Are you ready to get really.rich with these domainname.solutions?
April 5, 2014 8:26 AM Subscribe
Back in 2011, ICANN started taking applications to expand the list of generic top level domains (GTDLs) from 22 to ... a lot more, possibly 1,400 new names. This tidal wave of new GTLDs started with شبكة (shabaka, Arabic for "web"), then expanded from there. Enter the promotions of domain names no one will remember: .guitars, .sexy, .tattoo, and more.
The amount of use for these new generic domains is in question, as the .xxx domain is not heavily used, and none of those sites are among the top 500 most popular porn sites. Still, Google, Amazon and Microsoft saw some value in the expansion, applying for 189 domains between the three companies, and ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade explained some of the thoughts behind the decision in an interview with CNet.
The amount of use for these new generic domains is in question, as the .xxx domain is not heavily used, and none of those sites are among the top 500 most popular porn sites. Still, Google, Amazon and Microsoft saw some value in the expansion, applying for 189 domains between the three companies, and ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade explained some of the thoughts behind the decision in an interview with CNet.
Apparently we have created a world where it's necessary to have a ".rich" domain for :
"businesses catering to the wealthy".
posted by silence at 8:43 AM on April 5, 2014 [3 favorites]
"businesses catering to the wealthy".
posted by silence at 8:43 AM on April 5, 2014 [3 favorites]
Dear Sir:
Unrecognized activity has been detected in your bank account. Please click on this link to your BankCo account for more information.
http://bankco.corn
Also, Microsoft has detected a virus on your machine! Please visit:
http://micro.soft/totes-legit-really
posted by BungaDunga at 8:52 AM on April 5, 2014 [11 favorites]
Unrecognized activity has been detected in your bank account. Please click on this link to your BankCo account for more information.
http://bankco.corn
Also, Microsoft has detected a virus on your machine! Please visit:
http://micro.soft/totes-legit-really
posted by BungaDunga at 8:52 AM on April 5, 2014 [11 favorites]
The videos are so weirdly sincere and insincere. I have high hopes for bullshit.sexy.
posted by migurski at 8:54 AM on April 5, 2014
posted by migurski at 8:54 AM on April 5, 2014
Yeah, I am not seeing why most of these are even remotely necessary. It's not like complexity does not have associated costs; why build up unnecessary complexity?
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:55 AM on April 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:55 AM on April 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
Mostly to fleece the rubes, cf. Banking.
posted by benito.strauss at 9:07 AM on April 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by benito.strauss at 9:07 AM on April 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
Yeah this is basically a sop to domain name registrars. It gives them lots of fresh inventory to sell.
posted by chrchr at 9:26 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by chrchr at 9:26 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Microsoft has detected a virus on your machine! Please visit: http://micro.soft/totes-legit-really
I think you mean microsöft.com, which is really totes legit (at least, something like that was registered years ago when domain names first allowed an extended alphabet, as a proof that the extended alphabet made registering domains a lot trickier).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:34 AM on April 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
I think you mean microsöft.com, which is really totes legit (at least, something like that was registered years ago when domain names first allowed an extended alphabet, as a proof that the extended alphabet made registering domains a lot trickier).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:34 AM on April 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
See the thing is if you have a brand name, like "Pampers", you pretty much have to buy that brand name at every single TLD. I mean you don't want someone else to own pampers.sexy, do you?
Some of the earliest of these boutique TLDs are .museum and .aero. They've been around since 2002 and are nearly invisible. To their credit both TLDs have policies that prevent spammy crap from being registered. But they've had basically no impact on the culture. Still it was such a rousing success we expanded beyond to arbitrary TLDs. Let the free market reign!
I am excited to see non-ascii TLDs though, that's bound to confuse lots of software. site:.شبكة shows about 1000 results on Google. Chrome then fails when you click on them and displays http://xn--mgba2b5eb.xn--ngbc5azd/ instead of ايشيا.شبكة. Maybe it'd work better if I were on an Arabic system.
