4 ms·

This whole process is a scam designed to extort more money from trademark holders and well-known names through ever-growing defensive registrations. In the rea

This whole process is a scam designed to extort more money from trademark holders and well-known names through ever-growing defensive registrations. In the real world this would be construed as protection money. No further semantic information is conveyed by another domain registration; there is no improvement whatsoever in resource discoverability. The only winners are the name squatters, with Google and Amazon and every other applicant greedily lining up to be the slum landlords of their own worthless little namespace. ICANN should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for presiding over this farce.

icebraining 14y ago
How do they extort money, if you can stop other from registering a TLD with your trademark by just filling a Legal Right Objection[1], which if valid costs you essentially nothing ($2000)? [1]: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/lro/ http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/lro/
- chrisbolt 14y ago
  Because now you have to deal with registering yourcompany.blog, yourcompany.cloud, etc
  - icebraining 14y ago
    And why would you have to do that? Do you really think people will start guessing domains instead of putting "company blog" in their search engine? People don't care about domains. They put "facebook" and even "google" in Google and click on whatever comes up on top. Nobody goes to books.com to buy books, nobody goes to albums.com to buy music albums, it's all irrelevant.
    - rudasn 14y ago
      So after all these years we continue to support the middle-man idea (Google) instead of trying to figure out a way to move away from that. It's not OK for people to not know how to use the internet.
      - icebraining 14y ago
        So after all these years we continue to support the middle-man idea (Google) instead of trying to figure out a way to move away from that. If you want people to move away from middle-man, domains are certainly not the solutions, and the new TLDs will not change that for better nor for worse. We had domains before Google. People switched because they suck as an human interface. It's not OK for people to not know how to use the internet. It's not only about that. I know perfectly well how it works, but I still use Google all the time for finding company websites, because it'd be incredibly stupid to spend 10m guessing the domain instead of making a 300ms request to a search engine. Domains are great for decoupling URLs, configuration files, etc. from IP changes. They're certainly not a good mechanism for website discovery.
        rudasn 14y ago
        I'm not saying that domain names solve the problem of people typing "facebook" on google [1] or that typing "XYZ company" on google is a problem to be solved by XYZcompany.com. In other words, domains and search engines have distinct use cases and the problem is that people don't know how to use either. [1] It is a problem because it allows people not to understand the basics of how the internet works. I don't expect people to understand protocols and stuff like that. People don't want to understand technology, they only want to benefit from it. I don't know 80% of the features my TV provides but I don't care - I can still watch TV. People feel the same about the Internet - they know they don't understand it but they don't care because they can still log in to facebook and watch videos on youtube. But using a middle man (call it Google, Yahoo, or even Facebook) to do these things undermines the nature of the internet as we know it and allowing this trend to continue will most likely lead to problems that we will have to resolve. (Not exactly similar, but when MS decided that browsers don't matter it was our job to tell people to stop using IE6 and switch to Firefox. I wouldn't want to be the guy that tells people don't use Google for this, use ____ instead).
      - because 14y ago
        This is why Chrome should be viewed with skepticism. It's great for people who know how to use the internet, but what about those who don't? Type something ridiculous in the Address Bar (Google is trying to rename it the "everything bar" or whatever silly name they've come up with). Put a dot where it does do not belong. Mistype or mispell something. Runwordstogetherinalongstring. What happens? You get a Google controlled result. This is not insignificant. (Sorry for the double negative.) As a knowledgeable programmer, your internet experience with DNS and browsers is very different from others, because you know what you're doing. Many people do not. Should we teach them? Or should we try to control them by controlling "default behavior"? Many people reading HN are probably too young to remember the browser wars and the battle over the "default browser" setting. This is why IE triumphed over Mozilla. And as any web developer knows, the web has suffered for it. Users who knew what they were doing could change the default settings. But that did not make the difference. Chrome is highly configurable. But that will not make the difference. Default settings are what matter the most. The success of ICANN relies on a default setting. It's called "root.hints" or something similar. If a person running a DNS server (that could be anyone, including the end user) changes this setting, they can bypass ICANN and these landgrab gtlds. In the distant past, "alternate roots", an early reaction ICANN's abuse of power, failed because they were trying to do what ICANN is now doing: make money by selling registrations in additional, redundant gtlds. Perhaps the "alternate roots" of the future will be noncommercial ones that subtract gtld's, not add them. For example, maybe we as smart users will choose to use a "pre-landgrab" root that does not have all these silly redundant gltd's that try to capture whatever unorthodox string a novice user might type in a browser. Domain names are important, but always remember that those who seek to control the browser can easily subvert DNS. Given this decision from ICANN to sell out (which others, not just Google and Amazon, are following: e.g., the founder of BlackHat is running the newgtld program for ICANN; the author of BIND is partnering with a domainer to run a registry), we're going to see some aggressive moves from commercial authors of browsers to control type-in navigation. Of that you can be sure. Again, the question is whether we want to teach users how things work, or whether we want to let them remain ignorant so we can control them. In the big picture, ignorance does not help the web. Though it may benefit certain vendors.
