
.tel, .xxx and .mobi are all pointless and idiotic - profitbaron
http://blog.tommorris.org/post/3968125126/tel-xxx-and-mobi-are-all-pointless-and-idiotic
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duskwuff
I'd go a step further and suggest that _all_ of the new gTLDs are pointless
and idiotic:

\- .aero: if IATA airport codes were all registered domains here, it might be
useful, but they aren't, so it isn't.

\- .asia: asia is definitely a country </sarcasm>

\- .biz: sufficiently stupid that SpamAssassin has a rule for it

\- .cat: meow? seriously, I've only seen this used for vanity joke domains

\- .coop: there isn't a .llc, why is this any different?

\- .info: happy fun SEO land

\- .jobs: pity they won't take my registration for Blow, Inc.

\- .mobi: as noted

\- .museum: 1138 registered domains in 10 years is a sign of true irrelevance

\- .name: personal names are hardly unique identifiers

\- .pro: stupid hierarchy makes this one even more useless than you'd think

\- .tel: as noted

\- .travel: because .aero just wasn't enough

\- .xxx: as noted

Perhaps I'm just not seeing the possibilities, but I suspect that there's no
future for any of the gTLDs beyond com/net/org, and possibly a few of the up-
and-coming IDN gTLDs. The future of domain names is really in better unique
names, not a more complex hierarchy.

~~~
citricsquid
whoa there, slow down, there's _.cat_?!

~~~
die_sekte
Catalan culture. A regional-cultural TLD. If small countries get TLDs, why
shouldn't a tightly connected culture of ~5 million get one too?

~~~
anghyflawn
I'm all for .cat, but I can see the arguments against. People are already
campaigning for .cym for Wales, so where do we stop? Do all the regional
communities on Spain get one (Basque country, Asturias, Galicia, the list goes
on). Do the Saami in Scandinavia get one? (They have their own parliaments, so
why not TLDs?) What about Native Americans / First Nations? At least being a
country is a criterion that works 95+ percent of the time

~~~
vacri
Wales _isn't_ a country!? I would have thought of all people, someone with a
handle like "anghyflawn" might be a bit more compassionate to the plight of
the cymry...

~~~
DrJokepu
Wales is not a sovereign state, which is what "country" means in this context.

~~~
vacri
If you're going to abuse Wikipedia that way, you should be referring to him as
Jimbo.

------
kjksf
I think that this misses forest for the trees.

There should be no restrictions on the domain names at all. We only have the
arbitrary segmentation into m.n form (where n is a limited set of (org, com
etc.)) for technical reasons.

Preferably, there should be no such restrictions at all. Or the n part should
be an infinite set. But I don't see why people are partisan about restricting
the available namespace.

~~~
po
We already had a de-facto infinite set... it was the _m_ part. We could either
buy up common variations of, or ignore the _n_ part. Now it is becoming
obvious that ICANN views n as the new m for one of two reasons: money or
stupidity. I'm still not sure it can't be both.

If I'm a major corporation, do I now have to buy up my .n tld? Cannon did.
Will IBM have to buy .ibm? Will apple have to buy .apple?

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kragen
> Politically, we should push for an actual democratic version of ICANN, and
> get a bunch of wise Unix neckbeard types to join and require all TLDs to get
> a supermajority vote of ICANN or a future counterpart to ICANN.

Karl Auerbach was the wise Unix neckbeard type who was on ICANN's board for a
while. You can read about his efforts to create ICANN transparency:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Auerbach>

------
orangecat
_If I were an American, I’d now be saying something like “ICANN have jumped
the shark”_

"has". Although the British pluralization actually does make more sense.

~~~
derleth
> Although the British pluralization actually does make more sense.

Not really: One organization is one thing, logically speaking.

But it was amusing of him to get that wrong while explicitly attempting to
sound American.

~~~
chc
It gets really confusing, though. For example, "The Jets is doing really well
this season," "The Monkees was awesome if somewhat cheesy." One organization
is one thing, logically speaking, and teams and bands are just as much
organizations as are corporations.

