Big biz slams brakes on new domains ICANN has bowed to pressure from big business to push back the launch of new internet domains over fears of wholesale cybersquatting. The decision means domains such as “.shop”, “.music” or even “.google” and “.london”, would be unlikely to see the light of day until late next year at the earliest. The board of the internet …
"ICANN “believes strongly that the concerns of trademark holders must be addressed before this process is open,” chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said in a statement."
Where's the man from UNCLE when you need him?
"During a summit in Mexico City last week, ICANN heard pleas to quit stalling from those who would propose gTLDs such as “.bzh”, “.gal”, “.eus” and “.ker” to represent the Breton, Galician, Basque and Cornish peoples, respectively."
No prizes for guessing the first domain to be registered under the .ker TLD...
Maybe ... but seems to be a fair amount of brand infringement going on.
E.g. who gets the .moscow tld ... the one in Russia or the one in Idaho. Plus what about .lucerne - many years ago I visited there and by the lake there's a signpost pointing to all the other places called lucerne in the world -- there's a lot of them, especially in the US!
The UK is in a really bad position with having only a .co.uk TLD available to it. From a behavioural tracking point of view it is a 'trackers paradise' with the less secure browsers allowing cookies to be set in the domain .co.uk which means that any hacker can host a site and harvest loads of cookies and their data. How many .co.uk cookies are sitting on your computers? - do you even know that this is possible?
If ICANN wants to do anything, all .co.uk domains should be transferred to .uk or .gb domains.
And, all the other countries where businesses are using subdomains should similarly have their TLDs sorted out.
The whole idea of domain names is just daft. Anyone should be able to use any string of characters they like so long as it isn't the same as the string used by someone else. In a 'globalised' world we don't need a suffix that _pretends_ to tell us where the object the URL names is. Who types URLs anyway? The only time I ever type them is when using FF3 which has a very nice incremental search in the address field. And of course I only type part of the name, never the TLD.
Trademarks should never have been allowed to hold sway in the Domain system. Trademark law doesn't stop me from opening a Car Repair business called MacDonalds, because it doesn't overlap or infringe in any way on the business of MacDonalds fast food. So why is ICANN concerned about "protecting" the interests of MacDonalds when new Domains are created? MacDonalds is not harmed if someone else registers macdonalds.xyz, legally harm only occurs "passes off" as the "real" MacDonalds.
Title says it all really. By an large the TLDs should be restricted to the relevant legal jurisdiction.
There are a few "cross-cutting" TLDs needs (.org, .net, .com etc) and at least one new one (.xxx). Maybe also .sec/.secure for heavily validated and verified site owners. Dunno.
Beyond that - nothing else is needed. it's just a money grab.
I look forward to your explanation of how all these arbitrary names get looked up into IP addresses without adding say a million or two new root servers. And creating a similar number of 'root WHOIS servers' as well.
Please note that your explanation is forbidden by law from containing the words "All we have to do is update every client/operating system/resolver/router on the entire worldwide internet simultaneously, and ...", or any phrase substantially the equivalent thereof.
"the concerns of trademark holders must be addressed". Hmm. I wonder if anyone ever thought of that before, say around 1998 when ICANN waas being created and the idea of creating many new top level domains was first discussed. No, surely it was far too obscure an issue to be thought of then. Surely nobody then pointed out that the whole idea was both stupid and doomed. (Now, what's the icon for sarcasm, again?)
TLDs don't pretend to tell you about anything about the resources accessible via them. They tell who is responsible for maintaining the name servers for that namespace and for delegating responsibility over subdomains.
While it's a nice idea to have arbitrary TLDs, it would be a logistical and technical nightmare. One organisation would be responsible for maintaining all names and I don't even want to think about the capacity requirements for the root servers.
Regarding the meaning of domains, not all registrars are so lax. There are domains that cannot be bought by just anyone.
Lastly, the web is not the Internet. A lot more is happening with domain names than humans accessing web sites.
When setting up the Cook Islands ccTLD in the early 90s, we opted to go for co instead of com.
It took about 18 months before someone tried to register big.co.ck and hairy.co.ck.
Cook Islands culture being what it is (look at the statues sometime), the locals thought it was hilarious and were more than happy with the arrangement.
(Don't bother trying to register in this domain, they were migrated to .com.ck in the late 90s when prudery kicked in among the business community - although the pressure to change mostly came from outside the country)
Paris, because she should have a Cook Islands domain all to herself.
" Please note that your explanation is forbidden by law from containing the words "All we have to do is update every client/operating system/resolver/router on the entire worldwide internet simultaneously, and ...", or any phrase substantially the equivalent thereof."
Actually, there is historical precedence for exactly that ... the NCP to TCP/IP transition on January 1, 1983 ... It wasn't all that bad, went a lot smoother than I thought it would. Usenet didn't even hiccup.
These days ... would probably split the 'net into "NewNet" and "OldNet". Probably a good idea, all the Web2.0 twats would instantly latch onto the "NewNet" out of reflex, leaving the rest of us in peace. When can we start?
"The internet was also microscopic at the time."
Indeed. We didn't hit 1,000 hosts until mid-late '84, IIRC. I have no idea how many users there were, but it was probably between a quarter million and a million.
On the other hand, there were fewer idiots online ... Bring on Flag Day, MkII!
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
