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ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

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Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#51

Post by danShumway »

dmurray wrote: post #48
danShumway wrote: post #43

I'm slowly starting to suspect that maybe having human-readable names for domains is a mistake. Partially because phishing domains is already kind of easy (the rapid increase in tlds isn't helping ), partially because the race to grab and hold names has been having increasing negative effects, and partially because (aside from domains) many actual URLs are already impossible to remember. We're running into the same p…

The effect would be to give Google even more power. It wouldn't just be your older, less tech-savvy relative who now type "cnn" into the Google search bar every time they want to visit cnn.com.

Anecdotally, it's not just less tech-savvy people who do that. I do that today for most sites I visit that aren't bookmarked, because I don't trust myself to remember if domains are registered as `.org` or `.com`.

Of course, I use DuckDuckGo to do it instead of Google, and I also block ads because they're yet another area for phishing attacks. But look at HN for example -- I have HN bookmarked because I can't get myself to remember that it isn't `hackernews.com`. I have definitely used DuckDuckGo and Google in the past to find this website when I was on an unfamiliar computer.

The Google Ads phishing attacks are also an interesting point here -- they work. You can build a Google Ad for a product that points to a completely separate website, and you'll catch people. Arguably (probably) getting rid of readable names would make that problem worse, but it's not like the current situation is good. Domains are already hard to remember ("Does it have a dash in it? What's the TLD? Are the numbers spelled out?").

The question is whether it would even be possible at all to build a better system. I don't know.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#52

Post by danShumway »

athenot wrote: post #45
danShumway wrote: post #43

I'm slowly starting to suspect that maybe having human-readable names for domains is a mistake. Partially because phishing domains is already kind of easy (the rapid increase in tlds isn't helping ), partially because the race to grab and hold names has been having increasing negative effects, and partially because (aside from domains) many actual URLs are already impossible to remember. We're running into the same p…

You can do that today with IP addresses. v6 ones are plentiful. But I don't know how SSL would work without the domain part. EDIT: Cloudflare pulls it off here so it's certainly possible. https://1.1.1.1

Can I move a v6 address between locations/machines?

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#53

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

will_brown wrote: post #38
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #3

The whole domain market experience is utter crap. Commoditizing domain names has created such an unbalanced power dynamic between buyers and sellers where the sellers hold all the power. Gatekeeping at it's finest. Contrast this with acquiring a business name through any Department of State/Division of Corporations. I shouldn't have to name my company some contorted bastardization to successfully enter the market.

>Contrast this with acquiring a business name through any Department of State/Division of Corporations. What do you mean by this? Generally if a corporate name is registered (example: ABC, INC.) most states will not allow another “ABC” to be registered (even if ending in another suffix like “Corp” or even if another type of entity like an LLC). I had a client in a certain state who registered their entity name as MSG…

I mean if a name is available to use, you can just use it. There's no negotiation, no price barrier, nothing.

I think most of my frustration is toward the domain squatting/reselling industry.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#55

Post by WorldMaker »

ailideex wrote: post #12
pmlnr wrote: post #7

The whole decentralize everything! movement seems to overlook DNS. I get that technically the DNS system is decentralized, but in reality, you lease a domain from a random, usually politically charged entity, who can do anything with it, if they wish. We need a real DNS system, one where an individual can request and have a domain for life and which is truly decentralized. Unfortunately none of the attempts - .onion…

> We need a real DNS system, one where an individual can request and have a domain for life and which is truly decentralized. I very much want this also - but this cannot be solved in the same way as the challenge of business domain name assignment - a different approach should be used: [idx].[yyyyddmm].[given_names].[family_name].id e.g. 023.19830210.john_smith_3rd.doe.id given_names can have some standard seperator…

That bumps directly into "fallacies programmers believe about names". Not every culture uses family names the same or has them at all, for instance.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#56

Post by bdowling »

shock wrote: post #21
cardamomo wrote: post #5

Press release from Public Interest Registry, which oversees .org and similar TLDs: https://pir.org/pir-welcomes-renewed-org-agreement/ > Regarding the removal of price caps, we would like to underscore that Public Interest Registry is a mission driven non-profit registry and currently has no specific plans for any price changes for .ORG. Should there be a need for a sensible price increase at some point in the future…

> Public Interest Registry is a mission driven non-profit registry and currently has no specific plans for any price changes This means nothing. It's like when you get the hiring paperwork and the HR person says regarding the non-compete: "oh, don't worry about it, it's not enforceable"...

I don’t understand the comparison because non-compete agreements are unenforceable by law in California, which would explain an HR drone telling you so. As far as I know, there’s no law preventing the Public Interest Registry from raising prices.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#57

Post by cameronbrown »

ailideex wrote: post #19
cameronbrown wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless someone goes out their way to choose their own 'branded' name perhaps they could just receive a unique hash of their name for a domain? Tools can always be built to handle these names so you're not memorising such lengthy domains.

How do you decide which person get which name? This just gets you back to the whole ICANN problem. I can remember a couple of digits which makes my name unique. I cannot remember 1e873645-1f68-4b48-9eae-934ec717229b

That's just a technical problem that new infrastructure can solve by abstracting away the name. Instead of visiting 1e873645-1f68-4b48-9eae-934ec717229b.com/foo, you're just visiting "bar/foo", where 'bar' is their name. Click on the URL and the full hashed version is revealed for proper sharing.

In the same way that nobody memorised Facebook's UUID of a person, they can just remember their name.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#58

Post by foota »

Related to discussion about domain industry in general, I stumbled on the weirdest business the other day trying to go to a website name and instead typing crun.com.

It leads to https://venture.com/domains/, which is... a startup that rents out high visibility domains to others, with discount plans available where the price increases exponentially with the assumption that your startup does as well.

One of those things where you're not sure if it's satire at first.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#59

Post by some_random »

bdowling wrote: post #56
shock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public Interest Registry is a mission driven non-profit registry and currently has no specific plans for any price changes This means nothing. It's like when you get the hiring paperwork and the HR person says regarding the non-compete: "oh, don't worry about it, it's not enforceable"...

I don’t understand the comparison because non-compete agreements are unenforceable by law in California, which would explain an HR drone telling you so. As far as I know, there’s no law preventing the Public Interest Registry from raising prices.

Ah yes, California, also known as The Entire Known World.

Re: ICANN lifts the price cap on .org domains

#60

Post by tzs »

jlgaddis wrote: post #54

If you have any .org domains, you may want to consider a 10-year renewal before any price increases happen.

Network Solutions also offers 20 year and 100 year terms. ICANN rules say 10 years is the max, so I'm not sure how this works. Does NS just deal with it 10 years at a time at the underlying registry, eating any price increases themselves?

20 years .org at NS is $13.99/year, which is close to the more reasonable registries, such as Namecheap. 100 years gets it to $9.99/year, which is pretty good--if you believe that NS will really eat any underlying price increases over that time (and, of course, you will actually be using the domain for most of that time). (Well...pretty good until you remember that NS charges another $10/month for WHOIS privacy, which is free at Namecheap [1]).

[1] ...and I would assume at other popular registries. I'm just using Namecheap for comparisons because that is where I now have my domains.

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