

Get rid of all Top Level Domains - kitcar
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1320467&cid=28884865

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run4yourlives
Sounds good, but there are a few problems for flowerpot.tn.us to consider.

For example, under the current rules flowerpot.com can be a mom and pop shop
with a national reach. flowerpot.tn.us? Not so much, especially if there is a
flowerpot.ny.us. As people starting up, that would kill many of our
businesses.

This issue gets even worse outside of national boundaries, especially for
those of us who live in small markets but sell to larger ones as a matter of
purpose. Take abebooks.com for instance. Abe started as a small, local used
book store in Victoria, BC Canada. It is by all accounts a major niche player,
having been acquired by amazon. I highly doubt abebooks.bc.ca gets half the
American traffic that made it a success.

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nico
I understand what you are saying, but what's the best alternative? Should
there be no country-specific domains then? Maybe instead of geographically-
specific domains, we could have industry-specific domains, very much like what
TLDs were intended for in the first place.

It doesn't seem like there's a straight and simple solution for TLDs,
squatting and the whole domain regulation problem.

~~~
run4yourlives
I think the alternative is the status quo. In other words, I don't think
"squatting" is such a problem that we need to go redefining the internet.

Are all the good names taken? Of course, but apply a little creativity, and
the problem goes away. We all know what delicious is and that name is a
nightmare.

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DanielStraight
Is he seriously suggesting that governments control domain names? Because
that's what it sounds like to me. If so, that's possibly the worst idea I've
ever heard in my life. Seriously. I cannot think of a worse idea.

~~~
drewcrawford
I'm republican and libertarian as the day is long, and I hate to see the
expansion of government.

That said, domains need to be regulated by SOMEONE, and ICANN isn't doing a
very good job (not that some government bureau would do any better).

What I got from the poster (and what would be cool) is if ICANN or some
similar body were bound by some of the principles we've developed over the
years from trademark law (required to be using a name to own it, can't just
squat, etc.)

The other thing I don't like about ICANN is the appeals process. Can a (US
state/federal) judge order a domain transfer, like in a trademark dispute
case? At what level? What about international trademark disputes? Perhaps
unfairly, I've always been skeptical of "arbitration" or things that look like
a legal proceeding but really aren't. And the legal waters of domain disputes
have always seemed rather murky to me (ianal).

~~~
tdavis
I think a vast majority of the current problems would be fixed by auto-
releasing squatted domains. There are no good domains left because they've all
been squatted. They're hardly all taken up by actual sites.

~~~
drewcrawford
How do you enforce that? (serious question) Is there some automated polling
method to see if a site has any activity? Are there "squatting police" that
somebody pays to investigate these things? Are the people who want to use the
domain required to bring some sort of action (lawsuit or arbitration
proceeding)?

~~~
tdavis
I wish I had some ideas, I honestly do. All I know is that [I feel] the
current system is woefully broken. How to fix it can be left up to smarter men
than I.

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justin_vanw
Ok, this is my second alternative to the current domain name registration
system.

All domains are sold for 1 year at a time. At the end of each year, they are
auctioned off to the highest bidder, with the exception of domains that are
identical in name to a registered and established trademark, and is a .com
(for for profit) or .org (for not-for-profit). The net proceeds from the
auction go to the previous holder of the domain. If you hold a domain, and you
win the bidding to keep it, that money goes to me in the form of walmart gift
cards.

Ok, why do it like this? Domain squatting becomes impossible. Since the
domains are re-sold every year in an auction, buying domains becomes like
buying stock options. Maybe you can make money on them, but you might lose
money too, since there is no assurance that the bidder who wins one of your
domains will bid as much as you did the previous year to get it. Also, since
domains are bid in an auction, you can't wait until there is interest in some
domain and then squeeze someone for everything you can get. If someone wants
some domain you own, they bid for it. Unless you or someone else is willing to
pay more to keep it, they get it for what they bid for it.

If you have a trademark, you get to renew your domain that is identical in
name to that trademark without bidding (you pay some fee, like is the current
system). However, you have to acquire the domain somehow. If the car company
wants nissan.com, they either have to convince the current owner to sell it to
them, or they have to bid on it during it's yearly auction.

Ok, this makes it seem like the current owner of nissan.com is going to get
screwed, since he can't pay as much as the car company is willing to bid.
However, nissan is likely to be willing to pay lots of money for that domain.
Other bidders also know the car company is willing to pay a lot for the
domain, and would be willing to buy it and then hold it for a year or
privately sell it to the car company. However, nobody will pay more than they
think they can get for it later.

This system is purely awesome.

