Why does ICANN allow TLDs that are obviously trying to be extortionate? Locked nameservers? Blocked registration? Sunrise period for trademark holders? It's like they're just totally admitting that new TLDs are moronic and pointless and have absolutely nothing to do with increasing domain name space or providing value for the Internet community.
The whole NewTLD project is a misguided, worthless money grab by ICANN which doesn't make sense on a lot of levels. At this point, why even expect them to apply any sort of logic for the common good?
Those places has a legal system with laws, courts, lawyers and judges in order to define the limits of free speech. Is there a strong argument why that system has failed here, and why ICANN should step in and police?
See Brandenburg vs. Ohio. But I really fail to see how this tld meets that test. This is about huge corporations getting their panties in a wad when I register starbucks.sucks.
Why does ICANN allow TLDs that are obviously trying to be extortionate?
Because they collect $0.18 USD per domain per year.
It's like they're just totally admitting that new TLDs are moronic and pointless and have absolutely nothing to do with increasing domain name space or providing value for the Internet community.
I remember seeing something about how .museum and .aero and a lot of the first round of dumbass-TLDs was announced. Despite the only .aero I've ever seen was Boingo which seemed like a rather tenuous link. They offer WiFi all over, including airports, so that makes them aerospace? There's a really great yogurt/oatmeal place in SFO in Terminal 3 -- should they have whateverfraiche.aero, too?
And at some point I thought it was, well, at least about DNS. But registrations with no nameservers, or registrations purely to "block" registration seems rather much opposite of resolving names.
The justification for these new names is some of the dumbest I've read. I think Canon or some camera company was saying that with their own TLD, users could automatically share photos. ... WTF? What does that have to do with anything? It's just bizarre.
The best idea is probably just allowing anyone any domain, anytime, for some smallish price. Or force a standard registrar agreement so anyone can buy any second level from any registrar. Then we can just go back to ignoring all these terrible special TLDs. Why get .sucks, when you can have .blows, or .isshit or any other name.
on the inverse, why are there any TLD restrictions at all? Why can't google get google.chrome? It's just a text field, after all
This is a serious question, because I know a lot of people are against the expansion of TLDs (now I wouldn't have put .sucks on the top of my list for expansion, but...) and I haven't seen a real argument against it.
DNS is hierarchical. You know those dots? They actually mean something. Each name is a separate layer you have to query. Each one means more work for people who maintain infrastructure like the public suffix list[1]. Sure, each one might not count for much, but a world with thousands of TLDs isn't better for anyone.
Besides: TLDs function as a lexical tagging mechanism. When you see a string of letters like "foo.com", you recognize the word as a domain name because it's tagged with ".com". If we have thousands of TLDs, it's harder to recognize domain names as domain names.
I don't think any of these concerns will stop our descent to the world of unstructured AOL-keywords-as-DNS, though, and that's a shame.
Domain names are a mess. They're backwards (should be us.ag.bobsforestryservice), and since most domains just end with .com, there's no hierarchy. In my opinion, if ICANN wanted a hierarchy, they should be strictly regulating the names, including checking ownership of trademark, checking country of registration, etc. So thus we have AOL keywords.
That's the second time I've seen this argument made on HN this week. Why does that make more sense?
If I start typing in my address bar "g" then google.com is the first completion suggestion. If I want to get more specific, I can type "n" and news.google.com becomes the first suggestion. Or "m" and I go to mail.google.com. If we had to write "com." before any of these came up, it would mean a serious loss of productivity for everyone. The current system provides one or two layers of specificity before the TLD, then as many more as you would like (like /item?id=9357898 on the end of this URL, something nobody will every type) - it's ideal for everyday use even if it doesn't fit into some clean sorting method you're imagining or something.
Because directory hierarchies go from top to bottom - /dir/subdir/file.ext - or, globally, //hostname/dir/subdir/file.ext, or protocol://hostname/dir/subdir/file.ext etc.
That the hostname part's components, as presented to users, goes from bottom-to-top in DNS when the rest goes from top-to-bottom is an accident of history, but one it's too late to change (in DNS). Not everything made that mistake however - Usenet didn't.