- because 14y ago
  How can they extort money? You could argue ICANN extorts money here by putting pressure on companies to apply for gtld's in order to protect their marks. Many companies do not want to apply. For example, the world's most valuable trademark is missing from this applicant pool: Coke. There's no reason ICANN has to create gtld's that match trademarks by putting them in the ICANN root zone. It is domainers that want new gtld's the most. (For the simple reason why, see below.) How hard is it to do 2000 trademark searches? Essentially ICANN is profiting (they get a small fee for every domain name registration that is later sold) by selling the rights to use someone else's trademark. Then there is the extortion that is carried out by the registries and registrars and domainers. Companies are forced to purchase and renew registrations for direct matches and typos of their trademarks in many different gtlds. More tld's equals more money. Also companies register and renew names in the form [companyname]sucks.tld. That is why you see some applications for a .sucks gtld. These defensive registrations are the bread and butter of the domain name "business". Again, they have no right to sell use of these trademarks. But they do. And they make a handsome profit from the "protection money" that must be spent by companies as a result. That said, you do have a point: If you are a large company, $2000 and the fees to register domain names in lots of tld's, or to file UDRP's, are essentially nothing. It's easier for companies to just pay the fees rather than try to figure out how DNS actually works and how ICANN and their followers manage to pull off this scam.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    You could argue ICANN extorts money here by putting pressure on companies to apply for gtld's in order to protect their marks. You could, except I've shown that you don't have to register the mark to protect it. Companies are forced to purchase and renew registrations for direct matches and typos of their trademarks in many different gtlds. No, they aren't, Amazon doesn't own amazon.net and nobody gives a fuck, because people don't write domains, they write "amazon" and click on the first result of the search engine. Companies buy other domains for irrational fears based on outdated assumptions from when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and search engines sucked.
    - because 14y ago
- inopinatus 14y ago
  You mean, a demand for $2,000 of protection money for a piece of virtual real estate you didn't want and has no value, otherwise the other guy gets your spot? If there was another guy at all. And if you lose because the other guy had better lawyers, costs you $10,000? Plus the lawyers. Scammy McScam of Scamsville called, he wants his cut.
lsc 14y ago
Eh, I agree that this adds zero value for users (unless ICANN does something useful with the resulting cash) but I wouldn't call it extortion. I don't think typeo domains are that important (as evidenced by the fact that I haven't bought any of the typo domains close to prgmr.com) The way I see it, ICANN is selling google and amazon something that is worth about as much as a custom licence plate. (Until I sold it, the nameplate on my motorcycle read 'prgmr' - but I don't think I paid more than $40 a year for that.) I mean, if amazon and google want to pay that much for something that useless... who am I to say what they should do with their money? I mean, this is certainly better for the company than pissing the money away on corporate jets. (That said, if I were a shareholder, I'd be kinda cheesed.)
- inopinatus 14y ago
  The cost to Google & Amazon is irrelevant. The domain squatting and defensive registration under the resulting proliferation of gTLDs is the problem. ICANN is simultaneously conjuring an artificially scarce property and taking their cut of the proceeds of defensive registration, up front. These additional TLDs add little to zero actual value to the end-user, so any registrations therein are by definition a waste of money. Being charged by someone to protect something and receiving nothing of value in return sounds like extortion to me. Many will register their names under these gTLDs, solely out of fear of SEO issues later. It's protection money, pure and simple. Most of all this farce demonstrates that ICANN have abandoned even the pretence of good governance and conservative stewardship of a widely misunderstood technical resource.
  - lsc 14y ago
    but, how does the squatting and "defensive registration" (obviously, I don't feel the difference is as clear cut as you seem to.) effect legitimate users of domains? It makes it harder for us to get meaningful names. How will increasing the namespace help? My hope is that it will divert the resources of people that buy a gazillion names into, you know, buying names in these new namespaces that nobody gives a shit about, leaving more of the dot-com for legitimate use. I mean, I could be wrong, but I don't think it will decrease the dot-com namespace available for legitimate use. Personally, I think that if they can take money away from the squatters (or the people that engage in "defensive registrations" or whatever they are calling squatting this week) without taking money from legitimate users, that is a net positive by itself. Squatters are not as bad as spammers; I'm not advocating public executions or anything, but I'm not going to cry that someone else has figured out a way to extract more money from them.

