How do we make domains more democratic? It seems so backwards that massive corporations and groups of massive corporations are the only bodies that get to decide things like this that aren’t literally states.
ICANN isn’t really a massive organisation, it’s a technocratic non-profit with a buttload of advisory committees, including one for end users. The rules surrounding ccTLDs were tightened after Russia didn’t sunset .su, so they tried to take politics out of it, make it a wholly rules-based thing, but now it figures that the rule everyone wants to have is “decide on a case-by-case basis”.
There’s also been various initiatives regarding reform of internet governance over the decades but in the end noone can agree on what would be better so ICANN keeps on chugging on.
You know what would bring a quick end to this? If Mauritius doesn’t incorporate those islands into itself, letting them stay an autonomous territory. From British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritian Indian Ocean Territory.
Make a p2p parallel system, cryptography-based. You subscribe to a root identity, and you fetch (via something, it can be NOSTR, it can be anything) its messages, which describe the current state of the domain list.
If you don’t like that particular name provider, you may choose some other.
There may even be some voting protocol from among few different providers, on whether to accept a name change. Then you may use a few of them simultaneously.
Easy. The hard thing is to write the software (I have Aspergers, ADHD, social anxiety, chronic cold and house pests, don’t bother me, and I’m also stupid) and to make people use it.
Something between Usenet, Fidonet and Freenet, LOL.
Yes, only the US uses .gov. All other countries use .gov.uk where the last decimal is their country code.
And any country can get a .com without a .com.uk country code attached. That has changed.
All .gov are official United States government sites exclusively.
.gov (.gov.us) is used in the US to distinguish between commercial sites and sites run by state, federal, and local government institutions. It helps cut down on fraud. There are a few fucked up government sites in some states that use.com because ICANN isn’t doing their fucking job.
There’s also .mil for military sites. And .net for internet service providers. These were the original oldie domains. I’m not opppsed to adding .blog to the list, but I despise all of these confusing random cash grab domains that ICANN approves these days. “.social” is really just an org, and “.biz” is really just a com.
.gov is not the same as .gov.us (in this example, .gov is not the tld, .us is) Tlds like .io belong to countries, there is no going back to .gov or .com because countries outside of the US never just used .gov or .com.
How do you reconcile both of these websites having .gov? You can’t, you either need second level domains (.gov.uk,.gov.ik) or you would need one of them to change their name (parliamentsrilanka.gov)
.gov needs to be differentiated, and you need all of these country TLDs for that.
Yes, it is rather backwards for a handful of companies to own entire blocks of IP addresses just because. The infrastructure was massively funded by public dollars, it should be publicly owned.
How do we make domains more democratic? It seems so backwards that massive corporations and groups of massive corporations are the only bodies that get to decide things like this that aren’t literally states.
ICANN isn’t really a massive organisation, it’s a technocratic non-profit with a buttload of advisory committees, including one for end users. The rules surrounding ccTLDs were tightened after Russia didn’t sunset .su, so they tried to take politics out of it, make it a wholly rules-based thing, but now it figures that the rule everyone wants to have is “decide on a case-by-case basis”.
There’s also been various initiatives regarding reform of internet governance over the decades but in the end noone can agree on what would be better so ICANN keeps on chugging on.
You know what would bring a quick end to this? If Mauritius doesn’t incorporate those islands into itself, letting them stay an autonomous territory. From British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritian Indian Ocean Territory.
Make a p2p parallel system, cryptography-based. You subscribe to a root identity, and you fetch (via something, it can be NOSTR, it can be anything) its messages, which describe the current state of the domain list.
If you don’t like that particular name provider, you may choose some other.
There may even be some voting protocol from among few different providers, on whether to accept a name change. Then you may use a few of them simultaneously.
Easy. The hard thing is to write the software (I have Aspergers, ADHD, social anxiety, chronic cold and house pests, don’t bother me, and I’m also stupid) and to make people use it.
Something between Usenet, Fidonet and Freenet, LOL.
How about we just go back to .edu .gov .com .org?
You can take my .moe from my cold, dead, hands (๑˘･з･˘)
Who gets .gov? The US?
Other countries never used just .gov or just .com.
Yes, only the US uses .gov. All other countries use .gov.uk where the last decimal is their country code. And any country can get a .com without a .com.uk country code attached. That has changed. All .gov are official United States government sites exclusively.
.gov (.gov.us) is used in the US to distinguish between commercial sites and sites run by state, federal, and local government institutions. It helps cut down on fraud. There are a few fucked up government sites in some states that use.com because ICANN isn’t doing their fucking job.
There’s also .mil for military sites. And .net for internet service providers. These were the original oldie domains. I’m not opppsed to adding .blog to the list, but I despise all of these confusing random cash grab domains that ICANN approves these days. “.social” is really just an org, and “.biz” is really just a com.
I think you may have missed my point.
.gov is not the same as .gov.us (in this example, .gov is not the tld, .us is) Tlds like .io belong to countries, there is no going back to .gov or .com because countries outside of the US never just used .gov or .com.
To add a bit of context:
https://www.parliament.uk/ https://www.parliament.lk/
How do you reconcile both of these websites having .gov? You can’t, you either need second level domains (.gov.uk,.gov.ik) or you would need one of them to change their name (parliamentsrilanka.gov)
.gov needs to be differentiated, and you need all of these country TLDs for that.
Parlament.co.uk
.gov.uk actually exists. So yes, countries outside of the US use .gov.
https://legislation.gov.uk
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
the tld is
.ukin that casejust take the L good lord
No, they are not using .gov they are using .uk
Not opposed to that, but I’m more concerned with being able to get one at low cost, would need at least .net to kinda expand the pool.
Because they prop up the infra to support them right?
I don’t know what this is a question to.
“it seems so backwards”
They set the shit up, so they decided the behaviors.
Yes, it is rather backwards for a handful of companies to own entire blocks of IP addresses just because. The infrastructure was massively funded by public dollars, it should be publicly owned.
A fair point indeed, but that’s not how it is. Public dollars were funneled one-way into private infra, in many cases.
Doesn’t mean it can’t be that way, though, One way nationalization also exists.
You could create your own DNS server with its own routes and registrars.
If you got enough people to use your DNS network you could create your own registrars and your own rules.
Users would need to switch to your DNS, but otherwise there isn’t anything about how the Internet works that requires you to use the big dog DNS