New TLDs - Is There Any Real Benefit? 66
pigdawg writes "What is the purpose? What is the real benefit of new top level domains like .travel, .biz and .xxx? I don't believe these new TLDs will free up more names in .com or .org. Do they really think that orbitz.com will exchange their domain name to become orbitz.travel? Is the mostfrequenttypo.com porn site going to go legit and register under some new .xxx name? Again and again I keep coming to the same conclusion: given that many people/companies register their name in every TLD, it's all about generating more revenue for the registrars. What are your opinions on this subject?"
Enforcing their purpose would be ideal... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enforcing their purpose would be ideal... (Score:1)
Well, this should be pretty obvious... (Score:2)
At best, there will be a few fairly well known sites in the TLD, and a significant chunk of duplication between name.com and name.whatever
I'm unsure what infirmity of mind would cause one to genuinely believe otherwise.
Re:Well, this should be pretty obvious... (Score:1)
More revenue , more options (Score:5, Interesting)
I dont really see all the scum sites (not that all porn is scum , only the typo sites etc) moving off to the
I dont think there is anything wrong with them trying to drum up revenu
Re:Where/when (Score:2)
You can't yet. Follow the links in this blog entry [memwg.com] for more information.
EricJavaScript is Not Java! [ericgiguere.com]
blah blah, RFC, blah blah, stupid (Score:1)
Re:blah blah, RFC, blah blah, stupid (Score:2)
the whitehouse (Score:1)
8th grade children will never be able to find the real whitehouse website!
Re:the whitehouse (Score:4, Funny)
Re:the whitehouse (Score:3, Funny)
It's how we'll weed out the evil!
BINGO! (Score:2, Interesting)
BINGO! It's almost always about generating more revenue, just follow the money. Don't forget that ICANN [icann.org] gets a percentage of every new domain that is registered. This is their effort to raise more funds by FORCING companies to register more domains to protect their web identity (something public companies are legally obligated to do by contract with stockholders)
Re:BINGO! (Score:2)
Confusing a "registry" with an "index" (Score:5, Insightful)
Way Back When, When The Net Was Small, TLDs were used to distribute the load among the registries. With the advance of technology, there really isn't any functional reason to do so now.
In the mean time, the registry has been used like an index. Rather than look something up first, a person (machines don't care about DNS, just IP addresses) will type in a likely domain name and hope for the best. It is only after failure that they will go to the indexes like Yahoo and Google and look there for the address just like they would look in the phone book.
With the political forces already having created the country TLDs, there is no point at all to having, as you put it, "90's style suffixes appended to internet names".
What is surprising is the number of otherwise smart people who cannot grasp this. Since the DNS system is already difficult for humans to use by itself (eg. coke.com or coke.net or coke.int or coke.org or coke.ny.ny.us) because they are trying to use it like an index rather than a registry, they then advocate adding yet more TLDs. Yet it is the very use of TLDs that has confused the difference between an index and a registry in their minds in the first place, as well as caused the shell-game problem of which TLD to look under first.
Nothing I'm saying in any way reflects on the usefulness of the hierarchical system that is DNS. It is VERY useful to be able to separate www.whatever.the.heck from mx.whatever.the.heck from www.go.to.heck, etc.etc.etc.heck
The issue is TLDs, and TLDs have outlived their usefulness. At some point in the future, there will be a
Bob-
Re:Confusing a "registry" with an "index" (Score:1)
I would have to disagree. Seeing not technical people look for something on the interent invariably has them starting with a search engine. I watched my father wanting to look at Ford's website. He opened his browser which loaded to Google by default, and typed in Ford. My wife does similar things. The only time domain names seem to be really important for the average user, is when they
It's not *only* about the money... (Score:2)
Yes, it's true; many companies *do* register every version of their business name they can think of. So what does ABC laundry service do when ABC widgets already has .com, .net and .org? They register .biz or .us. What about ABC travel? They go for .travel. It's not just about freeing up .com and .net domains. It's about more choice as well.
