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I would honestly love to see government involvement in assigning public usage domain names. Phone numbers are much more limited than the domain space, but those

I would honestly love to see government involvement in assigning public usage domain names. Phone numbers are much more limited than the domain space, but those too are really in the domain of "public good". So much infrastructure depends on reliable and stable phone numbers and email addresses.

blharr 1y ago
> I would honestly love to see government involvement Is not a phrase you should use lightly... government involvement in anything is rife for mismanagement. At its reduction, a domain name is an agreement between people to use X address for Y purpose. What would this power even mean?
- nixpulvis 1y ago
  Gives me a .person.gov domain for free, would be a good example.
- pona-a 1y ago
  Agreement between what people exactly? The domain name system is definitionally hierarchical: ICANN, TLDs, registrars, customers. Nobody is "arranging" anything, it's a top-down system. The entire internet was built on public funds. The very reason why Verisign has exclusive control over .com and .net is a 1993 contract [1] with the National Science Foundation (or rather InterNIC [2], the successor of Defense Data Network NIC and predecessor of ICANN). They gave them this monopoly on the condition they pay 30% into a public fund, but the court ruled it an illegal tax. Do they add any extra value, aside from hijacking DNS with their ad pages [0]? Do they have any meaningful competitors? Can you make your own TLD and enter this market? What would be different if ICANN managed domain registrations itself, without the intermediary, short of having more checks and balances stopping them from milking their customers dry? Your government didn't need to sell all public roads to a monopoly to figure out how to tax them. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterNIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterNIC [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder
exiguus 1y ago
IANA is basically the US gov. All RIRs are also mostly governmental controlled.
- nixpulvis 1y ago
  Yea, but I mean like a .gov registrar to assign a single domain per SSN or something like that.

blharr 1y ago

> I would honestly love to see government involvement Is not a phrase you should use lightly... government involvement in anything is rife for mismanagement. At its reduction, a domain name is an agreement between people to use X address for Y purpose. What would this power even mean?

nixpulvis 1y ago
Gives me a .person.gov domain for free, would be a good example.
pona-a 1y ago
Agreement between what people exactly? The domain name system is definitionally hierarchical: ICANN, TLDs, registrars, customers. Nobody is "arranging" anything, it's a top-down system. The entire internet was built on public funds. The very reason why Verisign has exclusive control over .com and .net is a 1993 contract [1] with the National Science Foundation (or rather InterNIC [2], the successor of Defense Data Network NIC and predecessor of ICANN). They gave them this monopoly on the condition they pay 30% into a public fund, but the court ruled it an illegal tax. Do they add any extra value, aside from hijacking DNS with their ad pages [0]? Do they have any meaningful competitors? Can you make your own TLD and enter this market? What would be different if ICANN managed domain registrations itself, without the intermediary, short of having more checks and balances stopping them from milking their customers dry? Your government didn't need to sell all public roads to a monopoly to figure out how to tax them. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterNIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterNIC [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder

exiguus 1y ago

IANA is basically the US gov. All RIRs are also mostly governmental controlled.

nixpulvis 1y ago
Yea, but I mean like a .gov registrar to assign a single domain per SSN or something like that.