~~~
justin_vanw
Downmodding this was highly inappropriate. This is purely a description of an
on topic idea.

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makecheck
I fully agree with the first point, that the new top-level domains are
generally useless and should go away.

But country domains aren't enough. It's like the difference between the yellow
pages and white pages; it helps to organize businesses and groups by purpose,
while having a more generic by-location classification system for everything
else.

It is also useful for domains to be conspicuous so that they can be
automatically recognized as domains (e.g. for linking). There is _no doubt_
what "foobar.com" is, but "foobar" is without context (and arguably,
"foobar.cc" is more likely to seem like a source file than a country domain).

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donaldc
This is all academic. Top-level non-country domains like .com aren't going to
be eliminated.

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justin_vanw
I have a much better idea. Get rid of _all_ domain names. Just use some sort
of IP-like code that is basically random. (You can't use IP because IP's
change and you may have multiple ones, or use a content distribution system,
same reasons as now).

Example: <http://ewaouacswkaoieljoewa90d>

Step 2: Browsers don't emphasize the domain name anymore. No more bar to type
domains in directly, you would have to open a modal dialog to type or paste
one in. Since the url's aren't memorable anyway, it doesn't matter that you
don't see them. If you are concerned about people spoofing your domain, you're
already using certs to prevent that anyway.. right?

3\. How do people find your site now!? The same way everybody does anyway,
Bing. (Ok, I didn't want to say Google because this system of going without
domain names shouldn't rely on a single company like google for it to work,
although it does. This isn't so bad, since the internet de facto already does
rely on google to function, we just have these short, memorable domain names
that aren't necessary also.

Having domain names is _retarded_. What if you had to get a street address
that was also the name of your business?? What is the point of it?

~~~
makecheck
Well for one thing, web browsers aren't the only place domain names appear.

Network administrators are people, too. Suppose you had to administer a
server; the task would be almost impossible without domain name patterns.

Take a proxy server, for instance. Right now, I can set it up by saying that
domains "*.xyz.com" are local to my network, forcing everything else to go
through the proxy. If every location were an incomprehensible name (as you
suggest), the only way to configure the server would be to list every
obfuscated name. It also wouldn't be future-proof; without a pattern, the
server couldn't possibly determine how to handle a new machine name, so
someone would have to go in and add more obfuscated names to the list.

~~~
justin_vanw
I see what you are saying. why can't you say *.alsfjosajlksajdf, just the same
as now? It's harder to remember, but encryption keys are literally impossible
to remember and people maintain lists of those.

So to be clear, the idea is just to take away any choice when you buy a domain
name. Since people don't use domain names much to navigate around, and tend to
use google, this won't change much.

The domain is hidden and ugly, but otherwise works as per usual, perhaps I
should have been explicit about that.

Something else I should have been more explicit about: The whole point is to
make it impossible to have squatting and lawsuits about domain names. Let a
search engine decide what is the best 'flower' site, not who happened to buy
flower.com in 1994. The current system inherently favors existing sites over
new sites, which is silly.

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eli
So I have to remember what state YCombinator is based in to find the site? I
think I'll pass

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kitcar
Not my post, but thought the author makes a compelling argument for moving to
a country code only domain name system.

~~~
jpwagner
compelling?

the problem the author wants to solve is people assigning value to names. not
only will his idea not work for his specific goal, but he's not really taking
into account a few other variables that also need to be optimized.

