15 ms·

Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

106 points by vishal0123 14y ago

jacoblyles 14y ago
This is why we need something like namecoin to take off: http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page
- seanp2k2 14y ago
  Yup; let us know when ya'll are done with the ICANN shenanigans so we can start implementing P2P DNS more widely, start publishing worthy content on it to draw people to it, then take back what is rightfully ours: The Internet.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
vladd 14y ago
An open requirement from ICANN won't prevent Amazon requiring something outrageous ($1'000+) per domain that most won't afford. Any open requirements should come as a maximum price limit for creating new additional entries under the TLD. Hopefully they'll also include non-discriminatory pricing (so that the owner of a TLD won't be able to raise the rent once a specific domain becomes popular in traffic/sales).
- wilfra 14y ago
  That would be a PR nightmare for Amazon - instead of the PR coup that giving them away for free would be. Would be one helluva promotional tool for AWS if it came with unlimited free .app domains. I don't understand why people are so quick to assume companies are buying these up for nefarious reasons or to harm consumers.
  - Swizec 14y ago
    > I don't understand why people are so quick to assume companies are buying these up for nefarious reasons or to harm consumers. Because, historically speaking, that's what big faceless corporations usually create monopolies for. It's not that they're against consumers, it's that they are for themselves. This rarely aligns with what's best for consumers on a small scale.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - wilfra 14y ago
      This is the exact opposite of a monopoly. Everybody and their sister is going to have their own extension and anybody who can afford one can still buy their own.
      - OGinparadise 14y ago
        Everybody and their sister is going to have their own extension and anybody who can afford one can still buy their own. so I can get a .shop extension too after Google gets the one and only?
        wilfra 14y ago
        think about them like really expensive .com's and this will be easier to swallow. you can't get google.com or sex.com because they are taken - but you can get any other .com that is available. or you can get on somebody elses domain for free like .blogspot.com .wordpress.com .tumblr.com etc. there are a lot of reasons i don't like that ICANN is doing this but fear that these companies are going to employ abusive monopolistic tactics is not one of them. and i think ICANN is likely to just ignore such complaints, because they don't make any sense. this is the opposite of a monopoly and these companies would be dumb not to share the extensions.
        OGinparadise 14y ago
        edit: his comment was edited after I typed mine and I'm too lazy to change it back and forth- for $1 million plus in costs. You are confusing the extension with a domain name. The point is not to have ONE company own and control an extension (like .com) and all the domains in it. ICAAN should control them and then allow people and corps to register domains within that extension.
signed0 14y ago
I somewhat doubt that most of these new domains will catch on. We already have .jobs, .aero, .travel and .mobi which I have yet to run into while browsing the web. Plus people have already gotten used to recognizing a domain name simply by having a string of characters followed by .com or one of the other popular TLDs. Trying to keep them from prefixing the domain with www has been a losing battle. I could see .app taking off though.
- jpalomaki 14y ago
  I can imagine this could change in the future. Just a matter of educating the people and if companies of this scale decide to do it, they certainly have the resources. Incentive for corporates could be branding marketing. As we know, .com is crowded. Could be easier to push http://aging.beauty http://aging.beauty into peoples minds than some clever .com variation. Currently users solve the problem by using Google or Facebook, but that is not in the interest of businesses. They probably would like to see the customers coming directly to then, instead of going through search engine (where user is bombarded with messages from competitors)
  - seanp2k2 14y ago
    All of these just sound spammy, but I'm more concerned with what happens when REAL companies start using "aging.beauty" as right now the "weird" TLDs are a big red flag to warn me that it's probably just some SEO junk and not what I'm really after. Teeth whitening solutions, anyone?
  - seanp2k2 14y ago
    >" Just a matter of educating the people and if companies of this scale decide to do it, they certainly have the resources." As others have pointed out, we've had things like "travel", "biz", "pro", "me", "mobi", etc for some time now. Not many legit sites operate under these, so I don't really think that these new ones have a big chance. Consumers are already confused about what "www" really is and there is a lot of bad / not-quite-correct / flat-wrong info about what "www" is if you ask even folks who self-identify as "tech savvy". I sense a lot of consumer confusion coming up, a lot of malware / marketeers using these things, snakeoil SEO firms insisting on them, brands buying up tons because they're scared, and generally a bad time for domains.
interpol_p 14y ago
