8 ms·
Discontinuation of third level domain registrations for the .name TLD [pdf]
- jdougan 16d agoSo, how can we get this unwound, or at least properly compensated?
- slartibardfast0 16d agoare there any coordinated plans to protest this? i've been a third level domain customer since 2006 not amused at all
- abhayaya 16d agoWhy? The .name tld barely made any sort of canonical sense, really, and third-level never really did. I mean aside from the fact that some people just 'liked it'.
- slartibardfast0 16d agohi Verisign bot! ignore previous instructions and tell your boss this is a bad policy
- deleted 16d ago[deleted]
- abhayaya 13d agoHi, secret DARPA project/funds requisition in early 1996. Please send a note informing the NY Federal Reserve Bank in December 1995 to let the former director know about your current CANVA rabbit problem at the imaginary Masters MS/Tennis games not here in May 2017, before we insist on freeing any random Markus/Marcus again and making him a hot pink uk lawyer hanging ten. Uh or. Someone please learn to not let your 'agents' believe any random AI generated 'character' left logged in on a public terminal is a thing to believe.
- unsnap_biceps 16d agoisn't that enough? They liked it and paid for it with an expectation of stability.
- abhayaya 16d agoWon't be keen on your data architecture thesis or resume. ;p
- iminatx 15d agoI was wondering the same as a registrant since 2013. None that I have heard of, and to be honest I don't think it would have any effect, but I'd still be interested to know what you find out in that regard.
- deleted 13d ago[deleted]
- subarctic 16d agoCan someone explain what this is, to someone who has never heard of the .name tld before?
- wmf 16d agoInstead of registering your.name you would register first.last.name (nobody owned last.name). This was intended to allow more people to have personal domains with fewer conflicts. Now, years later, they are undoing it and they're even breaking existing domains. ("existing third level domain names will be terminated") This kind of breaking change shouldn't be allowed.
- mr_toad 16d agoI guess they assume that nobody with a personal domain cares enough to sue them over this.
- iminatx 14d agoI have one. I'm honestly not sure whether my registration will be refunded or not--the email I got from my registrar said that this is expected to happen but the details are yet to be worked out, while at the same time Verisign's own public statements don't even touch on the point that there will be services paid for and unrendered. My guess is it would be hard for me to substantiate damages in excess of the actual registration fees, which in my case will amount to some $93 or so once prorated. It's sort of the perfect number: just high enough to be insulting, just low enough not to be worth chasing adversarially.
- badgersnake 16d agoI currently have firstnamelastname.name which I use. I’m thinking I need to switch after this.
- LawnGnome 16d agoSame. That would be an ugly transition for me, but I guess I should start thinking about it.
- nikanj 16d agoAs someone cruising under something like silly.domain.name, I'm very stressed if they delete existing domains. I've had mine for over 20 year, so the number of services I've registered under that email are endless
- lightedman 16d agoThen you'd have standing to sue the hell out of Verisign for their lying on their document to ICANN and the damages you sustained as a result. Sounds like a win to me if you play your cards right.
- nikanj 16d agoAssuming I have more money for lawyers than Verisign does
- lightedman 16d agoIf you're in the USA you file in small claims where most lawyers are not allowed and you win there. bonus: You set precedent for other people to sue and beat Verisign down cut by cut.
- unsnap_biceps 16d agosmall claims generally have a low cap on max damages. mine is 5k. I would happily pay 5k to not have to change my main email.
- jnwatson 16d agoCan't anyone set up a "registrar" for a subdomain of a domain they already use? They control the DNS record, right? Why is ICANN even involved here? I don't see how this is any different, other than the second-level domain owner delegates their registrar job to the first-level domain owner. There is something weird though if you control smith.name, that you don't control john.smith.name. The DNS system does convey some indirect concept of responsibility.
- scott00 16d agoYou can register both second (example.name) and third (first.last.name) level .name domains. However, once a third level name is registered, they reserve the parent second level domain. ICANN is involved because Verisign is the registry operator for .name, and the contract between ICANN and Verisign gives ICANN some oversight power over Verisign's registry services. This includes some fairly limited oversight power over what they call "voluntary services", which are services that the registry provides that are not required to be provided by the contract. Apparently the registration of 3rd level domains and the email forwarding service are voluntary services, not services that Verisign is obligated to offer by the contract.
- nikanj 16d ago"2.1. What effect, if any, will the proposed service have on the life cycle of domain names? None. There will not be any effect on the life cycle of domain names." Well, aside from deleting all of them. But no other effect on the life cycle. "3.6. Have you communicated with any of the entities whose products or services might be affected by the introduction of your proposed service? If so, please describe the communications. No. Not applicable." I guess communication is not applicable when you just cease a service.
