> After a long and expensive battle, news just dropped that Verisign is retracting its plan to terminate 22,000 domain names and email redirects. Although they will be closing new registrations for 3rd-level .name domains, all existing domains (including this website) and email redirects will remain indefinitely.
This was what I figured SHOULD happen when they did this. Allow existing customers to keep renewing, but nobody new allowed, if a tld frees up over time, reclaim it completely and sell it off.
What they were proposing should really be illegal...
For it to be illegal I think we would have to have much stronger digital ownership laws. I would certainly support them. But for now a domain you "own" is just an entry in someone else's ledger and control is only enforced by contract for big players willing to pay.
but it's tricky because the domain name registries and registrars have a kind of thicket of contracts nowadays that subordinates registrants' property interests to other rules and considerations. So I don't think a court would think that a modern-day domain name registrant has property rights in a domain name that supersede all of those contractual terms.
Edit: my recollection is that Kremen v. Cohen interpreted the legal defaults that applied because Kremen registered the domain name in an era when Network Solutions didn't require registrants to agree to a contract that limited Network Solutions's liability and gave it various explicit rights and powers.
I'm not a huge ICANN expert, but I think ICANN broadly thinks the status quo is preferable to one in which registrants had stronger, less equivocal property interests in names.
These domains wouldn't be worth a penny if they came with a disclaimer that they can be deregistered or even taken over at any point. With a bit of luck, somebody could snatch popular last name domains and set up a catch-all mailserver.
They do have such a limitation, because of things like UDRP. It's just that there are maybe some forms of restriction on the processes by which domain names can be involuntarily transferred or seized. But it's a real possibility!
I don't know about .name specifically, but some registries have a grace period (or multiple) after which you can still renew it. It's worth checking if you're within the time limit.
And to show off another fun character, for languages like Spanish that start a question with an inverted question mark, there's also ⸘, the inverted interrobang.
Though I find the name some people call it, gnaborretni (interrobang backwards), much sillier.
Interesting! If we were to follow Spanish to name the inverted interrobang it'd be opening (and closing) interrobangs, not gnaborretni, just as we don't have nóicagorretni nor nóicamalcxe :)
It's a neat little mark but I don't think it has much of a
chance being widespread because I think ?! has already won in real usage and doesn't have the fine detail problem. I think it has a better chance of becoming an official grammatical digraph than the merged mark.
It has weird interactions with some modern browser features. For example domain isolation doesn't apply between subdomains of the same TLD, so john.smith.name and drew.smith.name don't get isolation in naive implementations.
It definitely is. <ingress>.k8s.<mydns>.com regularly confuses what password I want to use if I have different authentication per ingress. More commonly if I run something else at <name>.<mydns>.com firefox and chrome are both happy to offer up my password for <other service>.<mydns>.com.
Congrats to those wanting to keep their domains! I'm surprised they went with perpetual (well, as much as anything is) support, i.e. allowing renewals and such rather than just letting it naturally expire (the initial proposal was to immediately cease these records at a given date with no clear communication on how they'd be protected or not from re-registering the upper level domains or not).
Same as any gTLD, pick your favorite registrar and they probably support it. Give your registrar money, they'll give the registry money and boom. (more or less)
When .name was new, you may have needed to contract with the registry directly, it was an early new gTLD and I don't remember if they started with the registry/registrar split or not.
Afaik, new registrants are not able to register a third level domain, but second level domains have been available for a long time.
but which support the actual third-level domains? for example, my last name is already taken as a .name domain by verisign, what if i want my firstname.lastname.name domain?
One can't (officially) register such 3rd level domains anywhere anymore.
It's just a combination in the ambiguity of what "it discards the dot" should mean in GGP's message combined with the article already clarifying 3rd level domains are not available on .name anymore leading to a lot of confused comments.
"Although they will be closing new registrations for 3rd-level .name domains, all existing domains (including this website) and email redirects will remain indefinitely."
They were apparently planning on shutting down the whole TLD. They will be leaving it up for existing registrants, but not allowing new registrations.
No, they were not planning that. This is only about 3rd level domain as the paragraph you quoted says. Every other TLD don't sell those (afaik). Normally "someone.name" would be a domain, and they would own all the subdomains. .name allowed you to register "one.someone.name" and "two.someone.name" as completely separated domains with completely separated owners. I understand why they should grandfather in existing domains but this was just madness.
Ah, fair enough. I kind of thought that third level domain registration was the whole point of the .name TLD, so I was interpreting it as shutting it down.
So the weird part then comes in: are all second level domains that have third level registrations now reserved? Do they stop being reserved if the last third level registration expires without being renewed?