It's a little unnerving that large companies want control over some entire gTLDs. I wonder if Google will let iOS app developers have ".app" domains? I doubt it. For example, here are some relevant portions from Google's applications for the .app gTLD: (Note: Charleston Road Registry is a company wholly owned by Google.) The proposed gTLD will provide Google with direct association to the term ʺapp,ʺ which is an abbreviation of ʺapplication.ʺ The mission of this gTLD, .app, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which Google and select members of its application developer network (“Network”) can enact second-level domains that relate to the offering of Google’s and its Network’s applications and application-specific content. Charleston Road Registry expects uses of the gTLD may include but are not limited to Chrome applications, web applications, Google App Engine applications, Android applications, and mobile applications on other platforms. The proposed gTLD will enhance consumer choice by providing new availability in the second-level domain space in which Google and its Network can deliver new content and offerings. It also creates new layers of organization on the Internet and signals the kind of content available in the domain. Charleston Road Registry intends to operate the proposed gTLD as a closed registry with Google as the sole registrar and registrant. The goal of the proposed gTLD is to allow Google and its Network to manage the domain name space for their application offerings. The proposed gTLD will provide Google and its Network with the ability to customize domain and website name application offerings to signal to the general population of Internet users that .app websites are indeed managed by Google. The specialization goal of the proposed gTLD is to extend the Google brand and reputation to each .app second-level domain. This specialization provides a mechanism by which Google and its Network can easily link and manage their applications and related services. This specialization makes it clear to Internet users that this is the authoritative and designated space where they can find Google’s and its Network’s applications offered in association with the Google brand and accessible via differentiated and streamlined web addresses.
- apayan 14y ago
  The text you copied explicitly states that they would be opening this up to other platforms: and mobile applications on other platforms Not that I necessarily agree or disagree with the expansion of these TLDs, but Google is hardly the kind of bad actor I would worry about.
rehashed 14y ago
What benefit do these new TLDs bring to the table? If ICANN need additional revenue, why not fractionally increase the cost of the current gTLDs instead of introducing more? All these new domains can possibly achieve, IMHO, is to confuse the consumer and allow corporations to control access to 'desirable' gTLDs. If the domain space is so overcrowded, then by all means introduce a new gTLD - but keep it ICANN controlled. Either run a poll to choose, or allow the corporations to 'sponsor' their choice of TLDs incorporation into ICANN - but there is no way they should be commercially controlled! UPDATE: Im really upset that I missed this - looks like ICANN opened up a discussion for public comment (which has now closed after only a month? Surely such a major change should be open to larger public debate..): http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/closed-generic-05feb13-en.htm http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/closed-generic-0... UPDATE2: I have sent an email to karen.lentz@icann.org requesting that the discussion be reopened. I believe it is our duty as a community to publicise this discussion amongst web professionals and have a further chance to fight it. I would respectfully request that you do the same!
- rehashed 14y ago
  UPDATE3: The more I think about this, the more concerned I become. These new gTLDs, given the proliferation of combined search and location bars in modern browsers are tantamount to a direct keyword to those corporations with $185k to spend. Type in 'antivirus', and you will be directed to symantec - not the search results you would likely expect. This has to stop - NOW.
  - pixl97 14y ago
    Searching from the URL bar has always been a bad idea, too bad Google adopted the practice.
  - icebraining 14y ago
    That's hardly a reason to stop the new TLDs, you just need a rule that says you can't have A/AAAA records on the new TLDs.
    - 14y ago
brackin 14y ago
I think it'd be smarter to just add 10 - 20 new names for specific categories rather than an extension for every brand you can imagine ".apple, .amazon, etc". This could lower the resell price of the .com slightly and raise revenue. Like .co did but it wouldn't confuse the user heavily as this move feels like its changing everything.
- ufo 14y ago
  Like .biz, .travel and .museum? :P
sek 14y ago
The only one I find even remotely interesting is .blog nothing else. In the end the rule for which domain you should get is: .com .com and .com.
ctoth 14y ago
Problem: The .com and similar namespaces are crowded. As someone who has been searching this weekend for a domain, the sad fact is that a huge number of domains are simply "Parked free, courtesy of ..." or "Coming soon", or "Under construction", or "This domain is for sale, please contact..." In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined. Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net and other tlds to approximately $X. End the domain squatting market and put the sort of implicit requirement that the domain must generate $X for you to want to hold on to it into the equation. Now, let's argue about where $X is.
- unclebucknasty 14y ago
  From my understanding, there also was/is a loophole that allowed squatters to hold on to a name without cost for a period. Once it rolled off, they were able to grab it again at no cost. Don't recall all of the details or whether the loophole was closed, but at one time it powered a lot of the squatting activity.
  - larrys 14y ago
    You are talking about "domain tasting". It was closed because it wasn't good for the registry operators (once again Verisign in the case of .com and .net). That said there is a cost. A registrar needs to keep money on deposit with the registries for the domains that they have purchased. So if they have a constant 1000 domains being registered and dropped and registered it will cost them money. They will make that money somehow from the registrant (in addition to a registry closing the loophole for other reasons).
    - unclebucknasty 14y ago
