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Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

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Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#31

Post by unclebucknasty »

ctoth wrote: post #29

Problem: The .com and similar namespaces are crowded. As someone who has been searching this weekend for a domain, the sad fact is that a huge number of domains are simply "Parked free, courtesy of ..." or "Coming soon", or "Under construction", or "This domain is for sale, please contact..." In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined. Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net a…

From my understanding, there also was/is a loophole that allowed squatters to hold on to a name without cost for a period. Once it rolled off, they were able to grab it again at no cost. Don't recall all of the details or whether the loophole was closed, but at one time it powered a lot of the squatting activity.

Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#32

Post by unclebucknasty »

wilfra wrote: post #25
OGinparadise wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, they do not control anything, they administer it. I can register any .com that is free and Verisign cannot stop me. Google can refuse to allow anyone else from having televisions.shop or whatever.shop

That's a theoretical problem that wont matter in practice. Google only has two practical options: they can make .shop completely open and operate it just like .co or .io, or they can lock it down and use it only for themselves, in which case it will essentially just be a vanity domain, not an extension. If they choose the latter, just use any one of the hundreds of other extensions that will be available. I hate that…

I understand what you're saying, but not sure it will be that benign in practice.

That is, given that the domain format requires a minimum of two parts (the TLD and one other), ownership of entire swaths of possibilities/permutations can be locked down via complete ownership of one TLD.

Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#33

Post by mdc »

ctoth wrote: post #29

Problem: The .com and similar namespaces are crowded. As someone who has been searching this weekend for a domain, the sad fact is that a huge number of domains are simply "Parked free, courtesy of ..." or "Coming soon", or "Under construction", or "This domain is for sale, please contact..." In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined. Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net a…

It seems like this solution means that if you want to have your own domain, either you must be rich or the website must be profitable. You're basically saying that only the rich should have access to domain-branded blogs and other non-commercial sites, and everyone else can make do with subdomains like a blogspot or blogger website. I think raising fees would have consequences for well-intentioned users far beyond the effect it had on domain squatters.

Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#34

Post by richardwhiuk »

networked wrote: post #30

Could you create a viable alternative DNS root today, preferably one without TLDs at all? It seems like none of the attempts so far [1] gained much traction. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

No - the network effect here is huge, and so is the cost of change.

Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#36

Post by ctoth »

mdc wrote: post #33
ctoth wrote: post #29

Problem: The .com and similar namespaces are crowded. As someone who has been searching this weekend for a domain, the sad fact is that a huge number of domains are simply "Parked free, courtesy of ..." or "Coming soon", or "Under construction", or "This domain is for sale, please contact..." In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined. Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net a…

It seems like this solution means that if you want to have your own domain, either you must be rich or the website must be profitable. You're basically saying that only the rich should have access to domain-branded blogs and other non-commercial sites, and everyone else can make do with subdomains like a blogspot or blogger website. I think raising fees would have consequences for well-intentioned users far beyond th…

In particular I refer to the .com namespace which, after all, should be used for commercial purposes. We already have .name and so forth for personal sites. Given that .name presents the ultimate namespace collision factory we do come down to a scarcity problem though. Thoughts on how we can handle that?

Also: Note that I said we should argue about the value of $X. I did not at all imply that $X should be such that "only the rich" have access to the ability to purchase a domain. That said, people spend $1200 annually for cell phone service, which I think we can draw comparisons between and DNS. If a person pays $1200 a year for a number they can be reached at through the POTS, is it unreasonable to expect them to pay $X (which we still haven't defined, simply said should be higher than $10) to be reachable on the Internet?

Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#37

Post by mtrimpe »

ctoth wrote: post #29

Problem: The .com and similar namespaces are crowded. As someone who has been searching this weekend for a domain, the sad fact is that a huge number of domains are simply "Parked free, courtesy of ..." or "Coming soon", or "Under construction", or "This domain is for sale, please contact..." In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined. Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net a…

You just need to research, pick up the phone or email and negotiate. Even squatters know the relative value of domains fairly well and you'd be surprised how many names are held by someone who doesn't even remember he owns them.

Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#38

Post by CrLf »

Franky, I don't see the point of this. It opens an all-new can of worms, just like allowing unicode in DNS, while being useless even for marketing purposes (people are used to sites being ".com" and suspect anything else).

So ".com" is crowded. It would be much better if someone did something about squatters. So many parked domains and so little done about it...

Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#39

Post by larrys »

ctoth wrote: post #29

Problem: The .com and similar namespaces are crowded. As someone who has been searching this weekend for a domain, the sad fact is that a huge number of domains are simply "Parked free, courtesy of ..." or "Coming soon", or "Under construction", or "This domain is for sale, please contact..." In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined. Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net a…

"In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined."

How are "the commons" ruined?

Domains (as a business) has been going on since domains were available and some people recognized they would have value and bought them up. Call it "squatting" if you want (a derogatory term) which came up back in the day and plays no relation to the traditional use of "squatting" (thank the media for that one everybody just repeats it now).

Real estate has also gone up in value and there are people who recognized and took a chance on that and have made money as well.

"Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net and other tlds to approximately $X. End the domain squatting market "

The price of .com (and all else) is effectively determined by contracts that ICANN has negotiated with the registry operators (Verisign in the case of .com) who then sell to the registrars (like godaddy and the much loved on HN namecheap).

Re: Stop Corporate Takeover of New Internet Names

#40

Post by larrys »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #31
ctoth wrote: post #29

Problem: The .com and similar namespaces are crowded. As someone who has been searching this weekend for a domain, the sad fact is that a huge number of domains are simply "Parked free, courtesy of ..." or "Coming soon", or "Under construction", or "This domain is for sale, please contact..." In short, domains are being bought up and not used, and the commons is ruined. Solution: Increase the price of .com and .net a…

From my understanding, there also was/is a loophole that allowed squatters to hold on to a name without cost for a period. Once it rolled off, they were able to grab it again at no cost. Don't recall all of the details or whether the loophole was closed, but at one time it powered a lot of the squatting activity.

You are talking about "domain tasting". It was closed because it wasn't good for the registry operators (once again Verisign in the case of .com and .net).

That said there is a cost. A registrar needs to keep money on deposit with the registries for the domains that they have purchased. So if they have a constant 1000 domains being registered and dropped and registered it will cost them money. They will make that money somehow from the registrant (in addition to a registry closing the loophole for other reasons).

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