The internet's very own Muslim ban continues: DNS overlord insists it can freeze dot-words Internet overseer ICANN has insisted it has the authority to maintain a six-year online Muslim ban, despite being told otherwise by its own independent oversight panel. In a letter sent to the Turkish organization that applied for the rights to operate the .islam and .halal generic top-level domain names back in 2012, ICANN's …
Don't create a new TLD unless it is 100% crystal clear from the get-go, beyond any question of debate, who it should belong to, and what authority should get to say who administers it.
This isn't hard. National TLDs are administered by an agency nominated by their respective governments. Similarly I have no objection to creating ".disney' or '.pepsi' if you really must, though I think it's a shocking waste of everyone's time.
But taking a regular word with no specific trademark attachment and making it into a TLD? Just don't fucking do it. And revoke the ones you've already done, starting with ".info'. We won't miss them.
Why would Disney corporation be entitled to .disney? There are people with that last name who might have a stake in that, I would think. I suppose if it comes down to "who is willing to pay" then the six digit fees for creating a new TLD would tend to guarantee it is the mouse house that gets it but is that how we want to do things?
A TLD is effectively a worldwide trademark for a name covering EVERY line of business. Apple had to pay Apple Records to get involved in the music business, but there are enough other businesses named Apple so they truly never get "clean title" to a .apple domain. Heck even NYC might have wished to be https://big.apple!
Only companies with totally made up names that were trademarked early on, like say Facebook, would be eligible for TLDs. The only way the rest could get involved would be if you simply make it an auction, but did we want the company with the deepest pockets (at the time, because Apple may be huge now but 20 years ago many thought they wouldn't survive to see Y2K) to get the TLD?
I have no problem with new TLDs ... it makes my job on the mail server so much easier, I can just blacklist *.junk_tld domains and speed up the mail server by eliminating the junk TLDs from spam processing. Note, I've nothing against .islam or .halal, new TLDs are only be added to the junk_tld list when spam starts arriving.
Don't create a new TLD unless it is 100% crystal clear from the get-go, beyond any question of debate, who it should belong to.....
Similarly I have no objection to creating ".disney' or '.pepsi' if you really must, though I think it's a shocking waste of everyone's time.
You're actually contradicting yourself.
Have you ever visited Nissan.com ? There's an interesting tale....
Might the "hold" (for lack of a better word) be due to the two factions within Islam? They don't really get along and by dragging it's feet, ICANN might be trying to avoid a legal and public nightmare along with personal pain as the fanatics within these groups prove at the least, weekly. If governments are involved and they happen to be from the Middle East, then this might be the reasoning.
The lace of transparency in this seems to suggest there's more to them dragging their feet then meets they eye.
Indeed. As I recall, it went something like this:
ICANN: We think we'd like to let people create all sorts of new gTLDs.
Techies: No, that's stupid. Don't do that.
ICANN: We're going to do it.
Techies: Weren't you listening? We said it's a terrible idea. Here are many reasons why you should throw this plan in a pit and set it alight.
ICANN: Hooray! In response to overwhelming demand, we are now going to let anyone create a new gTLD.
ICANN: ... oh, except for all the ones we arbitrarily won't allow.
ICANN (subsequently): Jeez, what a horrible mess. Who could have imagined that new gTLDs would create problems? Why did no one warn us of this?
...ICANN (subsequently): Jeez, what a horrible mess. Who could have imagined that new gTLDs would create problems? Why did no one warn us of this?
You left off the part where ICANN go on to repeat the same mistakes over and over again because really, why should they care?
The idea of the Ottoman Empire Mark II bidding for .islam is LOL crazy. I'd rather see the Saudis get it than them, but it really ought to go to the Indonesians by weight of numbers. But as noted below, there's Sunni, Shia, Ismaili, Twelvers, and let's not forget the Sufis, who brought Islam to India and Indonesia, and have been cheerfully murdered as heretics by all latecomers since then.
Mebbe copy the Americans with something like "Icann shall make no gTLD respecting an establishment of religion, ..." ?
"They already gave out .bible, .catholic and .church - despite objections."
OTOH they have not given out .christ, .christian or .christianity.
If somebody applied for .koran, .shia or .mosque would they approve those?
This "prejudice" cry seems a tad lacking in supporting evidence.
Keep that banhammer swingin' ICANN, and keep poking those tickbox merchants 'til they change the rules.
Well, the Bible is a real book (As is the Koran and the Torah), and churches are a real place (as is mosques and synagogues). However, Christianity is a religion, and so is Islam and Catholic. I can see that .catholic is a strange one because that religion is centered around what the Vatican (which is a separate country in and of itself) says and does. This is similar to .judaism because Israel is the only Jewish theocracy in the world that I'm aware of.
"I can see that .catholic is a strange one because that religion is centered around what the Vatican (which is a separate country in and of itself) says and does. "
Nit-pick: what we in the West usually refer to as the orthodox church actually lays claim to being the catholic church. The word just means universal and consequently both sides of the Great Schism believe they are the *legitimate* claimants. This is also why the term /Roman/ Catholic exists.
I'm sure there are other religion-based TLDs out there. I found '.guru' and '.yoga' but most likely they're not in reference to eastern religions at all.
One reference suggested 10 TLD's were "religious" but I didn't want to wait for their slow scripted site.
The place I searched was gandi.net but they don't have EVERY TLD (just the vast majority of 'em from what I can tell). Notably did NOT find '.christ' or '.zen' or '.buddha' or '.hindu' or anything similar.