icebraining 14y ago

How do they extort money, if you can stop other from registering a TLD with your trademark by just filling a Legal Right Objection[1], which if valid costs you essentially nothing ($2000)? [1]: http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/lro/ http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/lro/

chrisbolt 14y ago
Because now you have to deal with registering yourcompany.blog, yourcompany.cloud, etc
- icebraining 14y ago
  And why would you have to do that? Do you really think people will start guessing domains instead of putting "company blog" in their search engine? People don't care about domains. They put "facebook" and even "google" in Google and click on whatever comes up on top. Nobody goes to books.com to buy books, nobody goes to albums.com to buy music albums, it's all irrelevant.
  - rudasn 14y ago
    So after all these years we continue to support the middle-man idea (Google) instead of trying to figure out a way to move away from that. It's not OK for people to not know how to use the internet.
    - icebraining 14y ago
      So after all these years we continue to support the middle-man idea (Google) instead of trying to figure out a way to move away from that. If you want people to move away from middle-man, domains are certainly not the solutions, and the new TLDs will not change that for better nor for worse. We had domains before Google. People switched because they suck as an human interface. It's not OK for people to not know how to use the internet. It's not only about that. I know perfectly well how it works, but I still use Google all the time for finding company websites, because it'd be incredibly stupid to spend 10m guessing the domain instead of making a 300ms request to a search engine. Domains are great for decoupling URLs, configuration files, etc. from IP changes. They're certainly not a good mechanism for website discovery.
      - rudasn 14y ago
        I'm not saying that domain names solve the problem of people typing "facebook" on google [1] or that typing "XYZ company" on google is a problem to be solved by XYZcompany.com. In other words, domains and search engines have distinct use cases and the problem is that people don't know how to use either. [1] It is a problem because it allows people not to understand the basics of how the internet works. I don't expect people to understand protocols and stuff like that. People don't want to understand technology, they only want to benefit from it. I don't know 80% of the features my TV provides but I don't care - I can still watch TV. People feel the same about the Internet - they know they don't understand it but they don't care because they can still log in to facebook and watch videos on youtube. But using a middle man (call it Google, Yahoo, or even Facebook) to do these things undermines the nature of the internet as we know it and allowing this trend to continue will most likely lead to problems that we will have to resolve. (Not exactly similar, but when MS decided that browsers don't matter it was our job to tell people to stop using IE6 and switch to Firefox. I wouldn't want to be the guy that tells people don't use Google for this, use ____ instead).
    - because 14y ago
      This is why Chrome should be viewed with skepticism. It's great for people who know how to use the internet, but what about those who don't? Type something ridiculous in the Address Bar (Google is trying to rename it the "everything bar" or whatever silly name they've come up with). Put a dot where it does do not belong. Mistype or mispell something. Runwordstogetherinalongstring. What happens? You get a Google controlled result. This is not insignificant. (Sorry for the double negative.) As a knowledgeable programmer, your internet experience with DNS and browsers is very different from others, because you know what you're doing. Many people do not. Should we teach them? Or should we try to control them by controlling "default behavior"? Many people reading HN are probably too young to remember the browser wars and the battle over the "default browser" setting. This is why IE triumphed over Mozilla. And as any web developer knows, the web has suffered for it. Users who knew what they were doing could change the default settings. But that did not make the difference. Chrome is highly configurable. But that will not make the difference. Default settings are what matter the most. The success of ICANN relies on a default setting. It's called "root.hints" or something similar. If a person running a DNS server (that could be anyone, including the end user) changes this setting, they can bypass ICANN and these landgrab gtlds. In the distant past, "alternate roots", an early reaction ICANN's abuse of power, failed because they were trying to do what ICANN is now doing: make money by selling registrations in additional, redundant gtlds. Perhaps the "alternate roots" of the future will be noncommercial ones that subtract gtld's, not add them. For example, maybe we as smart users will choose to use a "pre-landgrab" root that does not have all these silly redundant gltd's that try to capture whatever unorthodox string a novice user might type in a browser. Domain names are important, but always remember that those who seek to control the browser can easily subvert DNS. Given this decision from ICANN to sell out (which others, not just Google and Amazon, are following: e.g., the founder of BlackHat is running the newgtld program for ICANN; the author of BIND is partnering with a domainer to run a registry), we're going to see some aggressive moves from commercial authors of browsers to control type-in navigation. Of that you can be sure. Again, the question is whether we want to teach users how things work, or whether we want to let them remain ignorant so we can control them. In the big picture, ignorance does not help the web. Though it may benefit certain vendors.
because 14y ago
How can they extort money? You could argue ICANN extorts money here by putting pressure on companies to apply for gtld's in order to protect their marks. Many companies do not want to apply. For example, the world's most valuable trademark is missing from this applicant pool: Coke. There's no reason ICANN has to create gtld's that match trademarks by putting them in the ICANN root zone. It is domainers that want new gtld's the most. (For the simple reason why, see below.) How hard is it to do 2000 trademark searches? Essentially ICANN is profiting (they get a small fee for every domain name registration that is later sold) by selling the rights to use someone else's trademark. Then there is the extortion that is carried out by the registries and registrars and domainers. Companies are forced to purchase and renew registrations for direct matches and typos of their trademarks in many different gtlds. More tld's equals more money. Also companies register and renew names in the form [companyname]sucks.tld. That is why you see some applications for a .sucks gtld. These defensive registrations are the bread and butter of the domain name "business". Again, they have no right to sell use of these trademarks. But they do. And they make a handsome profit from the "protection money" that must be spent by companies as a result. That said, you do have a point: If you are a large company, $2000 and the fees to register domain names in lots of tld's, or to file UDRP's, are essentially nothing. It's easier for companies to just pay the fees rather than try to figure out how DNS actually works and how ICANN and their followers manage to pull off this scam.
- icebraining 14y ago
  You could argue ICANN extorts money here by putting pressure on companies to apply for gtld's in order to protect their marks. You could, except I've shown that you don't have to register the mark to protect it. Companies are forced to purchase and renew registrations for direct matches and typos of their trademarks in many different gtlds. No, they aren't, Amazon doesn't own amazon.net and nobody gives a fuck, because people don't write domains, they write "amazon" and click on the first result of the search engine. Companies buy other domains for irrational fears based on outdated assumptions from when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and search engines sucked.
  - because 14y ago
inopinatus 14y ago
You mean, a demand for $2,000 of protection money for a piece of virtual real estate you didn't want and has no value, otherwise the other guy gets your spot? If there was another guy at all. And if you lose because the other guy had better lawyers, costs you $10,000? Plus the lawyers. Scammy McScam of Scamsville called, he wants his cut.

