The future of domain names

[dee]

1) there are already sites and mechanisms for artists to get paid when their songs are played/downloaded

Agreed. But they don't get paid for most plays/ downloads It relies on honesty and people pirate / distribute / copy. Its been going on since i was a kid with cassettes and has been magnified exponentially by digital tech. When DRM gets sorted to the point they cant , then the film/music industry with grab hold with all it can .

2) the only thing holding up interbank transfers....is banks. There is a reason for that - they earn! Even if it was down to technology they can still process *far* more transactions without the infrastructure needed for bulky transaction details as it stands.

Agreed. 100 % . But again, economics will win. There are already banks using the system, so its shit or get of the pot. Customers will go elsewhere.

 

[dee]

VHS won because of porn. We had both in my house and betamax was better quality. However there was a lot of porn about on vhs only and that was the tipping point. At least in UK anyway. Also, as you say, licensing issues.

VHS porn won over BETAMAX porn because the porn copying tech that was cheapest was VHS

This brings us on to laminating tech and handwipe tech...

 

[cav]

I am confident domain names will remain the bedrock of an organisation's online presence. It is the established norm, just like post codes are for physical addresses. When apps and social media began to take off, I was concerned this would challenge this established order, but it has not. An organisation will always prefer to have their own web address rather than rely on a social media presence, as it gives them control of their online presence.

 

[jmcc]

I'm a software dev and I can't think of a common or simple way that I could guarantee that something hadn't been tampered with other than a checksum of some kind. But you have to store the checksums somewhere and who's to say that the checksum list hasn't been tampered with and how can anyone who comes to it without any knowledge guarantee that it hasn't been tampered with........... therefore as far as I understand the crapchain solves that particular problem.

What bothers me about Blockchains and cryptocurrencies is that they are all vulnerable to a single hack that successfully targets their main algorithm(s). They are, in effect, on borrowed time. Once a blockchain loses verifiability it becomes useless to its users because they cannot be certain about transactions. The domain name system as it stands is somewhat more robust but it can still be gamed. With, for example, a system like Sky, a hack would probably necessitate changing all the smartcards. It would be expensive but it could recover. With a blockchain system, replacing the core algorithms would require a lot of the initial work to be repeated and it would be catastrophic for the blockchain's credibility. With domain names, the control over the domain name's zonefile rests with both the registry (the TLD's zonefile) and the registrant's zonefile for the domain name. The domain name system is a lot more more robust than blockchains in terms of recovering from a compromise.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Ryan Ewen]

You'll still need a way of directing an individual to the information they are looking for. Even a blockchain based distributed web will need an addressing system

I agree - a bit like a postcode and house number. they will be around for a long time yet

 

[woopwoop]

One other thing that people tend to overlook (even domainers) is the role of domains in the ultimate app, email.

Even when promoting a domain for sale, owning awesomekeyword.com is a huge marketing benefit when emailing from [email protected]


If domains disappear you have to think what would happen to emails and the role of domain names in email addressing.

 

[JMI]

I find this type thread pops up every 4-6 months, the main reason being to put the minds at rest of non-technical people thinking about (or who already have) invested seriously in domains..a kind of 'give me a hug on the sofa with a hot choccy and tell me everything's going to carry on as is for another 100 years... and the domain-bogeyman won't be out this year..

 

[WalkinDude]

Domains are now too expensive and to complex for non techy end users. The pricing, and complexity favour the tech companies [less of an ocean of resistance], domainers who hoard best domains [i would plead guilty assuming it's applicable here], and big brands. What was once an ocean of opportunity is yet again forced into a pyramid.

Yet domains are also the primary way to 'own' your bit of the internet.
So what we have here is 'ownership' of digital real estate is expensive, massively overcomplicated, and drives a massive portion of the activity into these digital disneylands who are widely described by the media as utter failures to all except their own shareholders in terms of 'change the world' 'do no evil'.

I've always hoped domainers globally would form an alliance but was never quite sure to what purpose since the odds are so overwhelming. But for me where there a purpose it would be to:

Get the price down to 1 major unit. Dollar, Euro, Pound

Zero techie way to whack up website within seconds of registering the domain name. Point here click there etc. The current system is like paying full whack for a car then them informing you you need an engineering degree to drive it. It's a huge bottleneck of creative, entrepreneurial, promise that is then housed in the digital disneylands causing those behemoths to have 1trillion dollar valuations despite in total moving 1 and 0's - all completely DONATED to them by billions of 'users' every second of every day - around for a living.

Second issue is moving forward but the pricing issue is well all wrong imho.

It's the first time i've felt like we could be approaching a turning point. The disaster of the ntld's will cause wiser future decisions. You don't need to put what traditionally and logically goes on the left side of the dot on the right side. The right side is for new concepts and new digital universes that grow within themselves.

the dot stands for 'is, of, in,' those types of things. So Donut.Donut is DonutInDonut. Worthless. ThisIsThis<ThisIsThat.

I love domaining. Nice to see some energy back in acorn, I was 12 hours straight for first time in years on the PC yesterday, days behind the clock on the ror uk plus non of the fancy tech some of the big boys have in here but was a productive day. But in the end as domainers, those that care more than just profits, but actually believe in domaining, this [pause for drama]... this thing of ours.... have to solve the problems inhibiting it's rightful status in the internetsphere. It is right up there with the key fundamentals. The right address in that infinite space. I think the problems can and will have to be solved because sooner or later people are going to wake up and realise handing massive amounts of your personal data, activity, to faceless companies whos execs by sheer coincidence own 500million dollar yachts 18months later probably isn't the way to solve inequality and other matters we must attend to. Digital data is valuable and it's it's principly owned/housed by the domain name it's sent to so there is gonna be a natural and persistent pull towards owning that data especially when it's your own and for that you need a domain name.

 

[jmcc]

Domains are now too expensive and to complex for non techy end users.

There does seem to be a massive restructuring going on particularly with gTLD domain names. The non-COM gTLDs are basically losing registrations. The .NET has been in decline since 2009 or so. The .ORG recently stopped discounting offers to registrars and that's led to a decline in a lot of low quality registrations which generally don't renew well. The renewal fees on .BIZ and .INFO, and other gTLDs, have been creeping upwards and that's led to a decline in those gTLDs. The rise of the ccTLDs means that people are more likely to register a domain name in their local ccTLD and leave it at that. What's keeping .COM alive is that it is backed by the US. It is the de-facto US ccTLD. Outside the US, it is losing ground in the countries with strong ccTLDs. Discounting has completely banjaxed some of the new gTLDs but some of them have good renewal rates even though they have a renewal fee that's about two or three times that of a .COM renewal. In terms of development, the number of domain names in a zonefile is highly misleading. The percentage of active/developed domain names in a TLD can be between 20% and 30% for a good TLD. I've seen development rates of below 1% in some new gTLDs. The domain name is often the least expensive part of setting up a website. Selling domain names to non techy end users is always going to be difficult but it might be an idea to sell the domain name and a templated site to them rather than wasting time trying to just sell the domain name.

Regards...jmcc