But as for NOT registering '.islam' etc.: if terrorists and/or jihadists were to get '.islam' TLDs wouldn't it make it easier to TRACK them? Seriously someone isn't thinking very well...
/me points out that if believers in Islam use '.church' it would be just as applicable as a christian religion. And I saw several TLDs listed in foreign lingos and so I couldn't read 'em, so maybe they're at least slightly religious? Anyway, I think ICANN wanted to avoid this entire thing, but I say open the gates and let it all happen, equally.
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If you're going to relegate them to a subdomain, why have .islam at all? They can be shia.com or shia.org or shia.ir already.
They would want .islam (as would the Sunnis) because they think they are the true Muslims, and the others are heretics, or at least misguided.
Imagine if someone wanted to create a .christianity TLD. Who gets control of it, the born agains, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans? I guess the Catholics are out of the running for .christianity since they already have their own - but at least since they all recognize the Pope there's a central authority they'd agree is justified in controlling stuff like a .catholic TLD. There's no central authority over Islam any more than there's a central authority over Christianity.
So I think ICANN is justified here - better to keep it "on hold" indefinitely since there's no right decision about who gets .islam.
How US centric - although in the US you have religions and sects for any taste and inclinations - what about the various Orthodox churches? Do you believe Russia would have nothing to say about it? And do you believe Catholics would leave others take control of it, even if they already have their own, when they developed the "credo" to assert they are the only good ones? And the list is still not exhaustive, I'm afraid.
Any religion old enough will incur in the same issues, I'm afraid...
ICANN created a minefield with the new TLDs... and something will explode (figuratively, I hope) under their assess...
I didn't intend an exhaustive list, I'm aware there are various Orthodox flavors of Christianity, the Church of England, and so forth. Pretty sure all Catholics will submit to the authority of the Vatican though, or by definition they are no longer members of the Catholic church. That's the difference between .catholic and .christianity and .islam.
I wish it could be so simple... I'm afraid each of them believe to be the true and only one... and there could be even internal fights for controlling who controls what.
It happened in the past with other religions, including Christianity, as well, and may not be over yet, albeit less bloody.
The fact that other Middle East countries objected about a registrar in Turkey managing it tells a lot about it.
ICANN may deserve a lot of troubles - but I wouldn't really like to be the one who have to manage issues like this.
Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I can tell ICANN has power only because the rest of the world allows them to. What is to stop engineers around the world to tell ICANN to go jump off a roof and set up a new gTLD system?
After all: "the internet re-routes around what it perceives as damage"
Nothing, except for the fact that you could never get "engineers around the world" to agree on one single new gTLD system and who runs it. ICANN is a terrible solution, but it may be the least worse of the possible alternatives.
If engineers around the world bypassed ICANN, we'd have a dozen different gTLD systems within a year and since they'd all still have to point to ICANN roots for .com, .net, .org and country specific TLDs they'd be the lowest common denominator so that's all anyone would use. Which defeats the purpose of this hypothetical engineer led revolt against ICANN...
"since they'd all still have to point to ICANN roots for .com, .net, .org and country specific TLDs they'd be the lowest common denominator so that's all anyone would use. Which defeats the purpose of this hypothetical engineer led revolt against ICANN..."
On the contrary, I rather took this to be the point of the exercise. But on the other hand, DNS is a hierarchical system, so these hypothetical engineers can already configure their own systems to drop all the gTLDs on the floor.
What is to stop engineers around the world to tell ICANN to go jump off a roof and set up a new gTLD system?
Not a lot, just some complexity. And the return of balkanisation. It's been done before with several alt.roots and resulted in RFC2826 explaining why it's a Bad Thing!. Especially for ICANN and their revenue streams. It's also a bit of a deja vu because the alt.roots were created to expand on the original trinity+country TLDs.
All it needs is the creation of non-authoritative (in an ICANN sense) records that show .islam delegated to a DNS server operated by the alt.root. That's made easier where countries (eg Saudi) that attempt to restrict/intercept/block unwanted content. So Saudi could create a Sunni .islam and direct DNS requests to that. Iran could do the same for a Shia version. Just modify named.root and named.cache on official name servers and away you go.
If people still want to use ICANN-approved DNS, unless DNS is blocked/redirected they could choose diffferent DNS servers.. But that also brings up some civil liberties/human rights risks, ie given some Muslims view others as heretics, being able to monitor access to heretical sites could be a Bad Thing.
It's also where ICANN's actions may encourage balkanisation. The whole DNS structure has pretty much relied on trust for authority and delegation, and if they lose that trust, then they'll lose control.
I've pretty much reached the point where balkanization isn't the boogyman that it used to be. It's not wonderful, but we're increasingly accepting quite a lot that's worse.
The Titanic, with almost no watertight bulkheads, was wonderfully free in terms of passenger movement....
A lifeboat is an inferior means of transport to almost all others...
...except a sinking ship.
What was it they said in the early days of HiFi as loudspeakers and amplifiers got better and better high frequency response?
"The more you open the door, the more the dirt flies in"
The globalists just loved the internet, until it stated transmitting messages that they did not control.
I think that techies should control the Internet and politicians should be given a walled garden.
Perhaps the TLD .CNUTS would be appropriate.
I honestly don't understand the point you're making here, but let me try to clarify what I said.
I'm not in favor of balkanization. However, there are a lot of other things that are happening with the internet that I'm equally opposed to, and can see that there's a nonzero chance that balkanization could actually become the lesser evil. I hope that day never comes, but I'm not terribly optimistic about that at the moment.
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