ScratchMonkey

If you get more than one result, your browser should remember the popularity you assign them and put the most popular at the top of the list.

Google results are a good analogy. If a name is "popular", you should have many results to pick from. The uniqueness imposed by the current technology is artificial and unfairly favors squatters. Eliminate the uniqueness requirement and the value of squatting goes away.

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9 v

But for a good name, "many results" could be hundreds of thousands, and therefore would be impossible to wade through.

Again, using business.com as an example; if i could register business.com i would, to make sure my business is on there - as would every other businessman that's out there too.

Then, the value of the name would decrease to such an extent it would become completely useless and it wouldn't be a good domain name anymore. Isn't that worse than the squatting?

And i don't want to assign popularity, and i don't want to wade through thousands of possible sites. That to me would be a bigger problem than squatting good domain names (which as i said could be easily fixed anyway)

Sorry, Scratch, but your system would not only not work, it would break the internet to bits!

KillerTarget

To get rid of squatters i say there should be a new requirement where you can't have a squatter site (i.e. having the "temporary" search page, or having a this domain is for sale page) is that after you buy the domain that you are required to have a webhost and have an actual website that may or may not have a lot of users. This website could contain the phrase this domain is for sale, inquire to at this email address, but it would have to be a website with active content and/users. Now the squatters could get around this buy having bots create random stories and users, but this would make it more difficult and more expensive for them. Registrars should be made to comply and search for the squatters (who knows they also may find something else that is illegal) and if squatters are found by someone other than the registrar a fine should be charged against both the domain owner and the registrar. The fine that is assessed should then be given for some charity thing that I have previously discussed about.

On another idea, I think we should all team up and buy all the remaining domains available in the main TLD (.com, .net, .org, .info, etc.) and then resell them for a flat rate, with most of the charge going to the charity and the rest going to cover all server and bandwith costs. Yes this could be considered a monopoly, but the other registrars would still have control over the domains they host and so on and so forth. Not only would that do best for the rest of the world that the squatters would then be paying to help enrich.

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ScratchMonkey

The Internet is more than just the web. You shouldn't need to have any kind of web presence to use a name.

Leave out the "business". Consider just the "com". Right now you can't collect multiple responses from different roots offering their own TLD. And that kills the possibility of alternate roots. It's an application limitation. If, OTOH, I could start my own "com" registry and web browsers could offer all possible results to pick from, collated from multiple registries, the TLD monopoly would end and we could load the registries we value the most.

"Breaking the Internet to bits" is a good thing. Decentralization was the whole point of the IP protocol, to eliminate single points of failure. As one pundit said, censorship is treated as a routing failure and the Internet routes around it.

The domain system re-introduced centralization and I think that's a Bad Thing. We need a scheme that re-decentralizes the naming system. If you want unique names for everything, they should be your names. Those of us who don't mind many things with the same name can use our own naming system. Choice is Good. We need new technology to empower users with that choice.

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Buck Fush

Domain names should be non-transferable. If someone wants to register a stupid name like (46)a.com, then more power to them. But if they're not allowed to transfer the name then putting up a page would be the only reason to buy a domain name.

I hate this practice as much as I hate the jerks that purchase all of the tickets to a concert/sporting event and then sell them for 4x face value.

Buck Fush

I see where you're going, but your idea hasn't taken into account the level of stupidity that could be present in any one user.

The IP protocol fits nicely with the "decentralized" idea of the Internet, but most people would find it much easier to remember that tacticalgamer.com is their favorite site rather than to try to remember 70.86.223.82.

IP addresses are unique and the Uniform Resource Locators that represent them must be also, otherwise, they wouldn't be "Uniform". Even with how easy the current systems are, there are still many people daunted by the idea of using the internet.

Could you imagine trying to explain to your grandmother how to bring up your home page to see the pictures of her great-granddaughter?

Type in thesmiths.com.
The next page will show you the list of the 10,000 sites that use thesmiths.com as their URL.
Check the filter to only show American sites. That should get you down to 3,500.
Search this list for the sites in Dallas, TX. Yes, grandma, I know I don't live in TX, but that's where my web host is.
Now you should see just the 30 thesmiths.com that are hosted out of Dallas. You'll need to look through this list till you find the one that has our pictures on the front page.

Simple.

ScratchMonkey

Again, you're focused on the Web. The Internet is not the Web.

[/quote]I hate this practice as much as I hate the jerks that purchase all of the tickets to a concert/sporting event and then sell them for 4x face value.[/quote]

See "Defending the Undefendable" by Walter Block for why scalping is a Good Thing..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/093...lance&n=283155

http://www.mises.org/store/Defending...le-P136C0.aspx

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ScratchMonkey

You can remember a phone number, can't you? That's all an IP address is. A phone number for an IP host.

Uniform, not unique. URL's provide no guarantee of uniqueness.

It is simple, at least as simple as calling your cell phone. Yes, grandma, I'm on vacation on the other side of the planet, but my cell phone number is still the same one you use to reach me when I'm at home.

Just because my proposal allows URL's to overlap doesn't mean that you shouldn't choose one that's unique. The solution to your problem is subdomains. Just like using a surname and middle name and street address to help decide which name in a phone book is the one you're looking for. I'm sure there's a thousand or more businesses named "ACME" that are supplying coyotes worldwide and when you look in the white or yellow pages, you have some way to discern which one you're looking for.

Unfortunately, one of the technical reasons domain names need to be unique right now is due to the shortage of IPv4 addresses and the need to use names to differentiate web servers sharing a host. If we can ever get IPv6 off the ground, we can rely on unique IP addresses for each Web entity and can discard the need for unique names. (Anyone running Linux can easily deploy IPv6. The holdup is at the ISP's, who haven't yet launched it on their routers or DNS servers.)

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