
ICANN’s First Test of Accountability - ayh
https://afilias.info/blogs/web-icanns-first-test-accountability
======
byuu
> Competition drives innovation and improves consumer choice through ensuring:
> (i) market-based pricing; (ii) a widely available variety of unrestricted
> TLDs; (iii) improved quality of service (e.g. highly available and reliable
> systems); and (iv) improved customer service.

How did allowing corporations like Google to purchase generic gTLDs like .dev
and refuse to allow the public access to any of them ensure these goals,
especially (ii)? :/

Restricted gTLDs should have only been for trademarked company names, like
.google or .microsoft

~~~
tom-lord
> Restricted gTLDs should have only been for trademarked company names, like
> .google or .microsoft

Unfortunately however, there are a _lot_ of grey areas... To name a few:

* Amazon have been in a long dispute with the Brazilian government, over the right to operate a .amazon TLD - as the Brazilians claim it should instead be related to the rainforest.

* On the other hand, Amazon _have_ secured TLDs such as .prime, which could also be disputed. Apple have won .apple, Sky have won .sky, ... the list goes on.

* Sometimes, the conflicts can even be with foreign languages. For example, Ferrero are now the registry operator for .kinder - but as this is the German word for "children", it's been the cause for similar debate.

Also, with regards to your concern that there is a lack of variety in
available unrestricted TLDs - I disagree; if anything, there are far _too
many_ (there's hundreds!!).

~~~
byuu
> Unfortunately however, there are a lot of grey areas...

Certainly. Ideally, I'd have left it as .com, .net, .org.

> the Brazilians claim it should instead be related to the rainforest.

How many TLDs does a rainforest need, anyway? :P

> Apple have won .apple, Sky have won .sky, ... the list goes on.

I'm certainly particularly interested in .dev, because I'd like to have a .dev
domain. I think there's a lot more people who are developers that would want a
.dev than apples that would want a .apple domain ;)

(I actually use /etc/hosts to map byuu.dev to my VPS' IP when I'm setting up a
new box before deploying it to the world.)

> Also, with regards to your concern that there is a lack of variety in
> available unrestricted TLDs - I disagree; if anything, there are far too
> many (there's hundreds!!).

Still wishing someone would buy .emu for people to use. Anyone have a few
hundred thousand dollars lying around for a good cause? :D

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Certainly. Ideally, I'd have left it as .com, .net, .org.

(And .edu?)

Ideally, we would never have had more than one TLD; even before the new rounds
of TLDs showed up, people found it annoying and confusing to have example.org
and example.com go to two different places. Why did we need more than one TLD
in the first place, other than as a license to mint money in the form of
domain registration fees? I don't think it makes much sense as an
organizational mechanism.

~~~
byuu
I suspect if there was a flat gTLD with no suffixes, everyone would have
domain names that looked more like AOL screen names (lots of numbers after the
names.)

I'm okay with a few TLDs, but the original distinction is kind of vague.
There's really no distinguishing characteristics between .com and .net, and
even though for some reason .org became popular with open source, a lot of OSS
sites (including mine) are not organizations. If not for Google, .dev would
have been a great one for developer sites.

What I don't like is the idea of adding an infinite number of gTLDs. It's
bound to do nasty things: break a bunch of old URL matching regular
expressions, collide with some poor businesses that made bad choices for their
internal networks, etc.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> I suspect if there was a flat gTLD with no suffixes, everyone would have
> domain names that looked more like AOL screen names (lots of numbers after
> the names.)

I don't tend to see lots of numbers in domain names today, even in popular
TLDs like .com.

~~~
byuu
Because there are alternatives. You can grab foo.(net,org,io,country-code,etc)
if foo.com is already taken.

~~~
tom-lord
That was the whole point in theory, yes. But in reality, almost all new gTLD
registrations are being made as brand protection, and redirecting to the
company's existing .com domain. Only a very small minority of websites are
trying to _build a brand_ on a new gTLD domain name.

------
hackuser
Dumb question: Why do we need generic TLDs at all? Why can't I associate any
unique name I want with my IP addresses in my DNS records? Why shouldn't we
use "[https://ycombinator"](https://ycombinator")?

Is it due only to the legacy of DNS? I suspect I'm missing something obvious,
but even a quick search didn't reveal the answer.

~~~
startling
How do you decide which nameservers to trust about the "ycombinator" domain?
What happens if I advertise a nameserver with that domain?

~~~
hackuser
Use root servers like we do now. I'm not asking about doing away with DNS
completely, just TLDs.

~~~
startling
Got it. Then ICANN (or whoever) controls all websites, and is responsible for
their infrastructure. That may or may not be better than what we have.

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nickodell
I agree with the proposed remedy, but I wouldn't call this a test of
accountability. If NTIA oversight of VeriSign didn't prevent this, I don't see
how NTIA oversight of ICANN would.

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malloryerik
My "deplorable" Trump-voting attorney friend claims that an unaccountable
ICANN spells the end of the internet as they supposedly will discriminate
against certain users because of their political philosophy, as private
organizations are not limited by the First Amendment.

I'm blissfully ignorant of ICANN, etc. Can someone here give me an answer for
my paranoid right-wing libertarian friend?

~~~
guelo
Tell your friend to relax, it's not overly-PC liberals running ICANN, they're
just run of the mill money grubbers.