~~~
coderdude
The reason it sounds wrong the way you're saying it is because the team and
band you listed have pluralized names.

~~~
chc
Yes, I'm well aware of that. The point is that "The Jets" names an
organization just as much as "ICANN" does. Americans do not apply the "groups
are singular" rule evenly. British usage is actually more logical and
consistent IMO.

~~~
coderdude
Americans go by what makes sense linguistically rather than the blanket usage
of 'have' and 'are'. British usage is more consistent (usage-wise) but half
the time it sounds wrong because "Google have employees" doesn't make sense by
other rules of English.

~~~
alextgordon
Sounds wrong to _you_. Just as the American usage sounds wrong to _me_. It's
utterly subjective and completely meaningless. Might as well be arguing that
people in Scotland talk wrong.

~~~
edanm
Actually, if both ways "sound wrong" to people who aren't used to them, but
one way is consistent, then I'd argue it's the objectively "better" way.

By the way I'm used to the American usage, myself.

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delineal
None of it is idiotic. It is just different than before.

This creates greater competition in the registrar market which will keep
domain prices down. It also dilutes the value of any particular domain name,
which is a Good Thing (tm). I would be very happy to see the whole domaining
business model disappear.

The proliferation of new domains is one of the issues I'm grappling with in my
work on delineal.com.

~~~
rlpb
It doesn't do this at all. It just shifts the crowded .com space into the root
space, causes more confusion for everyone, and eliminates the possibility of
any future expansion. Once a name is allocated, it's gone forever - you can't
just demand it back or change the rules.

~~~
delineal
It doesn't move anything onto the root space, AFAIK. Do you have a link
supporting that assertion? My understanding is that this just creates more
TLDs under which domains can be registered.

There is no _more_ confusion created. (Almost) all existing TLDs have domains
in them that should not be there based on the original "purpose" of the TLDs.

The .com domain only ever made sense in the context of a single language and a
single country. It's only crowded because it is one of the first ones that
anyone could register in. If all the TLDs that exist today existed at the
beginning, the landscape would be very different.

The notion that "once a name is allocated, it's gone forever" is no different
than today. More TLDs provide more opportunities for similarly named companies
or organizations to have some form of their name. It "prevents" large
companies from dominating all forms of a name.

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citricsquid
.mobi is from way before we had smart phones, so the difference between mobile
and desktop web _did_ exist then.

~~~
carussell
Are you suggesting it doesn't exist anymore?

~~~
jawee
The gap is way shrinking. The mobile web originally meant browsers that barely
supported HTML (does WAP ring a bell?), picture support was sketchy, and
bandwidth was a major concern as connections were very slow. Now the majority
of mobile use that use it more than once in a blue moon have the same
rendering engines as most desktops on connections that rival (in my case
surpass) what we have available through telcom ISPs. Screen sizes are really
the only difference oftentimes. Indeed, even the plug-in landscape is similar
as many smartphones over Flash plug-ins and so forth.

~~~
carussell
It's not about whether the technologies are supported. It's about the
difference between what you get when you're identified as browsing on a mobile
device versus anything else.

------
cookiecaper
He's missing the point on .xxx. No person with any vague understanding of the
internet thinks that they can block pornography entirely from a person
interested in getting to it. It's not that hard to get around filters because
porn is everywhere online, but it can still be useful to filter it, even
though a determined individual can obviously bypass your block. Here's why:

1\. First and foremost, filtration software isn't just about adversarial
blocking. It can stop your grandma from getting tricked into going
lemonparty.org. This is a big one.

2\. Children looking for porn without permission are often under non-ideal
constraints, like a time limit before someone else comes home. If you can get
fairly good coverage, the kid will have that much less time, and many kids
aren't going to invest in figuring out how to bypass it; they'd just as soon
go to their room and fap there, or go to a friend's house where there is
unmonitored access.

3\. Filtration can be used to demonstrate a good-faith effort to keep your
network and environment safe (at a library or net cafe, for instance). Same
principles as number two here: if it's difficult enough and the user is under
time constraints, they'll just wait until later.

There are other good reasons, but that should suffice. .xxx isn't about
keeping a sophisticated, determined opponent out, and that's rarely successful
no matter what measures you take. The internet is always going to have porn
and there shouldn't be any enforcement forcing adult content onto xxx.

However, if xxx sees wide adoption, and the xxx sites move off of com
(redirect), that's a _big_ weight off the shoulders of blacklist and
filtration vendors. To be able to block a whole huge namespace like that,
where xxx is now hosting 30% or some other significant number of the new adult
content that would have been on com if not for the xxx TLD, that's a big
efficiency gain, even if you still have to filter com.

