November 25th, 2005
Dutch Firm Circumvents Net Suffixes
By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
Amsterdam-based UnifiedRoot wants to eliminate the need for you to use .com, .net, etc. as your TLD (suffix) in your domain name. Instead you can choose virtually anything.
“The plan is to offer names in any character set,” said Erik Seeboldt, managing director of Amsterdam-based UnifiedRoot.
UnifiedRoot offers practically unlimited numbers of suffixes, unlike the short list of suffixes currently in use. Its offer is different from other “alternative root” providers such as New.net which offers to register names in front of a small range of new suffixes, such as .club and .law.
Dutch airport Schiphol is one of the early customers. Registering a name costs $1,000 plus an annual fee of $240. Companies can then invent additional Web site addresses in front of their top-level domain (TLD) name, such as flights.schiphol or parking.schiphol.Critics argue alternative root companies such as UnifiedRoot introduce ambiguity because they bring a new set of traffic rules to the Web which are, certainly in the beginning, only recognized by a limited number of computers around the world.
“Those who claim to be able to add new ’suffixes’ or ‘TLDs’ are generally pirates or con-men with something to sell,” said Paul Vixie, who sits in several committees of the California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) with day-to-day control of the Web, on his CircleID blog.
To avoid conflicts between TLDs from UnifiedRoot and ICANN, the Dutch company will not register existing ICANN TLDs. Source: Reuters
How would this work? The only way every computer in the world can access these TLDs is to for them to use the the UnitedRoot root name servers which contain a superset … the ICANN name server + the UnitedRoot extensions (a root name server converts the site name, say www.realtechnews.com, into the IP address necessary to actually access the site). Alternatively, UnitedRoot could make deals with ISPs, which could then make the changes for all their subscribers. So far UnitedRoot has made deals with most ISPs in Turkey.
We Say: Despite the agreement put in place at the World Summit on the Information Society, it’s no secret that many countries are still displeased with ICANN and U.S. governance over the Internet, and this definitely plays to that. While I can definitely see the reasoning behind countries demanding the U.S. give up Internet oversight, I’m not a fan of the UnitedRoot idea because it causes decentralization which creates the potential for problems. I do think, however, that Vixie may have been just a wee bit pejorative in his comments.
John Thomas says:
Vixie is looking at the issue from his point of view. Why would he even be curious about this. This is not about technology. Those Dutch guys I think are asking the question that should have been asked much earlier. Why not? Why not any more top levels? Oh boy, don’t believe in the crap about that DNS system cannot hold more TLDs. That’s not even correct. So I think Vixie is responding the question that he was not asked, which is “What do you think about this movement which tries to show that ICANN is not doing rocket science?”
November 25th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Michelangelo says:
Ít’s just a pitty that the guy’s behind the Unified Root are the same people who were in control at UNIDT. The former distributor of www.public-root.com. They nearly destroyed the Public-Root organisation by illegaly copying their ideas and work. These guy’s are in it for the money, not to serve the internet community.
November 25th, 2005 at 4:51 pm
Joe Baptista says:
The Public-Root is an excellent idea, unfortunately as has been mentioned the UnifiedRoot is a rip off of the public-root. The unifiedroor people have committed fraud and the details are available to all to see:
http://www.cynikal.net/~baptista/P-R/
Unfortunately Vixie is right - the UnifiedRoot is run by pirates and rogues.
Joe Baptista
Public-Root Founder
November 25th, 2005 at 5:02 pm
Nathan says:
Pirates and rogues my ass!
Who are the real pirates and rogues???
The Internet should be a DEMOCRACY, and good ideas such as this should come to the forefront more often!!!
I think the most promising aspect of this whole phenomenon is its ability to potentially release new concepts and ideas (as well as old concepts) on the public at a more fundamental level.
What I mean is this: I think people are getting sick of .com.
People were sick of .xxx before it even started.
Wouldn’t it be great to use TLDs like .love or .thanks instead?
It strikes me that it will be a long while before ICANN permits the use of such obviously joyful and beautiful words…. Perhaps UnifiedRoot can get things rolling in a better, more democratic direction….TRUE to the spirit of the World Wide Web.
Instead of World Wide XXX I would personally prefer a “World Wide Hug”. Other good domains I can think of include:
.love and .thanks (obviously)
.joy
.peace
.patience
.kind / .kindness
.gentle
.faith / .faithfulness
.zen
etc.
Finally, this kind of undertaking would strongly corroborate with the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto (www.hado.net), (the author of “The Hidden Messages in Water” - as featured in the hit movie, What the Bleep Do We Know?)… he has in fact already ENDORSED this very idea!!!
People need to start thinking less about .xxx and .biz and more about .love and .thanks!!!
November 26th, 2005 at 2:00 am
Joe Baptista says:
Nathan said “The Internet should be a DEMOCRACY, and good ideas such as this should come to the forefront more often!!!”. Well I agree. In fact the Public-Root was designated to be such a democracy. Thats how it was designed.
Unfortunately the people behind the UnifiedRoot were instramental in killing that vision. The UnifiedRoot is just another attempt to pull the wool over the Internet community - because there is no democracy here.
The UnifiedRoot like the Public-Root is run by the same set of gangsters - there is no democracy, there is no transparency, there is no accountability or representation.
If you think I’m wrong please show me where the UnifiedRoot provides for such a democracy. It does not.
The UnifiedRoot is about greed, money, and control. The same people who were in the Public-Root are now in the UnifiedRoot. So nothing has changed.
Before you make these claims Nathan - take the time to investigate.
November 26th, 2005 at 6:09 am
John Thomas says:
If they stole public-root’s idea why doesn’t public root sue them? Unidt should have operated in a contrat if they broke it than public-root can say something. I see some comments from the founder of public-root. Instead of writing to blogs if your criticism is right, then you should be suing them. I’ve seen the link and I personally started to think that you are not even legally entitled to write on behalf of public-root.
I’d rather have a transparent corporation than public-root doing this, and this is my conclusion after reading the site about the history.
December 2nd, 2005 at 6:54 am
netfreak says:
“The UnifiedRoot like the Public-Root is run by the same set of gangsters - there is no democracy, there is no transparency, there is no accountability or representation”
Just Blaming Blaming Blaming.. I looked your site and it seems P-R killed himself. It seems P-R guys polluted .
It is very easy to Blame . Just wondering why you are against now such new attempts ?
Any how I want to see more development and get rid of This ICANN Regime. Any help wellcome
)
Freaknet
December 2nd, 2005 at 7:02 am
Nathan says:
Well…let’s build an open-source version of this, and link it with a Firefox extension…
Wouldn’t that take off wonderfully?
Let’s get the Mozilla/Firefox people behind this, and working on the same idea.
An open-source web will be the true Web 2.0.
Someone please write to me so we can work on this idea together:
nathanbraun@yahoo.ca
Let’s build a “people’s web”–alternative to ICANN et al. (ie UnifiedRoot).
December 6th, 2005 at 3:58 am