Submitted by Allan Gunneson07.11.2008
With ICANN's recent decision to go "Wild West" with top level domain names, the tech world is buzzing with concern and confusion.
From CNET:
The decision to allow custom top-level domains will be a "nightmare" for brand managers, analysts and lawyers have warned. On Thursday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) voted to allow--in addition to more traditional top-level domains (TLDs), such as .com and .org--theoretically any TLD at all, as long as it is no more than 64 characters long. The application process for such custom TLDs looks set to be arduous and the criteria reasonably rigorous, but observers say the new system will create confusion.
"This has the potential for utter chaos," John Mackenzie, of the law firm Pinsent Masons, said Friday. "The attraction for cybersquatters is not going to be setting up a registry that matches someone else's brand; it will be in the generic TLDs. All of a sudden, every brand will be forced to register their name at .shop, .buy and .london to stop anyone else getting it."
This prediction is that ICANN's new scheme will face such a firestorm that it will be rescinded by 12-31-2008 and NOT go into effect.
Suggested Odds50.00%
Prediction Close Date:07.31.2008 (EST)
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You were optimistic to suggest that the decision would be rescinded by the end of 2008. It is now Feb 2009 and consultation on the Applicants Guide is in full swing. And it appears too late to object to the principles [http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/summary-principles-recommendations-implementation-guidelines-22oct08.doc.pdf], of which I quote point C:
"The reasons for introducing new top‐level domains
include that there is demand from potential applicants
for new top‐level domains in both ASCII and IDN formats.
In addition the introduction of new top‐level domain
application process has the potential to promote
competition in the provision of registry services, to add to
consumer choice, market differentiation and
geographical and service‐provider diversity."
There is demand for weapons of mass destruction, but that does not mean we must supply that demand. ICANN's mission includes promoting competition, but who does it compete with? It is meant to promote innovation but, instead, is bent on distending a historically flawed system.
What is this historic flaw? Top-level domains are categories in a classification system; facets in a thesaurus; dimensions, if you like. As such, they should be orthogonal (lit: at right angles) so that any element to be classified is guaranteed to belong to only one category. This is very difficult to get right, as any OO programmer who has had to re-factor their OO inheritance hierarchy will know. So, in practice, this means that anyone who has a brand to protect, must take out registrations under each TLD. Introducing more TLDs, self-evidently, compounds this problem - only ICANN appears to doubt this. But it is also a guaranteed cash cow for anyone who owns the new TLD. No wonder there is 'demand'. As Adam Smith observed, people take every opportunity to extract rent.
But non-orthogonal TLDs are not the worst of the historic flaw. At the root is the desire to assign meaning to what should be an abstract identifier. In the world of relational data, we have just about outgrown this error, but I recall seeing product codes that categorised the product and even hinted at the supplier of the product. Nowadays, we know to use a 'surrogate key' - an wholly meaningless, but guaranteed unique, identifier. Any attempt to assign meaning leads to endless conflict and discussion. Indeed, this is what keeps ICANN more than busy. A job for life, of course, but utterly futile.
So the answer? Meaningless domains. No brand. No trademarks. No name, no pack drill. Like a phone number, but with less meaning. (The implied meaning in phone numbers also gives rise to problems when 'areas' run out of numbers.) To prevent 'mis-dialing' add check-digits (as in a credit card number). All computer literate cultures have symbols for the numbers 0-9, so these are easily translated.
But how would you find anyone's site? Use a directory. Let there be consumer choice, market differentiation and diversity in the provision of directories. We are already seeing search functions being linked to the browser address bar (Google's Chrome, for example.) This proposal would formalise and improve that.
How does this a numeric url differ from the IP number? You need a level of indirection, mediated by the DNS, so that a resource identified by a single, invariant numeric url can be served by a number of different servers, and those servers can change transparently. What this proposal does is simply add another level of indirection, with the directory analogous to, but much richer than, the DNS. Once a resource is found in the directory, its url can be locally cached (as a bookmark), with the information found in the directory displayed to the user.
This innovative system could, I believe, be introduced alongside, and in competition with, the existing .com style tlds. This would meet ICANN's mission to innovae and promote competition.
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