There is a technical problem; there's no scaleable Internet standard for how you find the whois authority for an arbitrary TLD. The DNS resolvers need to know that info in order to provide DNS service. The only way I know how to look up an arbitrary TLD is to ask IANA via whois -h whois.iana.org .xn--ngbc5azd, but that doesn't scale.
posted by Nelson at 9:34 AM on April 5, 2014 [3 favorites]
Some of the earliest of these boutique TLDs are .museum and .aero. They've been around since 2002 and are nearly invisible. To their credit both TLDs have policies that prevent spammy crap from being registered. But they've had basically no impact on the culture. Still it was such a rousing success we expanded beyond to arbitrary TLDs. Let the free market reign!
I am excited to see non-ascii TLDs though, that's bound to confuse lots of software. site:.شبكة shows about 1000 results on Google. Chrome then fails when you click on them and displays http://xn--mgba2b5eb.xn--ngbc5azd/ instead of ايشيا.شبكة. Maybe it'd work better if I were on an Arabic system.
There is a technical problem; there's no scaleable Internet standard for how you find the whois authority for an arbitrary TLD. The DNS resolvers need to know that info in order to provide DNS service. The only way I know how to look up an arbitrary TLD is to ask IANA via whois -h whois.iana.org .xn--ngbc5azd, but that doesn't scale.
posted by Nelson at 9:34 AM on April 5, 2014 [3 favorites]
Yep. It's basically a scam being run by the registrars. The domain name "frontier" had basically closed, so they felt the need to create some new land for everyone to grab.
Stupid, particularly the "mobi" and "jobs" ones. If your company wants to have a mobile or a jobs subsite, it should be "jobs.bigcodomain.com" or "m.bigcodomain.com" not under a separate TLD.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:35 AM on April 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
Stupid, particularly the "mobi" and "jobs" ones. If your company wants to have a mobile or a jobs subsite, it should be "jobs.bigcodomain.com" or "m.bigcodomain.com" not under a separate TLD.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:35 AM on April 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
If your company wants to have a mobile or a jobs subsite, it should be "jobs.bigcodomain.com" or "m.bigcodomain.com" not under a separate TLD.
Or sexy.whitehouse.gov.
posted by univac at 9:37 AM on April 5, 2014 [5 favorites]
Or sexy.whitehouse.gov.
posted by univac at 9:37 AM on April 5, 2014 [5 favorites]
dot wine and dot vin have been put on hold so the French can judge who is worthy. I kid you not
posted by quarsan at 9:43 AM on April 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by quarsan at 9:43 AM on April 5, 2014 [4 favorites]
I would to see ICANN.fuck become a website.
posted by oceanjesse at 9:43 AM on April 5, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by oceanjesse at 9:43 AM on April 5, 2014 [3 favorites]
I was going to say that this whole game was over with the addition of the .cat domain, except .cat is intended to be used to highlight the Catalan language and culture.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:43 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:43 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Chrome then fails when you click on them and displays http://xn--mgba2b5eb.xn--ngbc5azd/ instead of ايشيا.شبكة.
Not sure what the problem is. That's how non-ASCII domain names are represented in ASCII. It's sort of a kludgy encoding, but it was either that or wait for every piece of software in the universe to understand UTF-8, and that wasn't going to happen in this lifetime.
I guess you could argue that they should show the domain/TLD in the "native" charset in the address bar, but I think there's a good argument to be made that it might be a misfeature to do that: since the ASCII representation is what's being presented to DNS for resolution, that's probably what should be displayed to the user. There's a lot of opportunity for shenanigans using non-ASCII domains (e.g. using non-ASCII characters that happen to resemble ASCII) so it's probably better to display it literally to the user. Though I guess for someone who uses Arabic domains/TLDs all the time maybe they'd want to use a browser that selectively enables Arabic in the address bar for certain TLDs or scripts. But it'd be a pretty dangerous default for the large majority of Internet users today who are using and expect ASCII domains.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:46 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
Not sure what the problem is. That's how non-ASCII domain names are represented in ASCII. It's sort of a kludgy encoding, but it was either that or wait for every piece of software in the universe to understand UTF-8, and that wasn't going to happen in this lifetime.
