back to article 2,000 dot-word bids rocket ICANN onto $350m cash pile

The upcoming expansion of the internet's domain name system could see more than 2,000 new top-level domains come into existence, according to policy overseer ICANN. The organisation revealed at the weekend that it has received 2,091 applications for its controversial new gTLD programme, and could see up to 214 more before it …

COMMENTS

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  1. Suricou Raven

    Blatant moneygrabbing.

    Can we see some ICANN-hate? They really deserve it for this. These new domains provide no practical benefit to anyone (Is it that important for people to be able to type 'facebook' rather than 'facebook.com'?) and run the risk of breaking things due to name conflicts between new domains and hostnames used for internal networking. The only reason for any of this is a blatant attempt by ICANN to pull in a ton more money while leaving others to foot the bill for cleaning up their mess.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That's ICANN's board's Jet-Set lifestyle funded for then...

    ... for the next 12 months at least anyway.

  3. Ol'Peculier
    Thumb Down

    Should have applied for .dev

    It's the prospect of this shagging up existing local or company-wide configurations, I run my test websites on my local machines as <sitename>.dev for instance.

    OK, an edit of hosts will sort that out, but I can see trouble ahead for others. Like I'm going to start remembering to type in www.facebook.facebook?

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: Should have applied for .dev

      The correct answer here would be an RFC for reserved internal-use TLDs, as we already have for IP ranges.

    2. Tom 38
      Headmaster

      Re: Should have applied for .dev

      <pedantry>

      This was specifically warned against in RFC 2606, section 2 - precisely for this scenario.

      If you want to be using fake TLDs, you should be using one of the four fake TLDs that ICANN have guaranteed to never be used (.test, .example, .invalid, .localhost).

      I don't disagree that this is a colossally stupid idea by ICANN, but the warning was there for a long time that this could happen.

      </pedantry>

      1. Anonymous Coward 15

        Re: Should have applied for .dev

        None of those are really suitable.

        .test, .example, .invalid - it's none of those things, we're talking about production use

        .localhost - is for 127.0.0.1

        And using globally-valid FQDNs may break things differently or reveal the structure of your internal network to outsiders. If it's for internal use only, what do you tell your registrar to delegate as the NS?

        1. Tom 38

          Re: Should have applied for .dev

          Since when would a server with a ".dev" suffix belong in production?

          If its for production, you should be using a domain name you own. If you don't want your domain names resolvable externally, you should be using a split horizon DNS.

          If you blithely ignore RFCs when they explicitly tell you you should not do a thing, you should not be surprised when the internet bites you on the ass.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Should have applied for .dev

            If they reserved .local or .internal for private use would that be any worse than having 10.* or 192.168.* for private use? What would you propose to do about almost every SOHO router and some major OSes that default to non-compliant local domains?

  4. Ru
    Facepalm

    In other news, usefulness of a dotcom domain increases 2000-fold!

    Domain names that are unambiguously domain names when spoken for the win.

  5. LosD
    Flame

    "morally objectionable"? While all these new TLDs seems stupid to me, "morally objectionable" should be the last decider if they make it.

    This is with 99.9% certainty the freaking religious fuckheads that gets their useless say.

    1. LaeMing
      Boffin

      Shirly,

      there are enough elReg commentards that find the whole TLD-expansion morally objectionable that they should cancel the lot on those grounds!

  6. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Follow the money

    It will be intresting to see where the rabbit hole leads to.

  7. TeeCee Gold badge

    They need a TLD for this sort of thing.

    Has .getrichquick gone yet?

  8. Tezfair
    FAIL

    gimmick

    While I can see the marketing logic behind it I can also see a lot of people ignoring these extensions. I mean other than com, co.uk, org based ones I don't think I have been to many others.

    I think it will end up confusing people.

    1. Ol'Peculier

      Re: gimmick

      You probably have, but just never noticed.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    About time we dumped ICANN

    It's time we seriously pushed for an alternative DNS infrastructure - one that is not operated or governed by ICANN and that is not under any pressure from ICE to kill domain names at the whim of media companies - basically something independent from the US government.

    I know these do exist (in some form) but they are not heavily promoted or used at present - they need promoting.

  10. Wibble
    Terminator

    Input sanitisation

    The thing I hate is those dickheads at ICANN have shagged my nice simple input sanitisation routines used whenever anyone inputs an email or DNS address. A one-line regex now will need to be replaced with a database lookup plus a shed load of maintenance.

    Or a message saying "No poncy top-level domain names allowed here. Use a proper name like everyone else."

  11. Jacqui

    .biz == spam

    We already have the situation where some MSP's blacklist any email from a .biz related rDNS IP or domain. All these "vanity" TLD's will have the same ethics as .biz - they will take money from anyone so they can recoup thier losses and we will simplay add all the new TLD's as rules to our content filters or worse to our blacklists.

    Pessimist - Moi? :-)

    1. LaeMing
      Boffin

      Re: .biz == spam

      Even easier - just white-list all the real TLDs

  12. Dave 150

    do you think any of the churches have applied for .God ?

    1. Wibble
      Coffee/keyboard

      I'm Brian and so's my wife...

      Haven't they been fighting over that for millennia?

  13. Purlieu

    facebook

    you won't be typing www.facebook.facebook it will be www.yourname.facebook

    1. Richard Gadsden

      Re: facebook

      It might just be www.facebook

      1. LaeMing

        Re: facebook

        or just: facebook

    2. Anonymous C0ward

      Re: facebook

      face.book?

    3. Wibble
      Gimp

      Re: facebook

      Whogivesatoss.facebook.my.arse

      The possibilities are endless

  14. FunkyEric
    Facepalm

    Like who types the full URL anyway?

    My browser fills in the rest after I've been there once, so it's all a bit pointless really.

    Type f for facebook........

    I know, I know, I should have better things to do with my time than facebook, but it's free OK? And more enertaining than the drivel on telly these days.

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