
The death of a TLD - janvdberg
https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/the-death-of-a-tld
======
Lucent
This isn't what makes investing in other gTLDs a danger. It's that some are
offering registration for pennies, causing them to be almost entirely
populated by "bad" domains. For example, .fun is 80% spammy domains, creating
a strong incentive for all manner of services to blacklist the entire TLD.

[https://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/tlds/](https://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/tlds/)

~~~
walrus01
The other issue is with dark UI patterns in third party resellers, sure you
can get some weird gTLD for $1 for the first year. But then if you actually
build something that uses it, maybe the next year and the third year you find
that the price is now $89/year. Totally undisclosed before you buy it.

At least if you buy a traditional ccTLD like .ca , or a regular TLD in .com ,
.net , whatever, you can expect pricing to remain consistent.

~~~
jolmg
But then it sounds like the $89 is not the general price of the TLD but rather
your site as determined by the rate on how the registrar's been receiving
queries for your domain on their DNS servers. Can't you "reset" the price by
transferring to another registrar?

~~~
buckminster
No, because it's not actually the resellers doing this. It's the people who
own the tld doing the scammy pricing.

~~~
jolmg
You mean the registry has the registrars do that? Do registries even have view
on the popularity of different domains below their TLD? I didn't realize that
they received requests from resolvers that included second-level domains. I
thought it was only the registrars that received that, not the registries, but
I guess misunderstood DNS if so, because it makes sense.

~~~
buckminster
It's not popularity based. Everyone pays more to renew and it's a lot more
than the initial price.

------
firekvz
> With that, comes the question. Was anything lost?

Well, the real question is, is there some regulation from ICANN in regards of
terminating a gTLD who is not for private use? I can understand that if I want
to waste 185k into my very own gTLD then I can terminate it whenever I want,
but what happens when I commercialize it?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
That's a great question. There's never really been any likelihood of the
operators of .com, .net, etc. going out of business, but a lot of these new
TLDs very well could, and many were bought by smaller parties that aren't your
Amazons or Googles.

Does ICANN have a plan for transition for failed TLDs? It's not unrealistic to
suggest the owners of .space or something could just go belly up.

~~~
ci5er
> There's never really been any likelihood of the operators of .com, .net,
> etc. going out of business

ORLY? Where were you in the summer of '87?

~~~
eropple
Gestating, personally.

But I think it was pretty obvious that the poster you're replying to was
referring to the commercialized era of the internet.

~~~
ci5er
Thanks, Joke Explainer. I would have never got that.

(Although the other theory is that the poster was born after 1994 (not long
odds on that one, given the local demographics), and doesn't know much about
the Internet's history prior to Eternal September.)

EDIT: The Gestating thing was clever. Thank you.

------
pdpi
Interestingly, two of the dead TLDs (.sapo, .meo) were owned by the same
Portuguese ISP/media company — both tied to specific brands, neither of which
really justified a TLD

------
young_unixer
Question: would it be correct to have an email of the type name@TLD? Example:

John@com

Is this kind of name spec-compliant?

~~~
ajdlinux
The operators of the .ai TLD for Anguilla have done this for a while and hit
interesting bugs in mail clients.

(Also notable, they have an A record on the hostname "ai." \- you can see
their website at [http://ai./](http://ai./))

~~~
gcb0
the dot at the end is an ambiguity in a few specs. if I recall correctly, dns
requires to end in a dot as it signals the root servers or something, but
obviously can be left empty.

then browsers started to support it, but over time bugs pilled up and now it
is treated as a different hostname (e.g. "www.example.org" is completely
different to your browser than "www.example.org." even though they are the
same to the dns spec)

then tls specs considers the dot in an earlier version, and they should be the
same but because of the browser bugs it is all too much fun. my bank actually
has a server that replies the same for domains with or without the root dot.
but they only signed their certs for the no dot name, which again, is the
same, but for browsers is kinda of not.

ah! living Standards.

~~~
phicoh
The dot at the end has a technical meaning in two different contexts. The
first is to disable search lists in the DNS stub resolver. If you try to look
up, say 'ai', then the sub resolver is likely to append your current domain
name during the lookup. Looking up 'ai.' disables that.

The other use is in DNS zone files where everything that does not end in a '.'
get the name of the zone appended.

The for mail (SMTP) the dot at the end is implicitly present, and adding one
is not allowed.

HTML/HTTP basically doesn't define semantics with respect to the dot at the
end. That's why "www.example.org" and "www.example.org." are different. They
are different strings, and nobody defined them to be equivalent. At the same
time, the name is just passed to the stub resolver in many cases. So search
lists may be applied under the hood.