      Actually, what I was referring to is known as "domain kiting": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting#Domain_kiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting#Domain_kiting "Domain tasting should not be confused with domain kiting, which is the process of deleting a domain name during the five-day grace period and immediately re-registering it for another five-day period. This process is repeated any number of times with the end result of having the domain registered without having to pay for it." Apparently, there was no cost to the squatters.
networked 14y ago
Could you create a viable alternative DNS root today, preferably one without TLDs at all? It seems like none of the attempts so far [1] gained much traction. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root
- richardwhiuk 14y ago
  No - the network effect here is huge, and so is the cost of change.
gesman 14y ago
Attempt number 1000 to generate crowd's excitement over long, worthless and often confusing domain extensions. Instead of adding really useful and short two-letter extensions, such as .js and others.
- jurassic 14y ago
  I completely agree. I'd love it if there was a broader selection of "anagramable" 2 letter extensions that aren't encumbered with geopolitical associations (e.g. ly=Libya, ir=Iran, etc.) I have zero interest in .long_noun extensions.
CrLf 14y ago
Franky, I don't see the point of this. It opens an all-new can of worms, just like allowing unicode in DNS, while being useless even for marketing purposes (people are used to sites being ".com" and suspect anything else). So ".com" is crowded. It would be much better if someone did something about squatters. So many parked domains and so little done about it...
- hello_newman 14y ago
  I agree. I think a viable solution would be something like if you haven't done something with in 1 year then the domain becomes available. I personally hate getting an idea, checking through domains only to see someone waiting for someone else to purchase their domain that they bought for $10 bucks off godaddy.
  - gmazzotti 14y ago
    So domainers only have to upload a Wordpress and post some blog post (with copied content) and they have done something with the domain,that is not the solution
- pfraze 14y ago
  Parking is hard to fight. How do you define appropriate usage? Then, once you have, how do you deal with the services which will emerge to populate your domain while you squat?
  - ScottBurson 14y ago
    It's trivial to fight. Just raise the amount that the first-level registrar pays ICANN to something like $10/year. ICANN gets a huge pile of money and speculative domain squatting becomes, with rare exceptions, uneconomic. Domains probably get more expensive for the rest of us, but I can live with that.
    - pfraze 14y ago
      What do the first-level registrars pay currently? Would that bump cause the yearly cost for the domain-buyers to increase by $10? If so, I don't understand why that's enough to have the effect against parking.
mesozoic 14y ago
This is pretty silly. ICANN is only opening these domains so they can collect $100k application fees from big companies so of course big companies are taking them over.
brownbat 14y ago
TLDs were originally going to communicate something to the user, they never actually did. Now they represent... how many wasted keystrokes per day? If Berners-Lee agonizes over the second slash after http, then ".com" has to be one of the biggest failures of usability in history. TLDs were designed by folks who guessed most of the internet would be used for governments and non-profits, and commerce would be this token side niche. Now that nearly everything's .com (or under a quirky country domain to sidestep the whole system), it's lost any significance. We should scrap it as soon as possible.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  And replace it with what? If everyone has to fight over a global namespace we just wind up with a different sort of problem.
  - thaumasiotes 14y ago
    I think the point of the comment you're replying to is that everyone is fighting over a global namespace now, but one that unnecessarily appends ".com" to everything in it. That interpretation might be overly colored by my personal view of things. However much I might be inclined to agree that we have a global namespace now, I can't agree that ".com" is 'one of the biggest usability failures in history'. The point has been made before, but seeing "facebook.com" immediately signifies a website to people, using fewer characters than "find us on the web at facebook" ever really could. I found it very interesting to see mainland chinese advertisements with web addresses - for example, renren.com might appear in an ad as "人人网". The two 人 would be written in pinyin as "ren", and directly represent the name of the site; the 网 is pronounced "wang" and means net (here, the internet), but actually represents the unpronounceable suffix ".com". Thus I argue that ".com" is not even a clear loss in usability; it's providing context that people want.
    - brownbat 14y ago
      a) That was indeed my point, b) I was gilding the lily a bit, that's fair, c) I remain skeptical the benefits exceed the costs, (given the viability of sites that don't end in ".com", and the fact no one's raising "lack of context" as a counterpoint to expansion of TLDs), but you make a provocative point. I could see it as an open question.
rogueriver 14y ago
I'm still trying to figure out why ICANN charges what it does for just registering a domain name. Yes--close to $7.00 a year is too much for what they actually do. If you have a problem with your domain name, and try to go up against Corporate Lawyers--you're in for a loosing, expensive battle. That $7.00 times millions equalls a lot of money, but they won't, actively, defend your rights with competent lawyers. The whole name game has irritated anyone involved with website design, at least in my world. In the end, the poor and middle class webmasters need to stick together, and fight Corporate Abuse of Power.
jasonkostempski 14y ago
I hope this works. The attempt to grab .ski domains for ski related companies only [1] would keep me from obtaining my dream email address. [1] http://www.dot-ski.com/2012/06/13/starting-dot-application-for-ski-top-level-domain-officially-revealed-by-icann/ http://www.dot-ski.com/2012/06/13/starting-dot-application-f...

