I 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.
I 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.
thanks for trying, fwiw it made a beautiful domain for java source code back in the day. i hope you can do a long form retrospective on the .name story someday
do you think there's any point in contacting ICANN or Verisign? i'd be sad to lose mine!
it's wild how long some third level domains are still pre-registered for and how little an email forward must cost to run (at the sub-registrar level?)
Kinda, it's a slight variation of that from what I can tell. E.g. you can't go and register john.smith.uk because it's arbitrary.fixed.fixed rather than arbitrary.arbitrary.fixed. You can do something like john.smith.co.uk, but only if you have registered smith.co.uk or they delegate to you.
It's an odd concept. I have to say I hadn't really thought of it before reading this.
i'm 60% sure that anyone can get a .uk domain. police.uk and nhs.uk are the only ones i can think of off the top of my head, but those might be 3TLDs hosts tbf
I 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.
I 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.
thanks for trying, fwiw it made a beautiful domain for java source code back in the day. i hope you can do a long form retrospective on the .name story someday
do you think there's any point in contacting ICANN or Verisign? i'd be sad to lose mine!
it's wild how long some third level domains are still pre-registered for and how little an email forward must cost to run (at the sub-registrar level?)
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Don't many ccTLDs do something like that with the ".co.xx" second-level domain? (e.g., ".co.uk")
Kinda, it's a slight variation of that from what I can tell. E.g. you can't go and register john.smith.uk because it's arbitrary.fixed.fixed rather than arbitrary.arbitrary.fixed. You can do something like john.smith.co.uk, but only if you have registered smith.co.uk or they delegate to you.
It's an odd concept. I have to say I hadn't really thought of it before reading this.
i'm 60% sure that anyone can get a .uk domain. police.uk and nhs.uk are the only ones i can think of off the top of my head, but those might be 3TLDs hosts tbf
1 reply →