Also, being able to get the domain name you want is a form of free speech, and we should be open to it, even if the intent is to discredit a company.
Many places and people believe there should be limits to free speech if it's in the public good.
Those people are wrong.
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.
Did they ever claim otherwise?
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.
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.
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.
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.
For what it's worth, today is 2015/04/11 :)
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.
Since the AwesomeBar became a thing and I learnt the #, *, ^, + search modifiers [1] I've seldom typed an address.
- - -
[1] http://alicious.com/fast-bookmark-and-history-search-in-fire...
That's a very US-centric view. In most countries the local ccTLD will dominate, so there is _some_ hierarchy.
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'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.
If I want to go to Canon's website, I will search for "Canon" or try canon.com.
I'm not going to think "Of course, canon.camera! Or maybe canon.printer or canon.toner!"
What if you wanted a new app, like cup? Now you will be able to differentiate between the different cup's easier?
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.
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?
Also very curious to know why you need to work with the zone file on a daily basis?
"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."
Sounds cynical, but seriously, very few of their actions make the internet a better place, only them richer.
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.
One example: Paypal Sucks was a great website that impacted a big company by bringing their terrible policies to people's attention.
Should they also police anti-gay marriage domains, and pro Westboro Baptist Church domains?