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New .TLDs Announced

Posted on November 15, 2000

in Commentary & Society

by Martin Burns (MartinB)

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Martin Burns

Member info | Full bio

User since: April 26, 1999

Last login: March 30, 2010

Articles written: 128

After a mere glacial delay, ICANN has announced its proposed list of new TLDs. .xxx isn't there (neither is .kids), but why should ICANN start listening to good ideas now? The list includes:
  • .biz
  • .web
  • .name/.nom/.per
  • .health
  • .geo
  • .union
  • .museum
  • .info
  • .air
  • .one
  • .co-op
  • .post
  • .event
More in ICANN's announcement.

Martin Burns has been doing this stuff since Netscape 1.0 days. Starting with the communication ends that online media support, he moved back through design, HTML and server-side code. Then he got into running the whole show. These days he's working for these people as a Project Manager, and still thinks (nearly 6 years on) it's a hell of a lot better than working for a dot-com. In his Copious Free Time™, he helps out running a Cloth Nappies online store.

Amongst his favourite things is ZopeDrupal, which he uses to run his personal site. He's starting to (re)gain a sneaking regard for ECMAscript since the arrival of unobtrusive scripting.

He's been a member of evolt.org since the very early days, a board member, a president, a writer and even contributed a modest amount of template code for the current site. Above all, he likes evolt.org to do things because it knowingly chooses to do so, rather than randomly stumbling into them. He's also one of the boys and girls who beervolts in the UK, although the arrival of small children in his life have knocked the frequency for 6.

Most likely to ask: Why would a client pay you to do that?

Least likely to ask: Why isn't that navigation frame in Flash?

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Submitted by olineham on November 15, 2000 - 17:26.

I am appalled, this is terrible!

I want to remind people of two things:

  1. Top-Level Domains (TLDs) other than country domains (ccTLDs) are international domains.

  2. The whole world does not speak English.

Beyond the obvious language issue, there are also cultural issues. '.co-op' means different things to different (English-speaking) people, and absolutely nothing to many.

I repeat, TLDs are not american domains! American domains end in '.us'. If you want new domain categories, start doing what the rest of the world does - and put these domains under ccTLDs where they are supposed to be.

(Of course, that would require the USA to start using '.us' for its intended purpose!)

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Submitted by mwarden on November 16, 2000 - 14:22.

In addition to what onlineham said...
.biz? .web? Sounds like a couple of new anyone-can-use-it .com TLDs. .name? What the hell is that? .union? .geo? Seems like they hit the super-specific and the grossly general, but didn't hit that middle ground that the 'net really does need.
Another winner from ICRAPP.

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Submitted by nictamer on November 17, 2000 - 07:25.

When I read about those, I was surprised by how 1- useless and 2- unreadable they were. WTF is co-op? geo? Union, ok, in English maybe but ... it does'nt mean the same thing in other languages, like French (the word is "syndicat").

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Submitted by headlemur on November 19, 2000 - 14:28.

Here is what I see as being the use for the New TLD's. .biz sites for used car salesmen and other offers that are too good to be true.. >>click here for your 100 year lightbulbs<< .info sites for infomercials and banner ad networks. newstuff.info thank you for visiting, your name is now on over 10,000 maillists!! your free offers will be arriving shortly .name sites for identity thieves. fugitive.name the source of new and old identities. who-wants-a-new-identity.name become someone else .pro prostitution and outcall services on the web vesuvius.pro your source for volcanic eruptions!! high-colonic.pro your home for that really clean feeling! 60 minutes or less!!! (please kids, do not go there. You remember happened in Risky Business) .museum sites to save the dead arts and sciences. dead-html-tags.museum the home for propriatary tags and effects that only work in certain browsers! .aero sites for airplanes... flying-laptops.aero top 100 reasons your 1000 dollar laptop will crash our 50 million dollar plane .coop sites for convicted felons. fed-pen.coop guides to federal prisons... Now with menus!! lockdown.coop bad boys and what they do alone

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Submitted by r937 on November 22, 2000 - 00:27.

hey alan, that's pretty funny have a look at SO LONG DOT-COM, HELLO DOT-MUSEUM! (ICANN Meets Urgent Demand by Adding .Aero, .Coop, and .Museum Domains) on the SatireWire.com site

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Submitted by dewolfe001 on November 25, 2000 - 10:00.

This may seem stupid, but here it goes: Where does the authority for ICANN stem from? When Tuvalu or Canada or another country go on the Internet so to speak, how did they attain their TLD? "olineham's" post about these names having English-- American English-- signifigance is very true. Does ICANN have absolute authority over TLDs? What's to stop a series of name servers from introducing their own domains (www.faint.hope, www.bad.luck, etc.)? As I said above, a stupid question, but one that's been nagging me for a while.

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Submitted by olineham on November 25, 2000 - 18:13.

dewolfe001, hopefully this newer article answers all of your questions. If not, feel free to ask again.

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