~~~
JdeBP
Untrue. RFC 1738 was in fact quite explicit on this subject. It was almost
universally disregarded.

* [http://jdebp.info./FGA/web-fully-qualified-domain-name.html](http://jdebp.info./FGA/web-fully-qualified-domain-name.html)

------
Jaruzel
I'm probably alone in this... but I would like to see the registration of a
new TLD that has restrictions on it where you cannot run ads on sites that use
that TLD, or domain park, or re-sell at profit. It could become a nice little
corner of the internet where people like us can run stuff for each other, and
the unwashed masses never visit.

Our own little club under one TLD as it were...

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _or re-sell at profit_

That's not really enforceable, is it?

> _It could become a nice little corner of the internet where people like us
> can run stuff for each other, and the unwashed masses never visit._

Why not register a domain and offer subdomains for sale?

~~~
ballenf
Each person could have their own 'city' and being geographically-based, you
could call it something like geocities. Or, if everyone has their own 'space'
that they think of as 'my'...

~~~
Jaruzel
Great Idea. Do you think the users would like animated gifs and sparkly
background images?

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's the best part! We let them style their own website, so they can show
off their own aesthetic!

------
skrebbel
I don't understand this. Eg in the Sony case, why wouldn't they just hold on
to it? They did the hard work, they paid up, keeping it on is not a bigger
burden than keeping a registered trademark globally, I'd assume? Does anybody
understand?

~~~
TsomArp
Saving money maybe? I believe it is 185.000 per year.

------
ipsin
If I'm reading this [1] right, some TLDs can be renewed by a different party.
In that case, "link rot" might become wholesale link poisoning.

[1] [https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registry-
agreemen...](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/gtld-registry-agreement-
termination-2015-10-09-en) "...ICANN's Preliminary Determination shall not
prohibit ICANN from delegating the gTLD pursuant to a future application
process for the delegation of top-level-domains, subject to any processes ...
intended to protect the rights of third parties."

------
fipple
Overall the gTLDs are a good thing because some of them will become
legitimized alternatives to .com for consumers, and thus weaken the power of
domain squatters.

~~~
duskwuff
> [...] some of them will become legitimized alternatives to .com for
> consumers [...]

Like what?

New gTLDs have been around since 2013 -- five years. I can't think of a single
one that I'd consider as legitimate as .com. I can, however, think of a bunch
that are frequently used for spam and other abuse...

~~~
fastball
I think .app could have a bright future in the age of web apps. It has only
just recently been opened up by Google for public registration[0].

0: [https://get.app/](https://get.app/)

~~~
ChristianBundy
Why do you need a walled garden around your DNS? I'm not sure that involving
Google in _everything_ we do is a good idea.

I wonder how many websites are served entirely through Google. Browsing with
Chrome or Chromium, custom DNS set to 8.8.8.8, domain name from .app, "cached"
by AMP, serving an Angular app with Material UI, originally hosted on Google
Cloud.

~~~
Tepix
... showing Google Maps, using Google Analytics, Google webmaster tools,
custom Google search, offering Google payments and some Google docs forms.

Google wouldn't even have to index it.. they know everything about it already.

------
CaliforniaKarl
For those TLDs that had certs, I’m curious: Should those certs have been
revoked, since some/all of the associated domains no longer exist?

~~~
djsumdog
Why? I mean the certs are still valid, just for a domain that no longer exists
on root DNS servers (You can still publish them to internal DNS). I mean,
they'll expire and be non-renewable eventually anyway.

~~~
lucb1e
Until someone re-registers the TLD and can now MITM some internal traffic, if
it is indeed used internally.

I can see the argument for invalidation, even if unlikely. The much more
realistic scenario is where you get a cert for 2 years for any ordinary
domain, even if your domain expires next month.