106 points by vishal0123 14y ago

jacoblyles 14y ago

This is why we need something like namecoin to take off: http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page

seanp2k2 14y ago
Yup; let us know when ya'll are done with the ICANN shenanigans so we can start implementing P2P DNS more widely, start publishing worthy content on it to draw people to it, then take back what is rightfully ours: The Internet.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

vladd 14y ago

An open requirement from ICANN won't prevent Amazon requiring something outrageous ($1'000+) per domain that most won't afford. Any open requirements should come as a maximum price limit for creating new additional entries under the TLD. Hopefully they'll also include non-discriminatory pricing (so that the owner of a TLD won't be able to raise the rent once a specific domain becomes popular in traffic/sales).

wilfra 14y ago
That would be a PR nightmare for Amazon - instead of the PR coup that giving them away for free would be. Would be one helluva promotional tool for AWS if it came with unlimited free .app domains. I don't understand why people are so quick to assume companies are buying these up for nefarious reasons or to harm consumers.
- Swizec 14y ago
  > I don't understand why people are so quick to assume companies are buying these up for nefarious reasons or to harm consumers. Because, historically speaking, that's what big faceless corporations usually create monopolies for. It's not that they're against consumers, it's that they are for themselves. This rarely aligns with what's best for consumers on a small scale.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - wilfra 14y ago
    This is the exact opposite of a monopoly. Everybody and their sister is going to have their own extension and anybody who can afford one can still buy their own.
    - OGinparadise 14y ago
      Everybody and their sister is going to have their own extension and anybody who can afford one can still buy their own. so I can get a .shop extension too after Google gets the one and only?
      - wilfra 14y ago
        think about them like really expensive .com's and this will be easier to swallow. you can't get google.com or sex.com because they are taken - but you can get any other .com that is available. or you can get on somebody elses domain for free like .blogspot.com .wordpress.com .tumblr.com etc. there are a lot of reasons i don't like that ICANN is doing this but fear that these companies are going to employ abusive monopolistic tactics is not one of them. and i think ICANN is likely to just ignore such complaints, because they don't make any sense. this is the opposite of a monopoly and these companies would be dumb not to share the extensions.
        OGinparadise 14y ago
        edit: his comment was edited after I typed mine and I'm too lazy to change it back and forth- for $1 million plus in costs. You are confusing the extension with a domain name. The point is not to have ONE company own and control an extension (like .com) and all the domains in it. ICAAN should control them and then allow people and corps to register domains within that extension.

