all the great minds out there can figure it out). Ideally I would've liked to see it evolve into a more clean/friendly structure all together... web//companyname, yourname@companyname, etc. Yes we'd get the clashes of people that currently have different TLDs of the same name, but maybe solve that by making the new structure an optional extra, so people buy the "new" domains from scratch (and if you currently own all major TLDs for your name, eg Microsoft/Google/Apple/etc, noone else can register your "new" domain). First to buy the new one, gets it. Person who had the differing TLD finds a slightly different one. These new .whatever really piss me off. It's making the web a messier place, and confusing the average users even more, all for the sake for some greedy fatcats to charge stupid amounts to companies that can afford to throw money at it.
- henrikschroder 14y ago
  And what do you do when multiple companies have the same name and there's no top-level country domain to distinguish between them?
  - icebraining 14y ago
    The same you do know when two companies in the same country have the same name/trademark?
  - rootzoned 14y ago
    If you are ICANN/Registry/Registrar you make money! You send it to auction and let them bid to see who gets it. Or you send things to a dispute resolution provider, e.g., WIPO. Not sure how much revenue they make from these disputes, but it is no doubt growing. Could this problem be fixed with a technical solution? Maybe. But for ICANN, there's little incentive to fix it because lots of money is made in their system if there are disputes and an illusion of scarcity. What is true for company names is also true for trademarks. Like company names, trademarks are both restricted to a particular business sector and they are regional. But ICANN's system keeps things so that there can be only one xyz.com even though there may be many XYZ Corporations around the world, in different business sectors. They do not compete with each other in the real world. But in ICANN's world, they are forced to compete. And this brings in lots of money for ICANN/Registries/Registrars.
kijeda 14y ago
One of the common refrains from this is that it is a money grab by ICANN, but all ICANN is doing is implementing a multi-stakeholder consensus policy that was ratified by the various community groups 5 years ago, and doing so on a cost-recovery basis. While the costs may end up being conservatively estimated, any excess will be returned back to the community. ICANN itself has no vested interest in this other than executing its policies, and if the consensus policy had ended up being "no new gTLDs, there are enough" then it wouldn't have embarked on this program.
- wmf 14y ago
  Pretty much all the "stakeholders" are from the "domain industry", so it's pretty obvious what their "consensus" would be. You're right that it's technically not a money grab by ICANN, but somebody is planning to make money and we've seen that people who work at ICANN can also profit from the revolving door.

forgotusername 14y ago

Namespaces exist for a reason. For example, what do you call your network printer after http://canon http://canon gets reserved by the printer manufacturer? Same with http://epson http://epson, whatever. And is http://printer1/ http://printer1/ safe? Only until someone writes a paragraph justification and shows up with $1m. The entire process is a money grabbing farce.

