As places like that see $186,000 as small change, I wonder
what other countries (much less the cities within them)
like .nu, .sb or .vu will do? For them this is an
astronomical number. Someone's about to hit a financial
home run reminiscient of the tech-stock bubble...
No countries were obliged to apply. Both country codes and country names
were excluded from the new gTLD process. Actually, they couldn't even
apply, as they are considered ccTLDs.
Thank you for explaining this. Again, probably.
So the cities in those countries could buy them (if they could
afford them) but not the countries? So .portvila is available,
but not .vanuatu?
Yes. Country names will be part of the expansion of the ccTLD space, where
usually countries are not asked to pay evaluation fees, just annual fees
much like current country codes.
What about places like Singapore? The city name is the same as
the country name.
Excluded by being a country name.
"I haven't read enough, but what's to stop speculators paying
the $186,000 then charging the tiny countries mors when they
are able to make the purchase?"s/tiny countries/cities in tiny countries/
Does the speculator issue have to go to arbitration?
The $185k is an evaluation fee, not a "buy now" price. Part of the
evaluation process is to determine if the string has a geographic nature,
and if does, if there is proper government support. There could be issues
if a city name that is not in the ISO lists (nation capitals, state names)
that happens to be a plausible non-geographic name. Let's take Sao Paulo
(largest brazilian city) for example: it's the name of a catholic saint in
Portuguese, so an applicant claiming to a be a gTLD targeted at the saint
devotees could in theory apply (it's not the case as Sao Paulo is also a
state name listed in ISO 3166) and after getting the delegation repurpose
it to serve Sao Paulo individuals and businesses.
Besides many objection procedures, one of them a community rights objection
that could be used in a case such as the one I described, governments have
a veto power that even requiring consensus among representatives would
probably be used to stop the application. Both mechanisms (objections and
government veto) are in play at two TLDs facing opposition from
south-american countries: .amazon (from Amazon Inc., opposed by countries
of the Amazon region like Brazil and Peru ) and .patagonia (opposed by the
region of same name encompassing Argentina and Chile). The outcomes of both
will likely be known this month at ICANN's meeting in Durban.
Summary: there are residual risks, but the checks and balances of the
process are likely to stop bad actors, at the cost of also stopping some
good actors. Error in the side of caution preferred.
Rubens
You're missing the forest....
If a new gTLD applicant decides to "capitalize" on their financial
investment once they have received approval, there is nothing stopping
them from opening the flood gates to anyone who wants to register
sub-domains/second-level domains for financial gain.
Of course, they should be allowed to do so. It's a free market.
Just look at .cc and the complete Charlie Foxtrot they caused by
allowing second-level domains to be used by anyone for any purpose
(e.g. *.co.cc, *.cu.cc, etc.) and .tk for instance.
We can expect a lot more of the same with the expansion of the TLD
space, so it *will* require a lot more diligence.
- ferg
> Summary: there are residual risks, but the checks and balances of the
> process are likely to stop bad actors, at the cost of also stopping some
> good actors. Error in the side of caution preferred.
>You're missing the forest....
If a new gTLD applicant decides to "capitalize" on their financial
investment once they have received approval, there is nothing stopping
them from opening the flood gates to anyone who wants to register
sub-domains/second-level domains for financial gain.Of course, they should be allowed to do so. It's a free market.
Just look at .cc and the complete Charlie Foxtrot they caused by
allowing second-level domains to be used by anyone for any purpose
(e.g. *.co.cc, *.cu.cc, etc.) and .tk for instance.
New gTLDs aren't allowed to register 2-letter country-codes like co.<TLD>
without clearance from government of that country. Considering gTLDs pay
ICANN fees by domain if they go higher than 50k domains, it's unlikely that
a registry business model will go in the same direction as the repurposed
ccTLDs
We can expect a lot more of the same with the expansion of the TLD
space, so it *will* require a lot more diligence.
Current working version of the Registry Agreement, following advice from
governments, established requirements for security monitoring for ICANN,
registries and registrars, so you should probably wait until ICANN board
publishes it to assess whether such diligence is already being provisioned
into the system or not.
From
http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/resolutions-new-gtld-annex-ii-agenda-2b-25jun13-en.pdf
"Registry Operator will periodically conduct a technical analysis to assess
whether domains in the TLD are being used to perpetrate security threats,
such as pharming, phishing, malware, and botnets. Registry Operator will
maintain statistical reports on the number of security threats identified
and the actions taken as a result of the periodic security checks. Registry
Operator will maintain these reports for the term of the Agreement unless a
shorter period is required by law or approved by ICANN, and will provide
them to ICANN upon request."
Rubens
Great, Let's see what happens.
If history is any teacher...
- ferg
Makes me wonder if concern for routing table size is worrying about the right thing.
Great, Let's see what happens.
If history is any teacher...
There is not much history here to look at... .cc and .tk are ccTLDs, based
out of sovereign states. They are delegated into the root by ICANN (more
precisely by IANA, which is currently a contract also granted to ICANN) and
that's it. What they do with 2LDs/3LDs are not under community scrutiny,
unless the ccTLD operator is also operated on a multi-stakeholder basis.
gTLDs operate under ICANN compliance regime and are required to abide by
community policies. Will this be enough ? We don't know yet, but people
have given some thought trying to find a way it is enough, and can require
further mechanisms if the initial ones fail.
Rubens
Now you are thinking. 
- ferg
Of course, we all know that makes a huge difference.
Cheers,
- ferg
Because obviously, the problems of scaling router memory and scaling DNS
servers are the same kind?
Yes, having many many new TLDs introduces new problems. (If you're not
scared enough, I encourage you to go read the output of the Variant Issues
Project. Full disclosure: I had a hand in.) Why are we talking about this
non-news now? We all knew about three years ago, at the latest, that ICANN
was planning to do this. If we didn't, shame on us.
A
Makes me wonder if concern for routing table size is worrying about
the right thing.Because obviously, the problems of scaling router memory and scaling
DNS servers are the same kind?
I would not say "same" but I would say "similar" and "related" when you
think about things like how big the cache will be and how much of the
traffic the peerages worry about will be pure overhead, and stuff like that.
Yes, having many many new TLDs introduces new problems. (If you're
not scared enough, I encourage you to go read the output of the
Variant Issues Project. Full disclosure: I had a hand in.) Why are
we talking about this non-news now? We all knew about three years
ago, at the latest, that ICANN was planning to do this. If we
didn't, shame on us.
What is going to happen tomorrow is sometimes less interesting that what is happening a while ago.
Why does this discussion have to always be "one or the other"?
We have multiple problems here, friends.
Focus.
- ferg
The number of tld's has very little effect on cache size. Cache
size is proportional to the number of unique queries made. There
are already enough names to blow out any cache.
The number of tld's does have a impact on servers that keep a local
copy of the root zone.
Mark
+10
I think you mean "de-focus".
Joe