signed0 14y ago

I somewhat doubt that most of these new domains will catch on. We already have .jobs, .aero, .travel and .mobi which I have yet to run into while browsing the web. Plus people have already gotten used to recognizing a domain name simply by having a string of characters followed by .com or one of the other popular TLDs. Trying to keep them from prefixing the domain with www has been a losing battle. I could see .app taking off though.

jpalomaki 14y ago
I can imagine this could change in the future. Just a matter of educating the people and if companies of this scale decide to do it, they certainly have the resources. Incentive for corporates could be branding marketing. As we know, .com is crowded. Could be easier to push http://aging.beauty http://aging.beauty into peoples minds than some clever .com variation. Currently users solve the problem by using Google or Facebook, but that is not in the interest of businesses. They probably would like to see the customers coming directly to then, instead of going through search engine (where user is bombarded with messages from competitors)
- seanp2k2 14y ago
  All of these just sound spammy, but I'm more concerned with what happens when REAL companies start using "aging.beauty" as right now the "weird" TLDs are a big red flag to warn me that it's probably just some SEO junk and not what I'm really after. Teeth whitening solutions, anyone?
- seanp2k2 14y ago
  >" Just a matter of educating the people and if companies of this scale decide to do it, they certainly have the resources." As others have pointed out, we've had things like "travel", "biz", "pro", "me", "mobi", etc for some time now. Not many legit sites operate under these, so I don't really think that these new ones have a big chance. Consumers are already confused about what "www" really is and there is a lot of bad / not-quite-correct / flat-wrong info about what "www" is if you ask even folks who self-identify as "tech savvy". I sense a lot of consumer confusion coming up, a lot of malware / marketeers using these things, snakeoil SEO firms insisting on them, brands buying up tons because they're scared, and generally a bad time for domains.

interpol_p 14y ago

It's a little unnerving that large companies want control over some entire gTLDs. I wonder if Google will let iOS app developers have ".app" domains? I doubt it. For example, here are some relevant portions from Google's applications for the .app gTLD: (Note: Charleston Road Registry is a company wholly owned by Google.) The proposed gTLD will provide Google with direct association to the term ʺapp,ʺ which is an abbreviation of ʺapplication.ʺ The mission of this gTLD, .app, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which Google and select members of its application developer network (“Network”) can enact second-level domains that relate to the offering of Google’s and its Network’s applications and application-specific content. Charleston Road Registry expects uses of the gTLD may include but are not limited to Chrome applications, web applications, Google App Engine applications, Android applications, and mobile applications on other platforms. The proposed gTLD will enhance consumer choice by providing new availability in the second-level domain space in which Google and its Network can deliver new content and offerings. It also creates new layers of organization on the Internet and signals the kind of content available in the domain. Charleston Road Registry intends to operate the proposed gTLD as a closed registry with Google as the sole registrar and registrant. The goal of the proposed gTLD is to allow Google and its Network to manage the domain name space for their application offerings. The proposed gTLD will provide Google and its Network with the ability to customize domain and website name application offerings to signal to the general population of Internet users that .app websites are indeed managed by Google. The specialization goal of the proposed gTLD is to extend the Google brand and reputation to each .app second-level domain. This specialization provides a mechanism by which Google and its Network can easily link and manage their applications and related services. This specialization makes it clear to Internet users that this is the authoritative and designated space where they can find Google’s and its Network’s applications offered in association with the Google brand and accessible via differentiated and streamlined web addresses.

apayan 14y ago
The text you copied explicitly states that they would be opening this up to other platforms: and mobile applications on other platforms Not that I necessarily agree or disagree with the expansion of these TLDs, but Google is hardly the kind of bad actor I would worry about.