~~~
xyzzyz
> However, if xxx sees wide adoption, and the xxx sites move off of com
> (redirect), that's a big weight off the shoulders of blacklist and
> filtration vendors.

So, they should move to .xxx to facilitate being blocked? Somehow I do not see
it.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yes. As I mentioned above, I think it will become the friendly thing for
commercial, bona fide purveyors to do, just as it's friendly now to have a
page that says "If you're under 18, click here to leave!" I think any page
that currently has such an intro will move to xxx for the social goodwill, and
that any page that doesn't won't.

~~~
joebadmo
But the "under 18" landing page doesn't actually block anyone, including those
under 18 from continuing on with the site, so there's really no incentive not
do it. If they move to a guaranteed to be filtered tld, they'd explicitly be
asking for less traffic, which seems unlikely to me.

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chronomex
I have a .tel. It's almost useless--you get to publish DNS records through the
registrar's mickey-mouse PHP thing, and you can only really push TXT and NAPTR
and MX records.

The only reason I bought it is because I am a member of an informal
organization whose name is "Shadytel", so an @shady.tel address looked real
spiffy at the time.

~~~
derleth
> Shadytel is now offering reduced comfort noise as a tariffed service.

(from the Twitter feed:
<https://twitter.com/#!/shadytel/status/47150260157562880> )

I'm aware I can pay for that with my Diner's Club, but will you accept
Krugerrands if I can get them on the noon autogyro?

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cabalamat
> _I’ve heard that some of the Wikileaks and Pirate Bay crowd are working on a
> distributed alternative to DNS._

I suspect that this will be the ultimate solution to this sort of nonsense.

~~~
huhtenberg
It could also open the floodgates of phishing. Decentralized trust is one hell
of a problem.

~~~
bergie
Then you just build the trust on SSL certificates instead of DNS

~~~
ashconnor
Destroying the de-centralized part in the process.

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Jach
When there's an effective way to take the domains of squatters away from them,
I'll be fine with just .com, .net, .org. Or screw the dots and just have
"google". (I think that may be where it's going, considering Chrome tries to
hide the http and www isn't needed in many cases.)

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freejack
There are lots of stupid startups. Why would the ones behind these top-level
domains be any different? ICANN's role isn't to pick the winners, its to
manage the overall framework. Perhaps .sex will succeed where .xx fails. Or
not. But you can't blame ICANN for failed .tld business models anymore than
you can blame YC for funding failed startup business models. Its just part of
the landscape. Now stop ranting about it and go do something productive. ;-)

~~~
tommorris
I'm not blaming ICANN for failed business models. I'm blaming ICANN for
turning what ought to be a matter of public interest (i.e. the governance of
the Internet) and turning it into a situation where you can turn up with a
half-baked idea and a big pile of cash and be able to start churning out new
domain names.

------
robryan
No matter how many are added you will still have to assume that people who are
after a site and actually type in a domain name will pick the .com, so no
matter how many alternatives you own you won't get that traffic.