> So the weird part then comes in: are all second level domains that have third level registrations now reserved? Do they stop being reserved if the last third level registration expires without being renewed?
Yes, second level domains that overlap with a registered third level domain have never been available. Under the original proposal, once all the third level domains were dropped, the overlapping second level domains would have been available (first come, first served). I believe current practice is the second level domain becomes available if all of the third level domains expire. Registrants in other threads indicated that there's no process to have an orderly transition from being the only the registrant of a third level domain under a specific second level name to registering that second level domain ... you would have to let your current name expire and hope to catch the second level name.
Good question. Yeah no idea - the email linked in OP says they're going to send a new proposal, I'm assuming it will cover how they're planning to handle it. And I guess that yes blocking second level domains that have a third level already registered is the pragmatic choice.
So glad this happened. When I first heard, I assumed that all the folks wronged would simply be disregarded even though Verisign was blatantly breaking consumer protection laws (I assume. If it wasn't, those laws are incomplete). The fact that Verisign even tried still makes me upset though. It's really annoying what several companies will do as long as their hand isn't forced due to legal or social repercussions
This was what I figured SHOULD happen when they did this. Allow existing customers to keep renewing, but nobody new allowed, if a tld frees up over time, reclaim it completely and sell it off.
What they were proposing should really be illegal...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremen_v._Cohen
but it's tricky because the domain name registries and registrars have a kind of thicket of contracts nowadays that subordinates registrants' property interests to other rules and considerations. So I don't think a court would think that a modern-day domain name registrant has property rights in a domain name that supersede all of those contractual terms.
Edit: my recollection is that Kremen v. Cohen interpreted the legal defaults that applied because Kremen registered the domain name in an era when Network Solutions didn't require registrants to agree to a contract that limited Network Solutions's liability and gave it various explicit rights and powers.
I'm not a huge ICANN expert, but I think ICANN broadly thinks the status quo is preferable to one in which registrants had stronger, less equivocal property interests in names.
This is essentially premium real estate now. For us nerds, anyway.
Great job Neil and gang!
I did notice that my domain kept working past the supposed shutdown date, but I let the domain registration expire.
I'm so mad now! I assume there is no way to get my domain/email forwarding back :(
I suppose I could try to ask the registrar, but I highly doubt they can do anything...
(Edit: I'm not actually mad, but it was annoying to have to move accounts from my first@last.name email to another one)
And to show off another fun character, for languages like Spanish that start a question with an inverted question mark, there's also ⸘, the inverted interrobang.
Though I find the name some people call it, gnaborretni (interrobang backwards), much sillier.
And yes, I love the interrobang! Ever since I mapped scroll lock to "compose" on my keyboard, I've had fun typing all sorts of characters :)
I first heard of it back when Usenet was still the hotness.
Apparently it's been around for close to a century, so if it hasn't caught on widely by now, you're probably right.
Many registrars don't support the unique 3rd level domain setup for .name, so it can be hard to find registrars that properly support it.
There's also an associate email redirect service, which is unique to .name and probably costs money to run and maintain.
It's probably easier to support, and more valuable to sell second level .name domains.
Pretty terrible that they were considering just dropping tens of thousands of customer registrations however.
Closed. Wont fix.
Resistance is not futile.
Resistance with a strong case and competent lawyers is not futile.
When .name was new, you may have needed to contract with the registry directly, it was an early new gTLD and I don't remember if they started with the registry/registrar split or not.
Afaik, new registrants are not able to register a third level domain, but second level domains have been available for a long time.
It's just a combination in the ambiguity of what "it discards the dot" should mean in GGP's message combined with the article already clarifying 3rd level domains are not available on .name anymore leading to a lot of confused comments.
"Although they will be closing new registrations for 3rd-level .name domains, all existing domains (including this website) and email redirects will remain indefinitely."
They were apparently planning on shutting down the whole TLD. They will be leaving it up for existing registrants, but not allowing new registrations.
So the weird part then comes in: are all second level domains that have third level registrations now reserved? Do they stop being reserved if the last third level registration expires without being renewed?
Yes, second level domains that overlap with a registered third level domain have never been available. Under the original proposal, once all the third level domains were dropped, the overlapping second level domains would have been available (first come, first served). I believe current practice is the second level domain becomes available if all of the third level domains expire. Registrants in other threads indicated that there's no process to have an orderly transition from being the only the registrant of a third level domain under a specific second level name to registering that second level domain ... you would have to let your current name expire and hope to catch the second level name.
It was initially! But there was enough demand for second-level registrations that they opened that up too (and set the stage for this whole mess).
Shame I didn't register on my lastname .name , I had thought it was a much newer gTLD.
Success is possible. Well done to all.