It's not the sexiest issue around, I realize, but the new proposal that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) has approved, for opening up the space of top-level domains, is an important little moment in Internet history, and should be recorded as such so that the historians of the future don't think we were all oblivious to what was going on. [See the NY Times story here, and AP's here; ICANN's discussion of the new proposal can be found here] When ICANN first took over the Net's domain name system in 1998, a lot of us called for it to do something along these very lines, but better late than never. Our reasoning went something like this: The original top-level domains (.com, .org, .edu, .mil, .int, .gov, .net) were chosen, back in 1984, for no real reason at all; Jon Postel, who was basically in charge of the net's naming and numbering systems from its inception until ICANN took over, more-or-less picked them out of a hat, having no idea (in 1984!) what this "Internet" thing would become down the road or why you'd ever need more than 7. There were (and are) NO technical reasons for having only 7 (or 11, or 14, or 278, or any specific number) top-level domains; the naming architecture was built to allow an almost infinite number of TLDs (another one of the truly brilliant scaling mechanisms built into the network that has allowed it to become "the Internet").
Opening up TLD-space is a really good idea -- though not because we necessarily need more TLDs. Personally, I don't really care whether there's an .XXX, or .stuff, or .oldtimeradio, or .Postfamily, or .university, etc. available. Maybe that'll make the Internet a richer, more interesting Internet, as people find new ways to manipulate and utilize this new structure; maybe it won't. No, opening up TLD-space is a good idea because the scarcity was entirely artificial, a means for maintaining a stranglehold over critical Internet resources (domain names). Artificial scarcity is generally speaking a bad thing; people manipulate it to make things valuable that have no inherent value (like domain names); we call the people who maintain artificial scarcity in valuable goods "monopolists," and we don't like them -- for damned good reasons.
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And as for people not being able to pretend they are Microsoft or Pfizer, so what? It benefits consumers that third parties can't pretend to be established companies.
1) Ease of memory. It's easier to remember how a URL ends if it's a) only 3 letters, and b) they're so common that they are easy to remember.
2) Ability to guess URL's. Say I learn that there's this place called Ebay where you can buy things at auction. It's a lot easier to run through ebay.net, ebay.org, ebay.com, etc. than if there were dozens or hundreds to try.
I don't really mind seeing more of them, but I would still want to see them limited for practicality purpose.
If these considerations are more important than variety -- and ultimately, I think they are, for the reasons you describe -- then in an unregulated world, people will naturally gravitate towards them without the need to artificially limit their options.
Huh?
Which websites people go to is largely independent of the TLD it is associated with. Because of cybersquatting, half the websites I go to are .net, .org or similar instead of .com.
Now, instead of going to maps.google.com, I will only have to go to maps.google ? Is that it? Is this really an "important moment in history"?
As most people already "do away" with the ".com" in their mind, not sure this makes ANY difference. Also, the ".com", to me, appears somewhat useful, at least, as a way to easily ascertain whether, in common parlance, an entity or the entity's web site is being reffered to.
Anyone trying to start a business with a web site these days is largely SOL because of these people.
Ignorance is the worst form of information spam. They were ALL chosen for specific reasons. I know people who were THERE at the time. Besides the fact that it is quite obvious. Heck, when I began registering domains they were FREE, but you were instructed to choose the "extension" .com .net or .org , etc. based upon the use and point of the site using the domain. Commercial sites used .com, non-profits used .org, service providers used .net, schools used...can you guess? .edu.
While this is true, it still grants effective control of all "ibm.*" domain names to IBM. Now multiply that by every corporation that has the cash to sue by every TLD and you get a certain block of names that are effectively removed from the public. Thus, creating new TLDs creates fewer new opportunities than you might think.
Athtart says:
If I may take a risk and explain what I think David was meaning when he said that: The actual name ".com" vs, say ".inc" or ".corp" was a purely arbitrary choice. That particular set of names was chosen for the various types of groups that participated in the early internet. University researchers (.edu), government researchers (.gov, .mil), sources of funding like banks (.com), non-profits (.org), and telecommunications companies (.net) were all given a place. What the TLD TLAs would be was arbitrary, that they represented these groups was not.
HTH ;-)
I doubt it. Easily recognizable .com names are still worth significant amounts of money, even as the .org or .net ones are considered relatively valueless. .com is just observed as being much more professional, and that's not likely to change no matter what or no matter how many individuals switch.
Alternative DNS roots have been offering nearly any TLD (UnifiedRoot allows literally any to be registered for less than a thousand euros) for quite a while, and even there such things are largely curiosities or primarily of internal technical importance for companies.
Opening up new TLDs on ICANN's DNS roots are nice, but it's primarily of utility to hobbyists. It's not going to shake up the roots of the world.
Not quite. Most major companies take possession of the alternative domain names, but that's for economic reasons rather than through trademark law. In some cases, those companies have had to pay significant amounts of money to squatters in order to get them to leave. PS.Com and PS2.com have been notoriously squatted on, despite obviously advertising their sale oriented toward the Sony products, but are obviously not similar to any Sony page, and thus do not fall under the trademark issue.
Creating a web page derivative of a known and named company is an issue, and will result in difficulties with ICANN or the company you registered the domain name with, but that's different from not having access to the name at all.
Actually, it appears to me that this creats NO new opportunities. Prior to this decision, one could have mail.google.com, Volokh.blogspot.com, or SupremeCourt.typepad.com.
Now, you will have the SAME choices, they will just be, instead, mail.google, volokh.blogspot, and supremecourt.typead (for example). Isn't this effectively the same as having no TLD?
Also to this quote:
There were an infinite number of choices before this change, and, guess what, there are still an infinite number of choices for domain names. NO CHANGE.
Oh, sure, ignore the massive market share of .arpa.
Best,
Ben
I ask because there were two proposals for ordering domain names. The UK proposal had the tld at the front, much like the rest of the URL is today. For example, com.amazon.movies instead of movies.amazon.com.
If we'd gone that way, amazon would grab a tld and move from com.amazon.* to amazon.*
Instead, amazon gets to try to grab a domain in every new tld. Why? Because amazon.movies is far more valuable than movies.amazon.
For instance, if I am looking for Rice university I might try rice.edu; if I am looking to purchase Rice I am likely to try rice.com If I enjoyed watching nude girls wrestle in rice, and .xxx were a popular porn TLD, I would know to try rice.xxx
Now, a pornographic TLD is the most obvious new candidate for a new TLD. It is a common search, and many sexual practices share words with other commerce. But perhaps there are others - perhaps .blog would bypass some trademark issues since nobody would expect that a man who blogs about Sony products is an official Sony spokesperson. Or perhaps a .movie domain would enhance trademark protections; xmen.movie could be expected to link to X men previews and not to transsexual forums.
Freak out much?