MARINA DEL REY, Calif., November 24 -- The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has introduced seven new Top Level Domains (TLDs). The new domains, announced a little over a week ago, are an attempt to solve a perceived problem: We're supposedly running out of dot-com domains.
I say "perceived" because there are two issues here: (1) Are we running out of dot-com names, and (2) is it a problem? Well, it's true that at this point, almost all words in the English language, and most simple combinations thereof, have been registered as dot-com domains (e.g., stuff.com, stuffandsuch.com). This being the case, new companies and Web sites are having trouble coming up with domain names that aren't already taken.
I do a lot of traveling by motorcycle -- so why not a .moto domain?
To some extent, this is a problem. I'm lucky that I have an unusual last name -- in 1998, when I registered kafalas.com (which later became the name of a company Meg and I formed), most last-name-dot-com domains were already taken. Many of these were hoarded by domain hogs like iName.com, who decided they'd grab all the cyber real-estate they could afford, at $35 a pop, in hopes of selling it at a profit. If iName or a similar company had thought to register kafalas.com, I'd have had to pay them a premium to buy it back from them. Fortunately, they hadn't, so I didn't -- I registered the domain name directly from Network Solutions.
A lot of businesses weren't as lucky as I was -- when they tried to register their business names as dot-coms, they found that the desired domains were long gone, and available only by paying serious bucks to whoever had already grabbed them. I'm not sure of the politics that went into it, but awhile back, President Clinton appointed ICANN, led by Esther Dyson, to sit down and hammer out a system of top-level domains that would allow businesses (and other organizations) to use the second-level names they wanted, even though the dot-com versions were taken. Furthermore, the new TLDs were to be administered by companies other than (or at least in addition to) Network Solutions, who'd had a government-sanctioned monopoly on domain registration until earlier this year. Companies that wanted to do domain registration had to pay ICANN a non-refundable fee of $50,000 just to be considered for the job.
OK, fine. So ICANN sat down and solicited input from industry, government, and the general public, and after much debate and deliberation, came out with seven new TLDs. Great.
But the domains they came up with make no sense at all. Let's take a look at them: .biz, .aero, .info, .coop, .name, .pro, and .museum.
.biz
This one makes some sense, on the face of it. Basically, it's just an alternative to .com, with the same connotation -- a commercial business. But there are no restrictions on who can register a .biz domain, and it's not clear how the registrar (JVTeam, LLC) will decide who's a biz and who isn't. One can already see problems -- companies can easily register a .biz domain to match their .com (e.g., amazon.com can, and probably will, register amazon.biz -- or if they don't, they'll sue whoever does). If this happens, we're right back where we started, with a shortage of names.
.aero
What the heck is this one all about? The registrar for this one is the Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques (SITA), of Brussels, Belgium. SITA's proposal stated that it wanted the .aero (originally they asked for .air) domain "to foster and develop the remarkable growth and availability of air transport at affordable prices." Well, I'm certainly not against air transport at affordable prices, but why do they need a special domain? I do a lot of traveling by motorcycle; so why shouldn't there be a .moto domain?
I read SITA's proposal up and down (as you can do for yourself at ICANN's SITA page), but I still don't get why the air transport industry gets its own domain. The more cynical observer might suggest that payola was involved -- but I'll just invoke a saying known as Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Why can't I have a .pro domain? Because RegistryPro says I can't. And unless you work in one of a select few professions, you can't, either.
.info
This one's also hard to figure out. It's going to be administered by Afilias, LLC, a consortium of 19 companies (including Network Solutions). Again, I took a look through the proposal -- and it's a thorough document, with detailed technical explanations of how the consortium plans to implement and oversee the .info domains -- but there's no explanation of what ".info" is supposed to mean.
This is what I don't understand. What kind of "info" sites are going to be found under the .info domain? Are we talking commercial news sites such as newspapers and TV stations, or infomercial sites (will we see ronco.info?), or what? The site on which this column appears is partly commercial, in that Meg and I are available for consulting work -- but it's also informational. Should we be kafalas.info? As with .aero, the proposal gives no clue as to what this TLD is for, and why it was suggested.
.coop
This one was adopted at the behest of the National Cooperative Business Association, of Washington, DC. The proposal notes as follows: "There are many different types of cooperative business in many different sectors, from consumer cooperatives in the retail sector, to agricultural co-operatives, to banking and insurance cooperatives and so on. They range in size from very large retail cooperative societies with tens or hundreds of thousands of members through to very small worker cooperatives with fewer than ten employee-members."
All well and good. But please explain why it is that coops are any different from regular (uncooperative?) businesses. The problem with .coop is similar to the problem with .aero: Why does one industry (or type of industry) get its own domain? This makes no sense.
.name
This one is analogous to .biz, except that it's for individuals. The issue it supposedly solves is that a lot of personal names are already registered, in their dot-com format, e.g. johnsmith.com. OK, fine. But adding .name doesn't do much to help the John Smiths of the world -- all it means is that two people named John Smith will now be able to have their own domains, instead of one: johnsmith.com and johnsmith.name (well, that's not counting the existing .net, .org, and other TLDs -- I haven't checked to see if there's a johnsmith.flagstaff.az.us, but there might be). Once again, this really doesn't solve anything.