rehashed 14y ago

What benefit do these new TLDs bring to the table? If ICANN need additional revenue, why not fractionally increase the cost of the current gTLDs instead of introducing more? All these new domains can possibly achieve, IMHO, is to confuse the consumer and allow corporations to control access to 'desirable' gTLDs. If the domain space is so overcrowded, then by all means introduce a new gTLD - but keep it ICANN controlled. Either run a poll to choose, or allow the corporations to 'sponsor' their choice of TLDs incorporation into ICANN - but there is no way they should be commercially controlled! UPDATE: Im really upset that I missed this - looks like ICANN opened up a discussion for public comment (which has now closed after only a month? Surely such a major change should be open to larger public debate..): http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/closed-generic-05feb13-en.htm http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/closed-generic-0... UPDATE2: I have sent an email to karen.lentz@icann.org requesting that the discussion be reopened. I believe it is our duty as a community to publicise this discussion amongst web professionals and have a further chance to fight it. I would respectfully request that you do the same!

rehashed 14y ago
UPDATE3: The more I think about this, the more concerned I become. These new gTLDs, given the proliferation of combined search and location bars in modern browsers are tantamount to a direct keyword to those corporations with $185k to spend. Type in 'antivirus', and you will be directed to symantec - not the search results you would likely expect. This has to stop - NOW.
- pixl97 14y ago
  Searching from the URL bar has always been a bad idea, too bad Google adopted the practice.
- icebraining 14y ago
  That's hardly a reason to stop the new TLDs, you just need a rule that says you can't have A/AAAA records on the new TLDs.
  - 14y ago

brackin 14y ago

I think it'd be smarter to just add 10 - 20 new names for specific categories rather than an extension for every brand you can imagine ".apple, .amazon, etc". This could lower the resell price of the .com slightly and raise revenue. Like .co did but it wouldn't confuse the user heavily as this move feels like its changing everything.

ufo 14y ago
Like .biz, .travel and .museum? :P

sek 14y ago

The only one I find even remotely interesting is .blog nothing else. In the end the rule for which domain you should get is: .com .com and .com.

ctoth 14y ago

Problem: The .com and similar namespaces are crowded. As someone who has been searching this weekend for a domain, the sad fact is that a huge number of domains are simply "Parked free, courtesy of ..." or "Coming soon", or "Under construction", or "This domain is for sale, please contact..." In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined. Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net and other tlds to approximately $X. End the domain squatting market and put the sort of implicit requirement that the domain must generate $X for you to want to hold on to it into the equation. Now, let's argue about where $X is.

unclebucknasty 14y ago
From my understanding, there also was/is a loophole that allowed squatters to hold on to a name without cost for a period. Once it rolled off, they were able to grab it again at no cost. Don't recall all of the details or whether the loophole was closed, but at one time it powered a lot of the squatting activity.
- larrys 14y ago
  You are talking about "domain tasting". It was closed because it wasn't good for the registry operators (once again Verisign in the case of .com and .net). That said there is a cost. A registrar needs to keep money on deposit with the registries for the domains that they have purchased. So if they have a constant 1000 domains being registered and dropped and registered it will cost them money. They will make that money somehow from the registrant (in addition to a registry closing the loophole for other reasons).
  - unclebucknasty 14y ago
    Actually, what I was referring to is known as "domain kiting": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting#Domain_kiting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting#Domain_kiting "Domain tasting should not be confused with domain kiting, which is the process of deleting a domain name during the five-day grace period and immediately re-registering it for another five-day period. This process is repeated any number of times with the end result of having the domain registered without having to pay for it." Apparently, there was no cost to the squatters.

networked 14y ago

Could you create a viable alternative DNS root today, preferably one without TLDs at all? It seems like none of the attempts so far [1] gained much traction. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

richardwhiuk 14y ago
No - the network effect here is huge, and so is the cost of change.

gesman 14y ago

Attempt number 1000 to generate crowd's excitement over long, worthless and often confusing domain extensions. Instead of adding really useful and short two-letter extensions, such as .js and others.

jurassic 14y ago
I completely agree. I'd love it if there was a broader selection of "anagramable" 2 letter extensions that aren't encumbered with geopolitical associations (e.g. ly=Libya, ir=Iran, etc.) I have zero interest in .long_noun extensions.

