New top-level domains a money grab and a mistake: Paul Vixie
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
I think that there was no end-user demand whatsoever for more so-called DNS extensions, [or] global generic top-level domains (gTLDs)," he said.
There will be a time when the multitude of TLDs won't bother anyone. Limiting TLDs doesn't add security. Educating people about the dangers of the internet does.
I find it somewhat depressing that emailing folks about domain names they're not using results in either a) being ignored or b) being asked to pay $40,000.
I'm of the view if you're sitting on names that you're keeping around exclusively because you think they could net you a windfall in the future then you're a bit of an internet twat.
I think the new gTLDs are great. Most of them aren't exorbitantly expensive, and generally speaking they free you up to have an address on the big wild internet that makes way more sense than the contrived naming conventions we resorted to using in the past (eg: get[???].com, [???]app.com, both of which I can think of prime, famous examples in real world use). Is [???].app really better? Yeah, probably.
There isn't a good alternative to the way it currently works. Allowing domain owners to sell their domains results in domains going to those companies that are successful enough to afford them.
Some domains that appear unused are actually being used.
I've got a very minimal, largely neglected, web presence on my domain, but would not even consider selling it unless the price was very very high.
That's because I am using it--for email. If I were to sell my domain I'd have to update my information with thousands of sites, companies, and individuals.
That's not something I'd be willing to undertake lightly. Any place that has my email that I forget to update is a place where my account could be easily hijacked.
I think you're confused, and probably mean "give up the domains" they're not using. Not "give up the TLDs".
This is not a viable option, though. Even though someone may think they're not using the domain, there's a good chance they could be using it (like using it for email even though the a record doesn't resolve to anything) or they could be using it as an investment.
Asking someone to give up a domain that "they're not using" is like asking someone to give up the vacant lot they're not using. It's real estate.
Anyways, I'm actually arguably in favour or a Land Value Tax. Land is a super fininte resource and holding onto it for no reason other than as an investment screws over anybody who isn't there first. This is great if you have land, for whatever reason, but not to great if you grow up poor and want to live anywhere near your place of work in a place like London where the property market is completely broken.
The domains landscape is similar, except that it is indeed easier to create new TLDs than manage the mess of domain speculation.
What if you're a bank and somebody gets a TLD like "yourbank.bank" with valid SSL and starts fishing people from yourbank.com?
What happens now? It's not like there's a single domain already - there are dozens, if not hundreds of TLDs.
The realistic answer is: the new TLDs don't matter, even just with .com, it's easy to get a similar enough domain that many people will fall for.
Either that, or they'll finally realize it's futile and stop that nonsense.
The new TLDs are a massive problem disguised as a solution in search of a problem.
Who benefits?
A few other sports specific domains are also nice, like .soccer, .tennis, .football ...
Almost all of the meaningful .com's .org's and .net's are gone. It's time we had new TLD's that make more sense.
I think that a "globally unique brand" will go the same way as a "globally unique username", for exactly the same reasons.
Goodbye "apple" hello "apple computers"... oh wait, that already happened...
If we only allow companies to have ".com" then which of these two companies, both called Apple, would have "apple.com"?
Having multiple TLDs allows for disambiguation. It's a good thing.
It's a shame that ICANN is polluting the internet like this.
Plus, what's actually wrong with vanity as far as what domain points a website? What is the benefit in having fewer TLDs?
what i have been noticing my redirect to search on unknown domain names has been failing more and more, cause is that there are too many domains other so if I type "domain names dog", browser can't send me to google anymore to find if there are domain names .dog, I just get host not found error. Granted this is not how most users use firefox host tab. However it is clear case where corporate greed breaks organically grown infrastructure, in our office we use 8.8.8.8 and thats how I know about it.
Domains can't have spaces, so if you type as such, you'll still get a search in any browser (that has search-in-URL-bar enabled, of course).
What kind of realistic search query without spaces and ending in ".dog" do you see yourself doing?
The only use case where domain name is actually used is when you need to tell someone to go to some website or give them your e-mail over the phone. Especially if it's your website. New TLDs are still fresh and people get confused. If it doesn't end with .com, they want to add .com themselves. You need to spend time and energy explaining - which would take a lot longer than just having an extra word in proper .com domain.
I guess people will get used to new TLDs in time. But that time is yet to come.
I wouldn't worry about that too much. The general public concept of the Internet is really not all that old (15-20 years). People will adjust remarkably quickly.
User confusion for one.
They also have a self interest in handling conflicts responsibly and being proactive about new laws, and the juridical status of domain ownership, because they're in it for the long run. I wish I could say the same about for example Verisign...
Then owning all the 2nd level domains would be prohibitively expensive and would actually be useful for people coming up with a good domain name.
And we have .bank launching, you have to actually be a financial institution in order to have a .bank domain.
We will be able to trust those new TLDs, this is all changing back (to the way it should be).
That would make ICANN mostly irrelevant in less than a year.
Also, it improves security, since you are already trusting your browser vendor and would no longer need to trust ICANN, registrars and the CA system as well.
As for why they would setup an alternate DNS system, they would get power over the DNS system and the money from domain registrations.
In exchange, users would get more security and website owners lower prices and more friendly policies (now the reputation of those companies is on the line, and they care more about it than ICANN since they are selling other things).
There's some anonymity risk though which might lead to strong opposition to the project if not addressed and while bundling and using Tor would work, it's not clear if Tor could take a few billion extra users doing tunneled DNS queries.
As soon as there was precedent and infrastructure for this, a huge number of state actors would either set this up maliciously, or start auctioning off country-specific DNS rights (aka start extorting money from companies -- "oh do you want to own google.com in <country>? that will be $2mm/yr").
It is interesting to think about why we are limiting the creativity here. Are we looking out for a human being's typical memory? A router's memory? Network capacity? All seem ample to support loads of new TLDs.