~~~
johannes1234321
How could they - without private key? - By not revoking and having certificate
transparency we rather can see if somebody else tries to take over the domain
with a new cert.

~~~
lucb1e
With a new cert indeed. One would have to proactively look at transparency
logs instead of retroactively, which afaik only the biggest companies on the
planet (like Google) do, or maybe not even them.

------
zeristor
Was the .boots TLD for the Boots chemists?

Companies are quick to register domains, I had to manage about 1200 or so at
my last job, and migrate them to Route53.

Perhaps a manager thought it was a good idea, and IT said No!

------
ranger207
The article says "you can find the letter publicly here" but doesn't provide a
link. Typo? I'd like to some of the other "interesting reads."

------
exabrial
The only purpose for a tld should be like .bank and have it cost $100,000
registration fee and similar verified stuff

~~~
labster
Pay $185k for gTLD, get $100k per second level domain. Nice business sense.

And there's still be some random millionaire to register piggy.bank.

------
LambdaComplex
My personal opinion is that TLDs should be "generic"\--.com for commercial,
.org for organizations, country-specific TLDs, etc.--and that allowing private
corporations to register TLDs for their own brands (like .xperia for instance)
was a mistake

------
bsimpson
I'm amazed both that so many brands bought TLDs and that so many are
rescinding them so soon, especially relatively tech-savvy ones like HTC.

------
perl4ever
I wish there was a TLD that corresponded to the last two letters of my
surname, so I could register a domain and have an email like John@D.oe.

~~~
robinson-wall
My HN username is my surname... so naturally I snapped up
[https://nick.rw/](https://nick.rw/)

I wondered if they'd refuse it, for being close to "nic.rw" but they don't
seem to use it.

------
jfoutz
Before I read the article, I thought it was .nato. Sort of a testament to how
little I remember non big six or country code tlds.

------
walrus01
Regarding Sony specifically, my first thought was "... and nothing of value
was lost".

------
1996
This is concerning: imagine you have a unique domain opportunity for your
company in a smal, up-and-coming gTLD.

If you get it, yoj have to worry about the gTLD dying, and still get the .com

So you stay in .com with a sucky name

~~~
macintux
Per other comments there’s a recovery plan in place for public TLDs.

~~~
1996
When I read it, the other comment said the fate was uncertain if the other
company had issues - unless it is recursive, there is only 1 level of
redudancy

~~~
CydeWeys
ICANN has access to the escrow files and they will find someone to run it if
necessary. There are dozens of registry service providers.

------
aembleton
Full list of TLDs [https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-
domain.txt](https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt)

------
PrimeDirective
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17557295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17557295)

Similar stuff

------
ezequiel-garzon
As a suggestion for the author, the omission of apostrophes in contractions is
annoyingly distracting. Is this a new trend?

~~~
dudul
I really hope not.

------
matte_black
$185k is the price for your own TLD? That sounds super cheap. I would have
expected millions.

~~~
icebraining
$185, plus the infrastructure and know-how to run it.

~~~
dannypgh
I think the ability to setup BIND is easier to acquire than $185,000.

~~~
mcpherrinm
185,000 is cheaper than the cost of two full time employees, which is the
minimum for 24/7/365 oncall.

I assume nobody is going to pay $185k for a hobby project.

~~~
Kostic
It really depends where your techs live. 185k is enough money to pay a 4
person team of highly skilled techs in south-eastern Europe for over one year,
for example.

------
dingo_bat
I never understood why a TLD is a big deal in any real sense. If ICANN wanted
they could make the whole web address a single string. No need for a separate
TLD. It's like the filename's extension.

~~~
zeeZ
But then the DNS root servers would have to know every single domain in
existence. The current system works because the higher level servers only need
to know who below them in the hirarchy is responsible for the next subdomain.

How would you resolve a single string?

~~~
afandian
Replace hierarchical partitioning with keyspace partitioning (eg hash
buckets). A fundamental difference in architecture, but so was GP's idea.

------
kilon
in other news google is integrated in the browsers address bar, scientists are
baffled how it managed to fit in such small space and how it got there.

