domains ICANN Must Release the Single-Character .com Hostages

[Lox]

Most of the single-character .com labels were initially registered in 1993 by Dr. Jon Postel while performing work pursuant to a contract with, and funded by, the U.S. government and are currently assigned to a "shell registrar" created and controlled by ICANN. This shell — which is the 376th entry on ICANN's list of accredited registrars — is misleadingly identified as the IANA registrar while being engaged in the illicit warehousing of domain names for speculative purposes.

ICANN, in concert with Verisign, has attempted to engage in a speculative auction for at least one of these domain names, o.com, which has the stated purpose of serving as a "pilot" for the release of the other remaining single-character .com labels. The attempted speculative auction for this warehoused domain name is to be conducted by an auctioneer selected by Verisign and the proceeds — which will be overseen by a trustee selected by Verisign, which can also fire the trustee in its sole discretion — are intended to benefit the Internet Society (ISOC) and other non-profit organizations included on a redacted and non-public list that was created solely by ICANN and Verisign.

In summary, domain names initially registered on behalf of the U.S. government have been warehoused for decades by being assigned to a shell registrar named IANA that is controlled by an ICANN department named IANA, which also performs a set of naming, numbering, and protocol functions named IANA.

read more (circleid)

 

[CraigD]

Can you imagine the hostage ransom note?

Source: MultiColor Single Letter h-H Printable Digital Single Letter | Etsy

 

[jberryhill]

“while being engaged in the illicit warehousing of domain names for speculative purposes.”

Incidentally, the author is shilling for a guy who bought a bunch of dopey figurative single letter trademark registrations in naked assignments, because he thinks it should give him a leg-up on getting the domain names.

 

[Samer]

“Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN), registry for .com, isn’t allowed to allocate any single letter .com domain names. Three .com before restriction: q.com, x.com and z.com.” -DNW May 11, 2018

Why are they restricting the free market?

 

[jberryhill]

“Verisign (NASDAQ:VRSN), registry for .com, isn’t allowed to allocate any single letter .com domain names. Three .com before restriction: q.com, x.com and z.com.” -DNW May 11, 2018

Why are they restricting the free market?

They're not. The single letters were originally reserved by Jon Postel when he single-handedly ran the domain registration system. He had the idea that there might be a practical limit to a zone file, and so he wanted to reserve the ability to go to (name).a.com (name).b.com and so on. It never became necessary, and exactly three had been registered.

ICANN kept the rule and, quite frankly, it simply hasn't been a priority to come up with a plan to release them. For a while, Overstock.com lobbied to get o.com released, but they eventually gave up on it.

The author of this piece works for a guy who buys trademark registrations like these:


https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85010801&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

That is a trademark for:

"Advertising, marketing and promotional services related to all industries for the purpose of facilitating networking and socializing opportunities for business purposes; Business networking; Business networking of peer to peer learning groups of high net worth individuals; General business networking referral services, namely, promoting the goods and services of others by passing business leads and referrals among group members; On-line business networking services"

...which belonged to a company that ran untyed.com. The company went belly-up, their domain name was abandoned, and along comes VerandaGlobal to buy up the worthless figurative trademark registration, just so he can claim he has rights in the letter "U".

It's a stupid scheme, but VerandaGlobal keeps buying these things and paying this guy to write these tedious articles on CircleID in the belief that anyone will give a damn.

 

[Future Sensors]

Back in the days...

https://marc.info/?l=namedroppers&m=95837817327070&w=2

There is clearly a trade off between (1) the manageability of the naming
system and local control, and (2) short names. More structure is needed
to get better manageability. More structure leads to longer names.

In trying to get control of the growth of the COM domain, there have been
many suggestions for criteria on which to decide which applications should
be approved for being added to the COM domain. For example, (1) does business
in more than one state, or (2) has an annual cash flow of over 10 million
dollars, or (3) has assets of over 10 million dollars, or (4) is listed on
the NYSE or NASDAC stock exchange. In any case, the criteria has to be such
that the evidience is easy to communicate via email, and easy to verify with
minimal effort by the registration staff.

The COM domain is the current operational problem, so a workable proposal
to divert this growth into a much more structured set of names is urgently
needed.​

 

[jberryhill]

Wow. If you know an archive of the old net-policy list, let me know.

 

[Future Sensors]

Wow. If you know an archive of the old net-policy list, let me know.

I lost these lists myself during the years.

But you will probably find some good material in the backup of FTP.ISC.ORG via torrent (7.19 GiB)

Full grab of the FTP site of ISC.ORG, containing many open source projects, archival Internet historical data, and information on various Internet structures both past and present. Grabbed on October 10, 2011.

https://archive.org/details/ftp.isc.org.20111010

 

[Lox]

Wow. If you know an archive of the old net-policy list, let me know.

ICANN, Verisign, Internet governance related House/Senate hearings -debate etc. can be found @ govinfo.gov (example search ICANN+Verisign).

Example PDF attached

 

[Lox]

Unrelated, just an interesting read ...
CORNELL: The Truth in Domain Names Act of 2003 and a Preventative Measure to Combat Typosquatting

PDF Attached