(Mis)Uses of Technology

(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick




ICANN Expands The Number Of Domains You Need To Buy

from the but-why? dept

Because those other top level domain additions have been useful for not much more than forcing companies to register even more domains just to make sure no one else has them and random cybersquatting stunts, ICANN has apparently decided to expand the top level domain name space by approving .travel and .post. What for? Well, not because there's any clear need (that would be too logical and might explain what ICANN has been doing all these months), but because of "the level of technical and commercial details their sponsors were able to quickly provide." Meanwhile, they still can't decide about other TLDs like .jobs, .xxx and .asia. Apparently, needed or not, the technical details weren't clear enough. It makes you wonder why ICANN even bothered reviewing these at all if their only basis for making the decision is technical competence. There really doesn't seem to be a burning need for these domains. If the main reason ICANN is saying yes is because it can be done, then why not just throw open the entire TLD name space and let any TLD work?

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
 

Reader Comments

(Flattened / Threaded)

    Oct 27th, 2004 @ 7:22pm
  • These guys are computer scientists yes???

    by Tim

    Why on earth would .post advance postal services?
    If I'm using email instead of sending paper
    letters, I'm not shelling out for a stamp or a
    .post domain. I'll keep my existing .com domain!

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  • Oct 27th, 2004 @ 9:53pm
  • They will all be "approved"

    by Anonymous Coward

    We all know the registrars need to sell more and more domain names, and the only way to do so in the long run is to increase the number of TLDs. All those ICANN meetings are actually just formalities. I personally never bought any other domain than .com/net/org (and my own country's).

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  • Oct 28th, 2004 @ 5:10pm
  • No Subject Given

    by Slappy

    Will these be going the way of .info or .name ?

    :-)

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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