icebraining 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local
- Chlorus 14y ago
  .local causes chaos if you're running Bonjour/Avahi on the same network
  - icebraining 14y ago
    You just need to configure them as static mappings in /etc/avahi/hosts. http://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi.hosts http://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi.hosts
- forgotusername 14y ago
  Why should I have to type "canon.local" for my printer name, just in order to avoid an advert to buy a new printer? This destroys any sense of user preference in favor of large corporations pushing their shit further into your face even when you explicitly don't want it. I've worked at many places where http://search/ http://search/ was the Intranet search facility. Not now though, nope. Now your IT department will be under pressure to accept Big Search's latest site-integrated intranet search which they conveniently started marketing around the time they broke all your local URLs.
  - nikcub 14y ago
    The good thing about DNS is that the user controls it. You can set it to whatever you want. Enough people set it one way and it becomes a standard that no board can decide against.
    - because 14y ago
      Exactly. What's needed is more public education. DNS is a basic thing all users should know about. You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. They might not be able to explain how it works or what it stands for, but they know what it is and they know they need it for applications to run smoothly. Same should be true of DNS. Mozilla, not to mention Adobe, can coordinate millions of people to all download the same program (Firefox, Flash plugin). People can be taught how to control their own DNS, e.g. how to choose a DNS server. But ICANN likes users to remain ignorant. They want everyone to use their root server without ever thinking about it. Well, that server is about to become overrun with needless tld's.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        You can stop someone on the street and they will know what "RAM" is. People in NY were asked what their browser was and the most common reply was "Google" - and this was before Chrome had any kind of share. People are completely ignorant when it comes to technology.
ejdyksen 14y ago
Does owning a gTLD entitle you to use the top of your namespace for anything other than NS/SOA records? Put another way, if I'm Microsoft, can I put my website at http://microsoft http://microsoft? Or do I have to use http://www.microsoft http://www.microsoft? I've looked to see if there is a policy from ICANN on this, but I can't find one. Historically, TLDs did not themselves point to hosts (or have other things like MX or TXT records).
- icebraining 14y ago
  Some ccTLDs do have A records, though, like http://ac http://ac
  - franze 14y ago
    great example!!! i just tried to submit http://ac/ to hackernews. guess what? it didn't work.
    - Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
      Yeah, it's common to have bad url or email address validation. Many sites do not accept short email addresses at all. As example a @bc.de (space is there intentionally). When it becomes a @ bc then it's interesting to see how many sites will fail with that.
    - because 14y ago
      What browser are you using? This worked in my browser.
    - Cyranix 14y ago
      I believe that TLDs with A records should resolve correctly if you add a period to the end, as in "http://ac. http://ac.. As I recall, this came up when the "http://to. http://to. link shortener [no longer available] was discussed a while ago.
  - ajasmin 14y ago
    With the current trend of combining the address and search bar I doubt browsers will let you go to e.g. http://lol http://lol when you type "lol" in the bar. In fact I just checked that typing "ac" in the Chrome omnibox makes a Google search for "ac" as I would expect. So the value of having an A record on a TLD is limited. Edit: Somehow I missed the bar on top of the search results that says "Did you mean to go to http://ac http://ac " so there's some value after all.

Andrenid 14y ago

I've been preaching for years that we need to get rid of TLDs. If we truly want the web to be a global/borderless place, get rid of the extensions and let us do http://companyname/ http://companyname/ (I know it currently can't work like that, but I'm sure all the great minds out there can figure it out). Ideally I would've liked to see it evolve into a more clean/friendly structure all together... web//companyname, yourname@companyname, etc. Yes we'd get the clashes of people that currently have different TLDs of the same name, but maybe solve that by making the new structure an optional extra, so people buy the "new" domains from scratch (and if you currently own all major TLDs for your name, eg Microsoft/Google/Apple/etc, noone else can register your "new" domain). First to buy the new one, gets it. Person who had the differing TLD finds a slightly different one. These new .whatever really piss me off. It's making the web a messier place, and confusing the average users even more, all for the sake for some greedy fatcats to charge stupid amounts to companies that can afford to throw money at it.

henrikschroder 14y ago
And what do you do when multiple companies have the same name and there's no top-level country domain to distinguish between them?
- icebraining 14y ago
  The same you do know when two companies in the same country have the same name/trademark?
- rootzoned 14y ago
  If you are ICANN/Registry/Registrar you make money! You send it to auction and let them bid to see who gets it. Or you send things to a dispute resolution provider, e.g., WIPO. Not sure how much revenue they make from these disputes, but it is no doubt growing. Could this problem be fixed with a technical solution? Maybe. But for ICANN, there's little incentive to fix it because lots of money is made in their system if there are disputes and an illusion of scarcity. What is true for company names is also true for trademarks. Like company names, trademarks are both restricted to a particular business sector and they are regional. But ICANN's system keeps things so that there can be only one xyz.com even though there may be many XYZ Corporations around the world, in different business sectors. They do not compete with each other in the real world. But in ICANN's world, they are forced to compete. And this brings in lots of money for ICANN/Registries/Registrars.

kijeda 14y ago

One of the common refrains from this is that it is a money grab by ICANN, but all ICANN is doing is implementing a multi-stakeholder consensus policy that was ratified by the various community groups 5 years ago, and doing so on a cost-recovery basis. While the costs may end up being conservatively estimated, any excess will be returned back to the community. ICANN itself has no vested interest in this other than executing its policies, and if the consensus policy had ended up being "no new gTLDs, there are enough" then it wouldn't have embarked on this program.

wmf 14y ago
Pretty much all the "stakeholders" are from the "domain industry", so it's pretty obvious what their "consensus" would be. You're right that it's technically not a money grab by ICANN, but somebody is planning to make money and we've seen that people who work at ICANN can also profit from the revolving door.