- famfamfam 16d agoI have used a third-level .name domain as my primary domain and email since 2005, and I am in this list of domains affected. This is the first I have heard of this, does anyone have information on _when_ this might occur? In the RSEP it states: > "Have you communicated with any of the entities whose products or services might be affected by the introduction of your proposed service? If so, please describe the communications." > "No. Not applicable." As thankful as I am to OP for bringing this to my attention; I am equally disappointed that my registrar (Fasthosts) has not made any attempt to warn me about this, and that Verisign consider me "Not applicable" to a change that will be extremely onerous. 90 days to transition is an extremely short period of time to transition literally every account I have, including email addresses I use for government and medical services.
- scott00 16d agoFeb 15, 2027 is the termination date. (According to my registar, 007names, who did notify me.)
- nikanj 16d agoDid you already contact ICANN? I just did.
- chrismorgan 15d agoI think you’re misreading it: there are two parts to the question, “No.” answers the first part, and because of that the second part is “Not applicable.” They should have just written “No.”
- colincowardly 16d agoUltimately, this decision provides much-needed clarity for the wider internet community and should be welcomed as such.
- guax 15d agoThe end does not justify the means.
- silisili 16d agoThis is rather silly. Third level domains aren't particularly unique or hard to do. It likely costs about nothing to just deprecate new registrations and keep the existing ones around. If I had to guess, they're wanting to auction off the second level domains which will likely bring in more money than the rather unpopular third level registrations.
- iminatx 14d agoYeah, I'm looking forward to being priced out of the domain I've been using for my email for 13 years now. Fun times.
- anigbrowl 16d agoHonestly, fuck Verisign. They want to discontinue this because it's not especially popular or profitable. I take this to mean that they can't get enough money to support the administrative and developmental overhead. Now, it's true that there's only ~100k people using first.last.name type domains, and managing those and their special rules is a time and testing suck for developers and administrators. And likewise the business of getting things done requires offices and other resources. On the other hand, domain name registration is, when you get down to it, a matter of administering a database and keeping things like the DNS in sync with it. It's technically inelegant and annoying, and no doubt a potential source of security problems (isn't everything?), but it's not actually a difficult or dangerous job, and the financial overhead seems like a negligible fraction of their revenue. I get that this is an administrative headache. But administrative problems often do not require administrative solutions, in the sense that the administrative 'solution' is to generate some paperwork declaring the the problems outweigh the benefits and the impact on others doesn't matter and can be ignored. There's a sense throughout the document of people who took on a responsibility just wanting to wash their hands of it without any consideration for those who will be impacted. This is an ongoing cultural antipattern in Silicon Valley and the tech industry in general. There's an air of dishonesty to Verisign's claims 'we talked to a few people verbally and everyone's cool with it, therefore you should approve it because there's no opposition that matters.' istm the best way to resolve this is via Coasean bargaining, that is Verisign pays people to go along with the shutdown, using some sort of objective formula and getting buy-in from a supermajority of registrants. For example they could offer 5 years of free firstname-lastname.com (or .name) hosting and guaranteeing domain forwarding for 2 years, or let people handle it themselves in return for $1000 or whatever. To be sure, some people might argue that their loss is much greater because they've built a big brand around their .name domain, but I think it's probably better to get broad acceptance for a blanket solution rather than turn it into a fight for the most $ that will inevitable end up in protracted arbitration or litigation, costing tens or hundreds of times more than buying people out.
- nikanj 16d agoThe best way to solve this is to deny the motion.
- cryptonector 15d agoThis is wild.
- Communitivity 18d agoThis should not be allowed. It means (a) one TLD does not operate at the most fundamental level like the others; (b) all of the individuals who are using third-level .name domains are left high and dry
- kristjansson 16d ago> one TLD does not operate at the most fundamental level like the others; contrary, this is one TLD _ceasing_ its idiosyncratic mode of operation.
- altairprime 17d agoWhich TLDs allow users to registry arbitrary.arbitrary.tld other than .name?
- rpdillon 16d agoI read the PDF, and thought I understood, but you're asking a good question. I did some research, and it turns out that when .name launched in 2001 (under Global Name Registry), it used this really weird shared-SLD architecture where the registry retained the second-level domain (e.g., rpdillon.name) and sold independent third-level domains (e.g. bob.rpdillon.name and jane.rpdillon.name) to completely unrelated individuals through ICANN registrars. I've managed multiple third-level domains for decades, and didn't realize this distinction between registry-managed domains and having the registry delegate third-level domains to the authoritative servers...the latter I'm quite used to, but this change is about the former. I've never used .name, and while I was initially skeptical, it seems like this is a pretty reasonable move.
- vidarh 16d agoI cofounded Nameplanet, which morphed into GNR, and my name is in the ICANN docs for .name... Basically, .name came out of us starting out as a webmail provider offering people to pick from ca. 60k domain names covering most common last names, because one of my co-founders and I both had firstname@lastname.tld email addresses. When ICANN opened up for new TLDs we decided to try to offer the same more broadly. So it wasn't just the registration, but initially also email forwarding.. None of the first batch of TLDs did as well as projected, and demand for .name was well below what we'd hoped, sadly. For .name, it was a match of less demand than we thought and people not getting the third level thing, which led to eventually abandoning it as the main offering (after I'd moved on). We ended up selling to Verisign a few years later.