The exception of course is when you can build it into your website name like
.io and .ly. Also browsers are moving away from domain names so being first on
Google (just as hard if someone prominent is already on the .com you want)
will be more important.

~~~
stoney
If I'm after a UK or Australian company I'm as likely to try .co.uk or .com.au
first - but only because I've lived in both of those places so I'm familiar
with the extensions.

~~~
robryan
That's true, at least with .com.au you have to have a registered business so
you will usually get the company you are after.

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bromley
_"little Johnny can't visit any website where the domain component of the URL
ends in the string “.xxx”, in which case all little Johnny has to do is go to
a web-based nslookup tool, type in the domain he wants to look at, and then
replace the domain with that IP address."_

Sounds like a good opportunity for nslookup tools to justify requiring a
credit-card payment for certain types of lookup.

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tuhin
The joke was fine till .me, .co and .tv but .cat, .tel and .xxx? That sure is
bound to be of use to nobody but the ones selling the domain.

The point where he questions if he is desktop or mobile, is actually very
critical. The web is one. Especially with new ways of designing and developing
a site including things like media queries make the entire point of a .mobi
appear like a joke to me.

~~~
Macha
.tv is for Tevula. And .me is another country's abbreviation (Montenegro I
believe). Just because they're being abused doesn't mean they're a joke.

~~~
tuhin
I actually know that! I own two .me domains and was about to buy .tv domain.
Also the .tv domain was launched with high hopes of TV Networks buying enough
and paying enough to support the country's economy. Of course that did not
happen.

Looks like they were made with the purpose of being abused.

------
InclinedPlane
Most new TLDs have been pointless and idiotic. Blame ICANN.

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phlux
I can see a valid use for .xxx -- but .mobi is the lamest of them all.

.mobi should have been .mbl or just .m

To make the _mobile_ TLD ___longer_ __than allthe others, that is just plain
stupid.

~~~
iamdave
Honestly, I think the current format used by most m.website.tld makes the most
sense. It immediately tells you you're going to a mobile site in the case that
your screen cuts off the full URL.

Too, it's pretty consistent when a lot of sites use subdomains to indicate
you're going to a different portion of the same domain, i.e. a blog
(blog.site.tld) or an estore (shop.site.tld) or even a 404 page
(404.site.tld). 'm' should tell you then that you're on the mobile page of the
same site, especially when we're now seeing so many domains that a .com can be
a completely different, totally nonaffiliated group from the .net

~~~
tommorris
The only prominent site I've seen that does it a bit strangely is Wikipedia:

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/>

Which makes sense, but I can never remember whether it is en.m.wikipedia.org
or m.en.wikipedia.org

(And the fact that the iPad goes by default to the Mobile version despite the
fact that it's not appropriate for the size of the device.)

------
mkramlich
I also think TLD's have jumped the shark. Let's abolish .com/.org/etc and
force everybody to live in a more unified domain name space, so we're left
with (at best), addresses like: www.google, graph.facebook, api.cnn, etc. The
suffixes have been abused so much they are no longer reliable (see bit.ly that
wildly popular Libyan website -- wait, what?), and even if there are people
camping on foo.com's, we also have the problem where say foo.com and foo.net
and foo.ly are all unrelated to one another and run by different people. Yes,
legacy code, I understand, pain, etc. More of an idealistic rant. The
increasing inelegance and hypocrisy and over-complexity of TLD's are getting
to me just like the OA's author.

~~~
d0mine
The same effect [as abolishing all TLDs] could be achieved in a backward
compatible way by allowing arbitrary TLDs i.e., google, facebook, cnn would be
TLDs in www.google, graph.facebook, api.cnn addresses.

~~~
vacri
Doesn't this reduce our available address space? What about all the sites that
currently have three different entities at their .com, .net and .org
addresses? What happens to ubuntu.com and ubuntu.org, two different groups?
Where we are now, getting rid of TLDs would cause immense unnecessary
conflict.

~~~
d0mine
_"allowing"_ means that .ubuntu may exist _in addition to_ ubuntu.tld

.ubuntu is a TLD itself (or it could be thought of as having an empty tld)