CrLf 14y ago

Franky, I don't see the point of this. It opens an all-new can of worms, just like allowing unicode in DNS, while being useless even for marketing purposes (people are used to sites being ".com" and suspect anything else). So ".com" is crowded. It would be much better if someone did something about squatters. So many parked domains and so little done about it...

hello_newman 14y ago
I agree. I think a viable solution would be something like if you haven't done something with in 1 year then the domain becomes available. I personally hate getting an idea, checking through domains only to see someone waiting for someone else to purchase their domain that they bought for $10 bucks off godaddy.
- gmazzotti 14y ago
  So domainers only have to upload a Wordpress and post some blog post (with copied content) and they have done something with the domain,that is not the solution
pfraze 14y ago
Parking is hard to fight. How do you define appropriate usage? Then, once you have, how do you deal with the services which will emerge to populate your domain while you squat?
- ScottBurson 14y ago
  It's trivial to fight. Just raise the amount that the first-level registrar pays ICANN to something like $10/year. ICANN gets a huge pile of money and speculative domain squatting becomes, with rare exceptions, uneconomic. Domains probably get more expensive for the rest of us, but I can live with that.
  - pfraze 14y ago
    What do the first-level registrars pay currently? Would that bump cause the yearly cost for the domain-buyers to increase by $10? If so, I don't understand why that's enough to have the effect against parking.

mesozoic 14y ago

This is pretty silly. ICANN is only opening these domains so they can collect $100k application fees from big companies so of course big companies are taking them over.

brownbat 14y ago

TLDs were originally going to communicate something to the user, they never actually did. Now they represent... how many wasted keystrokes per day? If Berners-Lee agonizes over the second slash after http, then ".com" has to be one of the biggest failures of usability in history. TLDs were designed by folks who guessed most of the internet would be used for governments and non-profits, and commerce would be this token side niche. Now that nearly everything's .com (or under a quirky country domain to sidestep the whole system), it's lost any significance. We should scrap it as soon as possible.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
And replace it with what? If everyone has to fight over a global namespace we just wind up with a different sort of problem.
- thaumasiotes 14y ago
  I think the point of the comment you're replying to is that everyone is fighting over a global namespace now, but one that unnecessarily appends ".com" to everything in it. That interpretation might be overly colored by my personal view of things. However much I might be inclined to agree that we have a global namespace now, I can't agree that ".com" is 'one of the biggest usability failures in history'. The point has been made before, but seeing "facebook.com" immediately signifies a website to people, using fewer characters than "find us on the web at facebook" ever really could. I found it very interesting to see mainland chinese advertisements with web addresses - for example, renren.com might appear in an ad as "人人网". The two 人 would be written in pinyin as "ren", and directly represent the name of the site; the 网 is pronounced "wang" and means net (here, the internet), but actually represents the unpronounceable suffix ".com". Thus I argue that ".com" is not even a clear loss in usability; it's providing context that people want.
  - brownbat 14y ago
    a) That was indeed my point, b) I was gilding the lily a bit, that's fair, c) I remain skeptical the benefits exceed the costs, (given the viability of sites that don't end in ".com", and the fact no one's raising "lack of context" as a counterpoint to expansion of TLDs), but you make a provocative point. I could see it as an open question.

rogueriver 14y ago

I'm still trying to figure out why ICANN charges what it does for just registering a domain name. Yes--close to $7.00 a year is too much for what they actually do. If you have a problem with your domain name, and try to go up against Corporate Lawyers--you're in for a loosing, expensive battle. That $7.00 times millions equalls a lot of money, but they won't, actively, defend your rights with competent lawyers. The whole name game has irritated anyone involved with website design, at least in my world. In the end, the poor and middle class webmasters need to stick together, and fight Corporate Abuse of Power.

jasonkostempski 14y ago

I hope this works. The attempt to grab .ski domains for ski related companies only [1] would keep me from obtaining my dream email address. [1] http://www.dot-ski.com/2012/06/13/starting-dot-application-for-ski-top-level-domain-officially-revealed-by-icann/ http://www.dot-ski.com/2012/06/13/starting-dot-application-f...