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*Home > Background, including
Surveillance comment Background
Commercialization of Internet surveillance is the modern slave trade! Any
site that pops up a notice telling you 'we respect
your privacy' doesn't, or they wouldn't have to tell
you. Normally the notice is followed by a
request to plant cookies and 'other tracking
technology' on your device in order to disrespect
your privacy. Or worse, they tell you that by
using their site you accept their use of cookies,
etc. We don't issue a cookie warning. We
don't track users. Why should we? We
don't want to sell you anything, and we don't want
to sell you to anyone else! Remember the telephone? Early in its history you would pick up
the phone and talk to an operator (a real person)
and ask to be connected to the party you wanted to
call.
By
the time the Internet was introduced, most phones were
connected to phone numbers - although you might still talk
to an operator if you anted to make a long distance or
overseas call.
The
framers of the domain name system thought that we should
revert to connecting to other people by name, to
'humanize' the internet. We already had numerical
connections, the IP address, but that seemed so impersonal
and hard for users to assimilate since the numbers were
long and no longer (telephone like) associated with a
geographical area.
The
phone system moved from name to number calling when the
potential pool of users became too large to know everyone
by name.
The
domain name system wanted to address everyone by name, and
since every combination of second level domain name and
top level domain must be unique, ICANN thought it would be
great idea to add more top domain levels.
Everyone
can count to one thousand, but how many people can name
all of ICANN's top domains: the few legacy and many
country code, and 'too many' new generic levels? Can
you?
The
domain name system, as used today, dehumanizes the
Internet.
Adding
new top levels created several problems not seen in the
telephone network, like buying names on speculation
(raising name prices for 'new' users), buying several (or
many) copies of your second level name under different top
levels (to monopolize 'your' name), and the creation of
top levels like .sucks - cynically gaming of the
system to entice name owners into buying their own names
again, under the .sucks TLD, to prevent other .sucks
registrants from presenting critical comment. It worked,
over 8,000 times.
- - - Now to Multiplexed Names: Thirty years ago I created a public website for a very large, high tech company headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. It was a rational business decision to register the company name under the .se country code top level, but also under .com and, since the company is multinational, a large number of additional country code top levels. I
subsequently checked the local telephone
directory and found there were 100 unrelated
companies in the Stockholm area listed under 4
variant spellings of our company name, which is
based on a common Swedish family name.
None of the others could register .com or
country code .se using 'our' name spelling and,
by some standards, anyone using their variant
spelling could be accused of typo-squatting. So - one company could prevent 100 other companies, in Stockholm alone, from presenting themselves under their familiar name on the Internet, many more in the rest of Sweden, and even more in those countries where we registered under the local country code TLD. In March, 2023, an online directory found 12,781 companies in Sweden under the name Ericsson. The lack of appropriate domain names doesn't make the Internet a safer, more secure and inviting place for companies, organizations and individuals. It is a limiting factor that invites abuse. These DNS limitations don't promote the public interest. You may recite 'first come, first served' but that's misleading and semantically incorrect. It's 'first come, exclusively served'. Citing 'first come' doesn't mitigate the damage to all those who are not served. You may claim 'that's how the Internet works' but demonstrates how it doesn't work. You don't dismiss ransomware injections that take down the East Coast fuel supply as an example of 'how the Internet works'. Remember, the Internet once 'worked' only when domain names were written in letter/digit/hyphen ASCII. Why should everyone in the world be required to speak a subset of American English. IDNA (Internationalized names) solved the language problem by adding a little code to every browser. This code is invisible to the user. Where's the innovative technical solution to the 'first come exclusively served' conundrum? Requirements include unlimited naming, full backward compatibility, easy to learn and apply, that only a browser update is required (not network infrastructure), and that no current name holders and their content are negatively impacted. Multiplexed Names meet the requirements. Both the telephone network and social networks like Facebook manage 'unlimited' users with the same name/spelling as the company mentioned above. There are approximately 350.4 million domain names registered across all top-level domains (end of Q4, 2022, according to Verisign) but Facebook has 2.95 billion monthly users. The WIPO has handled >50,000 UDRP cases involving the DNS, but needn't mediate 'rightful ownership' of Facebook user names or telephone numbers. The phone in your pocket has added new features and functions since 1993, and you use it more. Domain naming hasn't evolved. It can, and should. In
his 1999 book Weaving
the Web, Tim
Berners-Lee, wrote: He could have written: Both statements were correct at the time he wrote, but for at least the last decade non-LDH ASCII ('foreign' characters and scripts) have been translated by the IDNA edge application in every browser - bärs.se and öl.se (beer and ale) can exist today. It's easy to improve the Domain Name System to point to multiple users of 'the same name'. Full disclosure: we have no affiliation with any TLD registry, registrar or re-seller.
September
2, 2024 |