The National Press Club just announced it is going to hold a session entitled:
“Beyond .com, .gov, .net and .edu… Expansion of Internet Addressing”
On Wednesday, Jan. 11 at 2pm EST at the Zenger Room, National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, Washington, DC
ICANN President and Chief Executive Officer Rod Beckstrom and Board Chair Dr. Stephen Crocker will discuss the launch of hundreds of new generic top-level Internet domains (gTLDs) such as .hotel, and .paris scheduled to begin taking applications on Jan. 12.
National Press Club members outside Washington and out-of-town journalists may watch the news conference via a live webcast at www.icann.org
seems to me the whole new gTLD motivation was jealousy over the aftermarket prices for domain names, and a way to cash in on the same phenomenon.
my guess is the new TLD will fail. They won’t sell enough names to even recover their cost. With almost 20 years of dot com behavioral patterns by internet users, trying to change the address system was a pretty stupid idea. And their going to be up to their ears in suits, from companies that feel forced into pay huge prices for the new names.
Those companies shouldn’t feel forced in the first place. But i guess the timing of .XXX fueled the fear even more.
ICANN did a poor job informing the public and companies about the gTLD’s.
The senate hearings displayed a total lack of understanding.
The only thing i’ve heard is the drums of fear the last few months and people and companies acting on that fear without any knowledge.
The internet produced tons of innovation. gTLD’s where the next step wich turned into over reacting and a big money grab. Funny how things can change 😉
some questions the press should ask:
what is the need for new gtld’s? what problem does it solve?
what is to be gained, and by whom?
what is to be lost, and by whom?
is this merely a solution for a problem that icann itself creates: by defining “domain names”?
this is the equivalent of vanity phone numbers. the domain name system is a vanity phone number system, for computers. should this be mandatory? why? why not?
the internetwork, aka internet, works by numbers, which for an internetwork must be unique. this is a technical limitation.
however the network can work with or without names. there is no technical limitation that says we must have rules about what is and is not a “domain name”.
how is icann responsible for determining what is and is not a valid “domain name”? simple. they tell verisign (who administers the root zone for icann) to put more tld entries in the root zone file, a simple text file, that is mirrored on various “root servers” throughout the world.
because almost all network-aware software is, by tradition, hardcoded to use the numbers of those servers to determine what is a valid “domain name” and what is not, this effectively creates more “domain names”.
but that practice is only tradition. nothing is etched in stone.
the numbers for the icann/verisign root servers could be removed from software going forward. we could use any “root servers” and “root zone” we want, including our own computers. (my computer has its own copy of a root zone, complete with any gtld i choose to create; it’s incredibly simple, any user could do it). we could break tradition. and it would not “break the internet”. far from it.
all this is simply a way to assign and name to a number. anyone with a computer can do this themselves, on the computer itself.
names are not important to the network. numbers are important.
through registries and registrars and their domainer customers, does creating icann creating more “domain names” do more damage to trademarks and cause more consumer confusion?
what is the cost/benefit analysis of more “domain names”?
consider that in intellectual property law we have decided a name can have multiple meanings. generally speaking, two or more parties can have rights to the same name, so long as the meanings of the names in commerce are different and consumers can tell the difference.
in the domain name system, we make no effort to allow multiple meanings. we acquiesce to massive confusion, and the icann “food chain”, from registry down to the domainer (in some cases all three might be the same party), makes a profit from this confusion. they make no effort to change the situation.
in the “domain name system” as administered by icann, we only allow one party to have rights to a name. and we encourage bidding to see who will pay the most. again the parties in the icann food chain make a profit from this situation, and make no effort to change it.
perhaps someone will make the effort that icann and the icann food chain will not make, and they will come forward with proposed solutions. is that something people would want?
domain names are not essential to the functioning of the internet. the internet functioned for many years before names were introduced as a convenience. and even after names were introduced, it functioned for years with a centrally administered “domain name system”. icann is not a necessity folks. anyone who says otherwise is deluding you and probably themselves. even email will still work with numbers. enclose IP number in brackets and it works.
the current head of the icann board knows this.
the press should ask him flat out, “does the internet work without centrally administered names? (not “would it work”, which calls for speculation, but “does it work”… the answer is yes, and there’s proof). and if so, why does the internet need icann?”
it takes pennies for a registry to maintain a domain name. that’s why their fees to icann are less than 30 cents.
if you run a computer, you can pay the cost of a domain name. they cost nothing to create.
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