I guess you could argue that they should show the domain/TLD in the "native" charset in the address bar, but I think there's a good argument to be made that it might be a misfeature to do that: since the ASCII representation is what's being presented to DNS for resolution, that's probably what should be displayed to the user. There's a lot of opportunity for shenanigans using non-ASCII domains (e.g. using non-ASCII characters that happen to resemble ASCII) so it's probably better to display it literally to the user. Though I guess for someone who uses Arabic domains/TLDs all the time maybe they'd want to use a browser that selectively enables Arabic in the address bar for certain TLDs or scripts. But it'd be a pretty dangerous default for the large majority of Internet users today who are using and expect ASCII domains.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:46 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
oceanjesse: I would to see ICANN.fuck become a website.
That's not an option yet, but we can register ICANN.singles, ICANN.solutions, and ICANN.support. And ICANN.wed .. except that specific domain is intended primarily for engaged couples on a short-term basis (two years with prohibitive third-year renewal fees for second-level domains).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:52 AM on April 5, 2014
That's not an option yet, but we can register ICANN.singles, ICANN.solutions, and ICANN.support. And ICANN.wed .. except that specific domain is intended primarily for engaged couples on a short-term basis (two years with prohibitive third-year renewal fees for second-level domains).
If you register a second-level .wed domain, you can have it for $150 a year for the first two years, according to the Atgron web site. After that, the price rockets to $30,000 a year.Linkrot is a thing, but should there be specific URLs intended to die off, or be wholly replaced? Then again, if you know that a domain will expire in a year or two, there is less guessing about the longevity of any links you send out or receive.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:52 AM on April 5, 2014
But if you think that sucks, you should check out the pricing for .sucks domains:
posted by filthy light thief at 9:55 AM on April 5, 2014
Trademark Priority reservations are first-come, first-serve and will be awarded prior to Sunrise. Trademark Holders who reserve now will secure a price of $2,500. This fee will jump to $25,000 in Sunrise.Priority registration is a mere $250 per domain, with Suggested Retail only bumping up to $300 per domain. Let the sharing of opinions and boosting of debates commence!
Priority Reservations are first-come, first-serve and will be awarded prior to General Availability.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:55 AM on April 5, 2014
I guess you could argue that they should show the domain/TLD in the "native" charset in the address bar
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. The Location bar is part of the user interface, and displaying Punycode xn-- nonsense to civilians is terrible. Not to mention a great way to reinforce how every language but American English is a second class citizen. On my Mac Safari does display "http://ايشيا.شبكة", but Chrome and Firefox both show "http://xn--mgba2b5eb.xn--ngbc5azd/" instead. You're right though that the risk of impersonation is significant. Basically we're both just talking about how non-ASCII TLDs are kind of a bad idea. It's too bad, 90%+ of the people in the world speak languages that are not representable in ASCII.
BTW, Wikipedia has a list of IDN ccTLDs, there's about 40 of them.
posted by Nelson at 10:04 AM on April 5, 2014
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. The Location bar is part of the user interface, and displaying Punycode xn-- nonsense to civilians is terrible. Not to mention a great way to reinforce how every language but American English is a second class citizen. On my Mac Safari does display "http://ايشيا.شبكة", but Chrome and Firefox both show "http://xn--mgba2b5eb.xn--ngbc5azd/" instead. You're right though that the risk of impersonation is significant. Basically we're both just talking about how non-ASCII TLDs are kind of a bad idea. It's too bad, 90%+ of the people in the world speak languages that are not representable in ASCII.