As for what you're typing in your 'awesome bar', when you start typing, your autocorrect is ranking your visited history: there's no reason it has to start at the beginning, especially when the beginning isn't the root, but there's also no reason that doesn't make sense.
In fact, drifting back to topic: GOOGLE. is in fact a TLD now. If DNS were the 'right' way round, you'd be going to //google.news - wouldn't that make more semantic sense?
Of course, in practice, we're stuck with DNS the way it is because .com is now firmly in the public consciousness. But it could easily have been different, and if I were designing something new, I'd pick the Usenet way round.
Autocomplete could work the other way around, with "n" finding `∗.news` and `g.news` finding `∗g.news`, after all that `news.google.com` actually starts with `http://`.
Yes, and I got downvoted by this crowd last time I mentioned as much. Some random SF-specific project launches, and snags up yet another .com domain. It's not even something like "san_fran_project.com", it was even more generic.
On that note, I'm fully with the GP. This sort of thing should be enforced. It would help with everything from spam, to fake sites, to weird domain name pollution as discussed here.
They should really have done that. TLDs that are properly regulated do have a meaning and are successfully used in their space. Examples are .gov or .edu (except that they should have put in a country layer) and .de, which is the most successful CTLD, because unlike .co or .io it is used only by entities that actually have a physical address in Germany.
There is no real argument against it. ICANN is doing us all a favor through inflation. Soon there will be proportionally less squatting simply because there will be more to squat.
They're making a quick buck on the side. I say: all the power to them. The only ones bleeding are squatters.
Embrace the new TLDs! Go wild! Devaluate contemporary domain names! This is how we really hurt the parasites.
.info got that reputation because Afilias has constant "promotional" pricing of $2-$3 for the first year. Very attractive to fraudsters who know the domain won't be around for that long.
Yep I worked on one of the other TLD's in that round .coop (I sat next to the technical architect) and .info was obviously in spend lost of cash to get rich quick and not worry about the long term consequences mode.
You're thinking as a 2012 netizen. Imagine how Google will sort results in 2025 on searches about Pharmacies and New York City restaurants when .nyc, .healthcare, .food and .pharmacy will be around.
You are advocating to remove the TLD system. That just decreases the available namespace.
All those hip new services under .rs or .io? That's not because those TLDs are somehow appropriate, that's because they have some even remotely pronounable names available. If you operated the root zone as an open registry, it would all be squatted. All of it.
Most of it would still be for sale however, but with prices no boostrapped start up could ever afford. That's what happens when you make a virtual resource more scarce.
Namespacing the root zone into TLDs makes sense. But it would be better if it was done tastefully. All these new silly TLDs just make everyone lose trust in ICANN.
Ask yourself a simple question: Where does ICANN derive its "authority"? Does it even have any "authority"? To do what?
Is there anything to stop anyone besides ICANN from setting up a network of FTP mirrors that offer a "clean" root.zone file, free from "new" TLD's? No.
I remember the day when ICANN most recently changed the IP they use for the ftp servers that serve the root.zone file. (It does not change very often; it does not rely on DNS!) I also remember the day that this small text file doubled in size to accomodate all the "new" TLD's. Nothing was mentioned on HN.
I guess not many folks use this file? I use it every day.
Is there anything to stop DNS admins from using some other zone file (e.g. editing the one provided by ICANN)? Maybe, but one can only wonder what these things would be.
Another simple question: Why follow ICANN as some sort of "steward" of internet naming? Because there is no possible alternative? We have already shown at least one reason not to follow ICANN. Maybe there are others?
"IPC also points out a peculiar change to the standard new TLD contract that’s in the .Sucks agreement with ICANN. It includes an additional fee for Vox Populi with $100,000 upfront and $1 for each additional transaction for up to 900,000 transactions. It’s very odd that a registry would agree to pay this additional amount to ICANN."
Why is it a given that such names are extortionate?
Whatever the wisdom (or not) of opening up the top-level hierarchy, there's a place for sites saying things suck. If companies want to engage in the futile enterprise of buying up and controlling every name that might host a site that could be critical, they don't deserve sympathy.
