Maybe someone could explain this to me: aren't non-ccTLDs controlled by consensus? If some asshat decides to jack the prices of *.orgs, why can't the majors (Google, MSFT, ...) just point to another DNS?
> If some asshat decides to jack the prices of .orgs, why can't the majors (Google, MSFT, ...) just point to another DNS?
When you go to "www.example.org", you are really going to "www.example.org.". The extra period at the end is subtle, but important.
The path of a DNS query is "." -> "org" -> "example" -> "www". Before a DNS client can lookup "example.org", it has to know where the DNS servers for the "org" TLD are, and it gets those values from the root domain servers, ".".
So how does a DNS client know how to find root domain servers? It's bootstrapped manually. Every DNS server has a static file that contains the values:
> You can do it on your own server, but you can't force anyone else to.
That's exactly what thechao meant by 'consensus'. If we all agree to configure our computers to fail to resolve all domains ending with `.org`, there's no longer really a .org TLD.
Google could probably pull it off. Imagine if .org domains failed to resolve in Chrome, or resolved but triggered an ad banner saying This website is supporting an institution which is undermining the web, for profit. Not the kind of activism we'd realistically expect from Google, but they have enormous power over the web. Throw in cooperation from the other browser vendors, and you can kill .org pretty dead.