BTW, Wikipedia has a list of IDN ccTLDs, there's about 40 of them.
posted by Nelson at 10:04 AM on April 5, 2014
The upcoming .web could be useful, the current .email (firstname@lastname.email), and the non-English ones, but I will appreciate the rest of them for comedic value.
posted by waytoomuchcoffee at 10:57 AM on April 5, 2014
posted by waytoomuchcoffee at 10:57 AM on April 5, 2014
Chrome shows the UTF-8 version of the domain if the characters in the domain are all in the character set for one of your listed languages in Chrome's settings (chrome://settings/languages). Otherwise, it shows the punycode instead to avoid potential for phishing.
posted by calebegg at 11:00 AM on April 5, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by calebegg at 11:00 AM on April 5, 2014 [3 favorites]
NPR did a brief story on this yesterday and interviewed the woman who dipped into her retirement savings to buy .wed (the cost was $185,000). Did the cost go up if you bought a longer name because someone else selling .wedding sites could easily kill her investment. She didn't sound like it was a trivial amount of money that she could afford to blow.
posted by fuse theorem at 11:01 AM on April 5, 2014
posted by fuse theorem at 11:01 AM on April 5, 2014
Some of the earliest of these boutique TLDs are .museum and .aero. They've been around since 2002 and are nearly invisible.
Don't worry, BTV is trying its hardest.
posted by hoyland at 11:08 AM on April 5, 2014
Don't worry, BTV is trying its hardest.
posted by hoyland at 11:08 AM on April 5, 2014
Oh, that's very sensible Chrome behavior. Thanks calebegg!
posted by Nelson at 11:12 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Nelson at 11:12 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
I'm getting a .ninja domain and not even ironically because ninja's are awesome.
posted by humanfont at 11:16 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by humanfont at 11:16 AM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
That the same people that authorized bike.com would years later decide that .bike should be available really makes them look like decent folks with integrity. One can only assume they will eventually make bike with no dots an entirely new category of domain name (they could call it a domain word.)
posted by Wood at 11:27 AM on April 5, 2014
posted by Wood at 11:27 AM on April 5, 2014
If your .ninja domain URL is actually visible in people's address bars, it's not really .ninja, is it?
posted by benito.strauss at 11:37 AM on April 5, 2014 [6 favorites]
posted by benito.strauss at 11:37 AM on April 5, 2014 [6 favorites]
I got canadaby.bike as a shortcut to the full site, because I used the route through BC and Alberta, and found the book and site useful, so I figured a link would help.
A coworker suggested making a single serving site at babyseal.club, and it is still available so nobody has knocked one out yet.
posted by ecco at 11:43 AM on April 5, 2014
A coworker suggested making a single serving site at babyseal.club, and it is still available so nobody has knocked one out yet.
posted by ecco at 11:43 AM on April 5, 2014
I would to see ICANN.fuck become a website.
I'm waiting for ICANN.hazcheezburger.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:05 PM on April 5, 2014 [8 favorites]
I'm waiting for ICANN.hazcheezburger.
posted by radwolf76 at 12:05 PM on April 5, 2014 [8 favorites]
I'm guessing pale people from Cornwall won't be rushing to http://wan.ker
posted by scruss at 12:08 PM on April 5, 2014
posted by scruss at 12:08 PM on April 5, 2014
From the interview:
> 've seen examples like the Japanese camera maker Canon applying to run a registry for .canon Net addresses. Do you hope that all companies with trademarks will run their own generic top-level domains?
Oh dear Lord...
Why does the guy keep stressing ICANN is "not for profit"?
I wonder.
posted by sixohsix at 1:38 PM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
> 've seen examples like the Japanese camera maker Canon applying to run a registry for .canon Net addresses. Do you hope that all companies with trademarks will run their own generic top-level domains?
Oh dear Lord...
Why does the guy keep stressing ICANN is "not for profit"?
I wonder.
posted by sixohsix at 1:38 PM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
sixohsix: Why does the guy keep stressing ICANN is "not for profit"?