If you're going to have .name domains for individuals, what about people who already have individual sites under existing domains like .com? If they're not going to be required to switch to .name (which they won't be), all the new domain does is confuse the issue.
Maybe the solution is to put a stop to domain-hoarding, by making a "use it or lose it" rule.
.pro
This one smacks of credentialism -- it's for "qualified" professionals. The sponsor, RegistryPro Ltd., says that its mission is "to create a reliable, sustainable registry of professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants by utilizing concrete registration requirements linked to evidence of professional qualifications."
I certainly like the idea that when I go to a doctor, lawyer, or accountant, there's a way of confirming that the individual I'm dealing with is what he says he is. But giving them a .pro domain (suggesting that everyone else should be .amateur, .dilettante, or .quack) is elitist, unnecessary, and just plain silly. And it won't do any more good, in terms of stemming the dot-com name crunch, than the .name domain.
RegistryPro says it plans to have second-level domains to distinguish between professions; this would result in domains like johnwsmith.doc.pro and johnwsmith.law.pro, for John W. Smith, MD and John W. Smith, Esq. But you have to meet their definition of who's a doctor or a lawyer. Will they accept homeopathic physicians, chiropractors, or massage therapists? Who's in and who's out, and who's going to decide?
I don't have any "credentials" as a technical writer, in the way of sheepskin. But I have a résumé 13 years long (plus a couple of years as a journalist), and plenty of references. I'd like to think I'm a professional in my field -- so why can't I have a .pro domain, if I want one? Because RegistryPro says I can't, that's why not. Unless you work in one of a select few professions, you can't have one, either. I say why not? What's wrong with jacknicklaus.golf.pro?
.museum
Not much need be said about this one. Why do museums need their own top-level domain? What's wrong with .org or .edu? Again, this is the same deal as with .aero and .coop -- what's so special about museums, as compared with other non-profit institutions? If we're going to have .museum domains, shouldn't there also be .historicalpark, .zoo, and .wildlifesanctuary?
So whose fault is it, anyway?
I hear you saying, "But these domains weren't ICANN's idea. They were presented to ICANN by companies that wanted to be granted the right to administer them -- the prospective registrars are the ones responsible for the goofy domains you're complaining about." True enough. But why did ICANN do its selection process that way? There's nothing wrong with the proposals themselves, in terms of the technical aspects of how the registering companies plan to implement the new domains. It's the names that are the problem. ICANN should have said, "Send us a proposal for implementing a new domain name, and when we've accepted your technical specs, we'll tell you what domain name you're getting."
ICANN's new top-level domains will do little or nothing to solve the problems of cybersquatting, domain shortages, and confusion as to what a company's domain is. Most of the general public thinks every company is something.com anyway -- this "solution" will end up making the problem worse, not better. Who's going to remember if a company is greatwidgets.com, .biz, .coop, or .info? Why is the air transport industry so special that it rates its own .aero domain? Who's going to decide who's sufficiently "professional" to merit a .pro designation? And why on Earth is there a need for .museum?
I'm flabbergasted that this is the best ICANN could come up with. It's amazing that they consider this new scheme a solution to anything. These new top-level domains are arbitrary and illogical. And they'll do nothing but confuse the public.
Esther Dyson's a smart cookie. I read her Release 2.0 awhile back, and I was impressed by her grasp of the Internet, how it has changed society, and what's likely to happen next. So this domain-naming fiasco comes as something of a surprise. ICANN was being pulled in different directions by governments, industries, and the public -- but I expected them to come up with something much better.
Running on empty?
It might be that we don't really need more top-level domains. Although most of the "good" dot-com addresses have already been registered, many of them (I have no idea of the number, but it's probably in the millions) are not actually being used. For instance, just now, I was looking for Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (I wanted to look up the source of the "Hanlon's Razor" quote. Turns out its history is unclear -- one source attributes it to William James, but others aren't so sure). I tried typing www.familiarquotations.com -- turns out there's no such Web site, but the domain itself has been registered by a domain-hoarding firm called Domain-It. (If you want Bartlett's book, however, the 1919 edition can be found on-line, courtesy of Columbia University's Bartleby Library.)
And although the dot-com well is nearly tapped out, there are the existing .org, .net, .gov, and .mil top-level domains, and there are the country-coded TLDs, many of which are barely being used. The possibilities offered by these domains are endless.
Maybe the solution is to put a stop to domain-hoarding, by making a "use it or lose it" rule. If a domain doesn't point to an actual server (with unique content) within a certain amount of time after being registered, it reverts to the public, er, domain. Or maybe the solution is something like the Real Name System used on AltaVista, which lets users type in a company's name, instead of having to guess its .com (.biz? .aero? .coop?) address. Or could it be that people just need to get more creative when it comes to naming domains and the businesses or organizations they represent?
Copyright © 2000 John J. Kafalas
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