Yes, I'm certain it will generate more revenue from the many companies who are die-hard brand protectors out there. But there *is* another aspect of this that i
Re:It's not *only* about the money... (Score:2)
The problem is that anybody can get a
Um... what? (Score:2)
Re:It's not *only* about the money... (Score:2)
Really? It seems to me that every state requires that every business have a unique name. If Bob's House of Computers exists, I cannot start a company named Bob's House of Computers, but I can probably start a company named Bob's Computer Store. Perhaps you missed the fact that company names can (and usually do) consist of more than 1 word.
I too lament the fact that we don't have a more hierarchical doma
Re:It's not *only* about the money... (Score:2)
No, we should have //com.computers.apple and //com.records.apple. That way the great unwashed might have had a chance at learning that if you wanted to see what the head of the executive branch of the government has to say you start out with .gov and then get more specific and it never crosses your mind to look for com.whitehouse.
Re:It's not *only* about the money... (Score:2)
Re:It's not *only* about the money... (Score:2)
Questionable benefit (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Questionable benefit (Score:1)
Let's hear it for .biz! (Score:3, Insightful)
What about Average Joe? (Score:1)
As others have mention, 'big' businesses will just buy up the new TLD's for their existing domain name, but businesses are not the only proprietors of domain names. For the Average Joe who just wants his own personal space to blog or whatever, having a variety of TLD's to choose from means he can have a shorter, one-word domain name instead of reallyreallylongdomainname.com. However that said, there are already a pretty sizeable number of TLD's to choose from.
Out of personal preference, I don't like these
They have some use ... (Score:2)
If you see a
There is absolutely no reason for
Re:They have some use ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure there's a good reason for
Re:They have some use ... (Score:2)
Re:They have some use ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also the suffix .com has been so embedded in the public consciousness that even if somebody reads joespoolcleaning.biz they will mistype it as .com half the time anyway.
Not sure I buy that one. Yes, .com has been nearly ubiquitous for a long time... but .biz domains are becoming more common, and I've started seeing them on advertising material, etc. I expect that the
Re:They have some use ... (Score:2)
DNS and the web have made all names/trademarks "global" be default. You can't have 27 Acme Cleaners scattered across the nation all with acmecleaners.com/biz/etc. And as others have pointed out, the whole reason for the problem is that people search for the website of a known company by typing acmecleaners.com and hoping it resolves to the "right" acme cleaners; i.e. they use DNS as a search/indexing tool. I've been guilty of this myself, though I've mostly
Re:They have some use ... (Score:1, Informative)
In 1998, Tuvalu began deriving revenue from use of its area code for "900" lines and from the sale of its ".tv" Internet domain name. In 2000, Tuvalu negotiated a contract leasing its Internet domain name ".tv" for $50 million in royalties over the next dozen years. Royalites from these new technology sources could raise GDP three or
Why not go without a TLD? (Score:2)
Most people just use
They can sell top level domains except 2-character top-level domains which should remain as country TLDs and the likes...
Blocking (Score:2)
-Bill
Re:Blocking (Score:2)
While we're at it, why not tattoo all of the terrorists we can find with "Terrorist" on their foreheads, so airport security knows which people to stop?
Re:Blocking (Score:2)
I'm not sure I agree with the moral equivalence between pornographers and terrorists. A lot of XXX sites do take steps to keep kids away (as any Fark reader should know
-Bill
Well, maybe people shouldn't register in every TLD (Score:1)
Agreed... The cat's out of the bag... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's too late. They've missed the bus. Only suckers will fall for this (they'll still make their money though, so what do they care).
Re:Agreed... The cat's out of the bag... (Score:4, Insightful)
Once upon a time when TLDs all had some sort of eligibility requirements (however tacit) and were usually treated as the first branches of a mutually exclusive hierarchy, adding more of them would have been of value. Heck, even .xxx would have made sense if it had existed back in the days before sex.com was registered.