As a Native American elder once put it to spitbull, "'nonprofit' is whiteman talk for 'nice office, nice car, nice house, and no taxes.'"
posted by filthy light thief at 1:55 PM on April 5, 2014 [5 favorites]
As a Native American elder once put it to spitbull, "'nonprofit' is whiteman talk for 'nice office, nice car, nice house, and no taxes.'"
posted by filthy light thief at 1:55 PM on April 5, 2014 [5 favorites]
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of URL validation regexes suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
posted by Feyala at 3:15 PM on April 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by Feyala at 3:15 PM on April 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
Nah, I hope people just refuse to update their regexes, and cause all of these dumbass new TLDs to fail horribly all over the place.
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:48 PM on April 5, 2014
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:48 PM on April 5, 2014
.diamonds is probably one of the most useless and unneeded TLDs. Was the jewelry/diamond business (two different things that overlap) really that hard-up for domain names?
posted by autoclavicle at 4:21 PM on April 5, 2014
posted by autoclavicle at 4:21 PM on April 5, 2014
Does this mean we can finally visit homestarrunner.egg?
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:39 PM on April 5, 2014
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:39 PM on April 5, 2014
Shit, yo! .diamonds is the most balla of domains! spittin.diamonds! pourin.diamonds! paytributetotheoldgodswithyourbloodand.diamonds!
posted by filthy light thief at 4:47 PM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by filthy light thief at 4:47 PM on April 5, 2014 [1 favorite]
> Still, Google, Amazon and Microsoft saw some value in the expansion,
> applying for 189 domains between the three companies
Bullshit. The only value they saw was the value spammers & scammers saw in squatting on their brand. Each one of these registrars has a built-in revenue base, knowing there's a couple of thousand, if not tens of thousands of companies/people/entities who will feel compelled to register "valuablebrand.stupidtld" just so some crook can't send spam.
Don't get me started on excrement like ".amazon" (the company, not the river) and homographs. And if you come to me with a ".ninja" or ".guru" address, don't be surprised if I roll my eyes and never take you seriously.
posted by kjs3 at 6:02 PM on April 5, 2014
> applying for 189 domains between the three companies
Bullshit. The only value they saw was the value spammers & scammers saw in squatting on their brand. Each one of these registrars has a built-in revenue base, knowing there's a couple of thousand, if not tens of thousands of companies/people/entities who will feel compelled to register "valuablebrand.stupidtld" just so some crook can't send spam.
Don't get me started on excrement like ".amazon" (the company, not the river) and homographs. And if you come to me with a ".ninja" or ".guru" address, don't be surprised if I roll my eyes and never take you seriously.
posted by kjs3 at 6:02 PM on April 5, 2014
There should be a .metafilter TLD.
That way, each of us could just register [username].metafilter and post our own stuff and moderate it ourselves. Imagine how much this would reduce your workload, mods! And no more "why, oh why was my rant deleted?" threads on MetaTalk! Let's make this happen for great justice!
posted by Naberius at 6:32 PM on April 5, 2014
That way, each of us could just register [username].metafilter and post our own stuff and moderate it ourselves. Imagine how much this would reduce your workload, mods! And no more "why, oh why was my rant deleted?" threads on MetaTalk! Let's make this happen for great justice!
posted by Naberius at 6:32 PM on April 5, 2014
There's a lot of opportunity for shenanigans using non-ASCII domains (e.g. using non-ASCII characters that happen to resemble ASCII) so it's probably better to display it literally to the user.
Yep, it's even got a name, an internationalized domain name homograph attack.
posted by MikeKD at 6:53 PM on April 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
Yep, it's even got a name, an internationalized domain name homograph attack.
posted by MikeKD at 6:53 PM on April 5, 2014 [2 favorites]
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The new gTLDs are here: are you prepared? (An article from World Intellectual Property Review)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:29 AM on April 5, 2014