lsc 14y ago

Eh, I agree that this adds zero value for users (unless ICANN does something useful with the resulting cash) but I wouldn't call it extortion. I don't think typeo domains are that important (as evidenced by the fact that I haven't bought any of the typo domains close to prgmr.com) The way I see it, ICANN is selling google and amazon something that is worth about as much as a custom licence plate. (Until I sold it, the nameplate on my motorcycle read 'prgmr' - but I don't think I paid more than $40 a year for that.) I mean, if amazon and google want to pay that much for something that useless... who am I to say what they should do with their money? I mean, this is certainly better for the company than pissing the money away on corporate jets. (That said, if I were a shareholder, I'd be kinda cheesed.)

inopinatus 14y ago
The cost to Google & Amazon is irrelevant. The domain squatting and defensive registration under the resulting proliferation of gTLDs is the problem. ICANN is simultaneously conjuring an artificially scarce property and taking their cut of the proceeds of defensive registration, up front. These additional TLDs add little to zero actual value to the end-user, so any registrations therein are by definition a waste of money. Being charged by someone to protect something and receiving nothing of value in return sounds like extortion to me. Many will register their names under these gTLDs, solely out of fear of SEO issues later. It's protection money, pure and simple. Most of all this farce demonstrates that ICANN have abandoned even the pretence of good governance and conservative stewardship of a widely misunderstood technical resource.
- lsc 14y ago
  but, how does the squatting and "defensive registration" (obviously, I don't feel the difference is as clear cut as you seem to.) effect legitimate users of domains? It makes it harder for us to get meaningful names. How will increasing the namespace help? My hope is that it will divert the resources of people that buy a gazillion names into, you know, buying names in these new namespaces that nobody gives a shit about, leaving more of the dot-com for legitimate use. I mean, I could be wrong, but I don't think it will decrease the dot-com namespace available for legitimate use. Personally, I think that if they can take money away from the squatters (or the people that engage in "defensive registrations" or whatever they are calling squatting this week) without taking money from legitimate users, that is a net positive by itself. Squatters are not as bad as spammers; I'm not advocating public executions or anything, but I'm not going to cry that someone else has figured out a way to extract more money from them.