But the domain name system has become a flat file, already substantially replicated across several TLDs. .xxx will solve no problems whatsoever, will probably introduce a few, and of course will make the registrars and the registry operator some nice cash.
But I think .cat is the more signficant gTLD to gain ICANN approval in this round, because it indicates that they're open just about anything if there's a technically competent sponsor behind it. If a language/culture can get a gTLD, why don't the Basques, the Chechens, the Tamils, the Palestinians, les Québécois, the Amish, the Yoopers, etc. petition for their own? It won't be long before I'm typing in www.pasty.up to order meat-and-potater pies online.
Re:Agreed... The cat's out of the bag... (Score:1)
It's hot and sunny outside and now all I want is a pasty.
Though I've always had them with turnips rather than potatoes. Time to scrounge up a recipe.
why have tlds anyway? (Score:2)
I seriously don't see where there's a technical or sociological merit to the whole
New Top Level Domains Considered Harmful (Score:3, Insightful)
I tend to agree with them. New TLDs are just a licence to print money. They do not offer new options for domain name holders - everyone with a business or company or product or trademark will just have to go out and get the same permuatations they already own for the existing TLDs and CCs. The name space gets filled up again and people lose out once more. The
Maybe it is just that someone at ICANN is a _big_ fan of Pokemon.
The DNS hierarchy needs a complete overhaul, not more random, money making and/or harmful branches.
Re: (Score:1)
TLDs are stupid (Score:1)
I've said it before and I'll say it again, TLDs are stupid. DNS doesn't really give a rats arse about .com, .foo, .etc, whatever. You should be able to register thisismydomain.takeoffeh and it should just simply work.
yay for .xxx (Score:2)
The porn industry is quite organised from what I can see, they could probably be persuaded to move to
Re:yay for .xxx (Score:1)
They're not organized either; most are greedy individuals who lust after sex and money and take advantage of other people's weaknesses to drag them in. They wouldn't co-operate simply because it will generate less money.
What really annoys me though are these companies that buy up literally hundreds of thousands of domain names an
Re:yay for .xxx (Score:2)
As for your comments about their level of organisation, you should look into the link/banner exchange programs that run between all the partnerships and organisational groups, not
Re:yay for .xxx (Score:2)
The age thing is for legal reasons.
Porn sites want to be filtered away from viewers who will result in legal complications to their operations (such as kids). They want everyone else to see them.
Ghettoization in .xxx doesn't help them at all, since it will be blocked en masse by corporate firewalls and even entire countries.
I'm sure yo
Re:yay for .xxx (Score:2)
I know of some huge company firewalls/proxies that won't even let you get to hotornot, that's how much they filter.
Re:yay for .xxx (Score:2)
Right, but that's a state of affairs that suits the porn operators just fine. They have no interest in porn being effectively targeted by corporate filters - that just means less business for them. As long as filters don't work that well, there will be more resistance to using them, as well as more ways around them.
Anything that makes it easy to block porn - unless it very precisely wo
One Use (Score:2)
It may sound strange but our I.T. systems here are designed for work, not surfing porn.
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
Damn... (Score:1)
Please disregard my recent job application to your organization.
Thanks,
G
TLD .here (Score:2)
Introduction
As wireless networking and devices become more common there may be a need for a convenient way to address hosts by physical location or context, especially when the users themselves are using mobile or wearable devices.
A step towards this could be by reserving a special public use TLD (.here in the examples). Then this TLD can be independently hos
Re:TLD .here (Score:2)
Why would anyone give a rat's ass that someone in the ORSC had laid claim to the domain?
Re:TLD .here (Score:2)
That said the ORSC's use of
My proposal for
Potential for hamana! (Score:1)
I agree (Score:2)
Lets face it
However its likely that the guy with
Netsol actively encourages you when you put in a name or even go there to check your record to purchase the same name upder all available TLDs...
Enforcement (Score:2)
As an aside, the