[Moogs]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7475986.stm

Discuss, fellow web nerds.


For example, Drew is now free to buy the name funtimes.hosket instead of funtimes.hosket.com

http://hosket.drewprops

http://pirate.drewprops

http://bodaciousboobies.drewprops

Businesses are going to have a *blast* trying to prevent squaters from taking up all the obvious names. Because now instead of ibm.com, we're going to have .ibm. Imagine when the Inventive Bottle Makers Inc registers .ibm before IBM does. This all starts in 2009. Fun times!

[Capella]

Sounds awesome. Unfortunately, the article makes it sounds expensive, plus the mention of needing a business plan. Does that mean your average user won't be able to afford registering a custom address, or does it just mean that businesses are held to a higher standard? On the businesses argument, I wonder how many businesses will stick with their old .com addresses? Will they even be able to?

[Banana]

It's kind of weird.

If we look at how Internet is implemented- it's totally decentralized. There's no single authority to decide who can use their bandwidth or not, and many requests may pass through multiple networks, thus using various bandwidth, and is not seriously affected should one network get taken out of commission for whatever reasons (except for the end users of that network, of course).

Yet, when it comes to *locating* an address, we all look to ICANN with the wall of cybersquatters registrars around it to give us the precious name needed to identify our little cyber-corner.

I wonder if we would be better off if there weren't ICANN, and the naming resolution was done by the end users, in similar manner as to what we already do with hosts file. Instead of bidding for ibm.com or even .ibm, IBM and Moogs' Inventive Bottle Makers can both say they want to be referred as .ibm, but the end users has to decide which one they want to call .ibm.

Maybe that's infeasible, but the fact remains- we're using a top-down approach to a bottom-up system, and that is um, problematic, no?

[EmC]

What if I have chosen to have .ibm go to IBM and you have chosen .ibm to go to Inventive Bottle Makers and then I send you a link to business.ibm, but instead of seeing IBM's new line of servers you see Inventive Bottle Makers business page?

Go to our webpage awesome.ibm, but remember to set .ibm to Inventive Bottle Makers first in your hosts file first, otherwise you will end up looking a some awesome PC deals.


Each name needs to have exactly one possible destination.

Did I read your post right?

[Banana]

Yes, you did.

But as I said in the last line:

Maybe that's infeasible, but the fact remains- we're using a top-down approach to a bottom-up system, and that is um, problematic, no?

Maybe someone will be able to come up with a brilliant solution (e.g. you send me www.ibm.com, but it's actually stored as XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX, so when I click on it, it goes to IBM, even though my default .ibm is set to Inventive Bottle Makers.) Maybe have it act with a little context, like we naturally do in our everyday conversation.

My basic point is still this; this should be an nonissue in the realms of trademarks, really.