Success is possible. Well done to all.

Resistance is not futile.

Resistance with a strong case and competent lawyers is not futile.

Shame I didn't register on my lastname .name , I had thought it was a much newer gTLD.

It's just a combination in the ambiguity of what "it discards the dot" should mean in GGP's message combined with the article already clarifying 3rd level domains are not available on .name anymore leading to a lot of confused comments.

When .name was new, you may have needed to contract with the registry directly, it was an early new gTLD and I don't remember if they started with the registry/registrar split or not.

Afaik, new registrants are not able to register a third level domain, but second level domains have been available for a long time.

"Although they will be closing new registrations for 3rd-level .name domains, all existing domains (including this website) and email redirects will remain indefinitely."

They were apparently planning on shutting down the whole TLD. They will be leaving it up for existing registrants, but not allowing new registrations.

It was initially! But there was enough demand for second-level registrations that they opened that up too (and set the stage for this whole mess).

Yes, second level domains that overlap with a registered third level domain have never been available. Under the original proposal, once all the third level domains were dropped, the overlapping second level domains would have been available (first come, first served). I believe current practice is the second level domain becomes available if all of the third level domains expire. Registrants in other threads indicated that there's no process to have an orderly transition from being the only the registrant of a third level domain under a specific second level name to registering that second level domain ... you would have to let your current name expire and hope to catch the second level name.

This was what I figured SHOULD happen when they did this. Allow existing customers to keep renewing, but nobody new allowed, if a tld frees up over time, reclaim it completely and sell it off.

What they were proposing should really be illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremen_v._Cohen

but it's tricky because the domain name registries and registrars have a kind of thicket of contracts nowadays that subordinates registrants' property interests to other rules and considerations. So I don't think a court would think that a modern-day domain name registrant has property rights in a domain name that supersede all of those contractual terms.

Edit: my recollection is that Kremen v. Cohen interpreted the legal defaults that applied because Kremen registered the domain name in an era when Network Solutions didn't require registrants to agree to a contract that limited Network Solutions's liability and gave it various explicit rights and powers.

I'm not a huge ICANN expert, but I think ICANN broadly thinks the status quo is preferable to one in which registrants had stronger, less equivocal property interests in names.

The question before the Court was not whether a domain name is a form of property. Both parties agreed that a domain name are a form of property; that wasn't in dispute. The Court did affirm their position in black letter law, though.

Rather, the question before the Court was whether, as intangible property, a tort of conversion claim could be made against it under California law. Previously, cases disagreed as to whether it could be recognized. The Court found that it could be.

This is essentially premium real estate now.

works for many polish people who own ski resorts :)

Where?

Many registrars don't support the unique 3rd level domain setup for .name, so it can be hard to find registrars that properly support it.

It's probably easier to support, and more valuable to sell second level .name domains.

Pretty terrible that they were considering just dropping tens of thousands of customer registrations however.

but I was told that AI has made code obsolete and free

Closed. Wont fix.

.co.uk wouldn't have the same problem because everyone knows that combo is a TLD in and of itself. with a seemingly infinite possible combinations of blah.name that could be a TLD itself, or, might just be a subdomain of .name, it gets really weird

The public suffix list is the big list of all the URL suffixes that should not imply shared ownership of all their subdomains. For example the line

com

says "XYZ.com" and "ABC.com" should not be assumed to be controlled by the same entity.

Problem is, all 1st level domains registered to the .name TLD should be added to the list, and that's a lot of domains. The correct answer, IMO, would be to add a wildcard

*.name

but that would involve updating all the code that relies on the public suffix list to support said wildcard.

I did notice that my domain kept working past the supposed shutdown date, but I let the domain registration expire.

I'm so mad now! I assume there is no way to get my domain/email forwarding back :(

I suppose I could try to ask the registrar, but I highly doubt they can do anything...

  203C;DOUBLE EXCLAMATION MARK;Po;0;ON;<compat> 0021 0021;;;;N;;;;;
  203D;INTERROBANG;Po;0;ON;;;;;N;;;;;
  2047;DOUBLE QUESTION MARK;Po;0;ON;<compat> 003F 003F;;;;N;;;;;
  2048;QUESTION EXCLAMATION MARK;Po;0;ON;<compat> 003F 0021;;;;N;;;;;
  2049;EXCLAMATION QUESTION MARK;Po;0;ON;<compat> 0021 003F;;;;N;;;;;

I first heard of it back when Usenet was still the hotness.

Apparently it's been around for close to a century, so if it hasn't caught on widely by now, you're probably right.

On a typewriter, you could type one punctuation mark, backspace, and then type another.

Even once computers added the interrobang to Unicode (or older systems), you either need to type in a numeric code, use a secret bucky bit, or select it from a graphical UI, none of which is worth it for more than the odd weirdo with a whimsical streak.

And yes, I love the interrobang! Ever since I mapped scroll lock to "compose" on my keyboard, I've had fun typing all sorts of characters :)

And to show off another fun character, for languages like Spanish that start a question with an inverted question mark, there's also ⸘, the inverted interrobang.

Though I find the name some people call it, gnaborretni (interrobang backwards), much sillier.

What the heck is ICANN doing in Bali of all places?

Last year it was in Spain and the year before it was in Mumbai.

I was expecting for Verisign to take this to court, drag it out, and bleed the opposing party out. I suppose the judges that Verisign lawyers depend on did not get favorable re-election.

Ofc it’s probably something less nefarious, and boring. Verisign probably did some basic math and determined that taking this to court with their army of overpaid lawyers was simply not cost effective compared to just supporting 3rd level domains.