.name Grandfathered (neil.fraser.name)
543 points by p4bl0 5 hours ago
giancarlostoro 5 hours ago
> 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...
Spivak 3 hours ago
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.
schoen 3 hours ago
There is a Ninth Circuit decision that domain names are a form of property
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.
otterley 2 hours ago
falcor84 3 hours ago
Agreed, but I just wanted to say that essentially every single thing anyone owns is, and has been from the invention of tally marks on clay tablets, an entry in someone's ledger.
stevage 23 minutes ago
mzajc 3 hours ago
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.
not2b 2 hours ago
schoen 3 hours ago
DANmode 3 hours ago
> What they were proposing should really be illegal...
Where?
gsich 2 hours ago
Everywhere.
DANmode an hour ago
echelon 3 hours ago
Now a "{first}.{second}.name" will be really awesome to own.
This is essentially premium real estate now. For us nerds, anyway.
Great job Neil and gang!
Macha 2 hours ago
Well anyone can buy a second.name if second isn't already registered, and then set up their own first. subdomain, so most visitors aren't going to know the difference in between grandfathered in first.second.name sites and people who just bought second level domains and created their own subdomain.
jareklupinski 2 hours ago
if you're lucky, you can do something like first.sec.ond
works for many polish people who own ski resorts :)
jayknight 2 hours ago
nticompass 4 hours ago
WHAT‽ I let my "first.last.name" registration expire because of the impending shutdown!
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)
mzajc 3 hours ago
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.
nticompass 3 hours ago
That's my plan. If they can help then cool, otherwise it's not really a big deal.
mixdup 2 hours ago
They haven't actually stopped taking third level registrations, so get in there before the revised proposal gets submitted approved and implemented
Panda4 42 minutes ago
I think they did. I tried to register one just now and couldn't
troyrollo 4 minutes ago
edoceo 3 hours ago
First time ive seen ! and ? overlaid. Neat.
chch 3 hours ago
For future reference, ‽ is called an interrobang!
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.
serchinastico 3 hours ago
BadBadJellyBean 3 hours ago
It's called an interrobang. Never really took off but still available in unicode.
_blackhawk_ 3 hours ago
Definitely email the registrar. Maybe it might work?
nticompass 3 hours ago
Worth a shot.
BoxOfRain 3 hours ago
While it won't lessen your frustration, I applaud your use of the interrobang. That punctuation mark needs wider use.
nticompass 3 hours ago
I'm not really frustrated, but it is annoying that I had to migrate accounts and stuff, but whatever.
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 :)
lutoma 2 hours ago
I have an auto substitution set up in iOS to automatically replace ?! with ‽ (Same for ellipsis, ... to …)
oneeyedpigeon 2 hours ago
Spivak 3 hours ago
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.
sillysaurusx 3 hours ago
reaperducer 3 hours ago
saalweachter 2 hours ago
soupbowl an hour ago
It is best to stick to the main top level domains. I bought into multiple 'new' domains and most of them caused me issues. A few of them jacked up their prices like crazy compared to when I first bought them. They can also be difficult to move between providers.
Unfortunately I am stuck in commitments on a few of these domains and just had to eat the cost increases, the rest I moved to .com/.net.
.consulting was the worst offender.
pmdr 22 minutes ago
> It is best to stick to the main top level domains.
Yes, I view most 'new' TLDs as scams. They lure you in with a low price, a rather pricey renewal and then price hike after price hike down the line. They also charge a premium for most dictionary words right from the start.
mlefer an hour ago
I wonder why couldn't Verisign just grant most people the second level domains here. I imagine there aren't too many people holding onto 3rd level .name domains here and the set of people holding onto 3rd level domains that share a second level domain with someone else is probably very small, a few hundred at most.
For all the ones holding exclusive second level domains, just give them the second level domain. For all the ones holding shared second levels, offer a buyout and/or allow parties to negotiate with each other on a shared ownership structure of the second level.
toast0 25 minutes ago
I suspect for most of the second level domains, there's only one registrant of a third level domain.
However, I also suspect that for most of the third level domains, they're on a second level domain with multiple registrants. And several of those shared second level domains will have a lot of registrants. If the registrants are in different jurisdictions, it becomes a pretty nasty process to develop international consensus, vs just keeping the status quo going (which IMHO, can't be that hard).
Still, it makes sense to have a process to normalize the single registrant second level domains, because less work.
slow_typist an hour ago
Nicely done. (I moved a few family email accounts from .name to .net years ago because it was a much cheaper option and the .name TLD was still so uncommon in our bubbles it led to questions when they gave their email addresses to someone else.)
derhuerst 5 hours ago
previous discussion on the predecessor post, 69 days ago, 547 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49550772
calebio 12 minutes ago
Kind of off-topic, but I wonder what will happen to .io in the end.
kwanbix 4 hours ago
Why would they even want to close it? It is probably close to 0 cost tot hem. Or am I wrong?
lambda 4 hours ago
It works differently than pretty much every other TLD, which means it's different code paths to support.
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.
charcircuit an hour ago
How is it different than others like .co.jp or .ne.jp?
lambda an hour ago
seattle_spring 2 hours ago
> It works differently than pretty much every other TLD, which means it's different code paths to support.
but I was told that AI has made code obsolete and free
swiftcoder 3 hours ago
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.
OkayPhysicist 2 hours ago
The real problem is that we'd have to add a wildcard to the public suffix list. That's it.
The public suffix list is the big list of all the URL suffixes that should not imply shared ownership of all their subdomains. For example the line
com
says "XYZ.com" and "ABC.com" should not be assumed to be controlled by the same entity.
Problem is, all 1st level domains registered to the .name TLD should be added to the list, and that's a lot of domains. The correct answer, IMO, would be to add a wildcard
*.name
but that would involve updating all the code that relies on the public suffix list to support said wildcard.
toast0 22 minutes ago
tylergetsay 3 hours ago
wouldn't that be a problem with a lot of other domains? like locality domains
timeinput 3 hours ago
OkayPhysicist 2 hours ago
mixdup 2 hours ago
clickety_clack 4 hours ago
My thoughts also, but maybe they can make more from a few sites like baby.name than they can from personal domains.
nikanj an hour ago
There would be great money to be made if you could auction off domain.name, instead of being stuck just getting $20 per year because some geezer registered his.domain.name.
damoe an hour ago
A few years ago I was able to register <first name>.<last name> I was so excited until I realized how potentially precarious the domain was. My established domain is <first><last>.<forever tdl>. I'm not too worried about it having a problem (although as some have mentioned here I wish we had more rights, as individuals, to this IP). So I keep the new domain more as a personal toy...
Tepix 5 hours ago
Vive la résistance!
Resistance is not futile.
cobbzilla 5 hours ago
> to my lawyers Jan, Flip and Diégo who threw the book at ICANN
Resistance with a strong case and competent lawyers is not futile.
dataflow 5 hours ago
And with a lot of money to burn.
codexon an hour ago
The title of this submission is misleading. This is only for "3rd level" .name domains. The title makes it seem like normal .name domains were being deleted.
origini 2 hours ago
I have bought my *.name domain a decade ago? Why was this ever a thing? Was there some limitation i'm to stupid to get or did one company just register some common last names?
ZeWaka an hour ago
for specifically third level registrations
zamadatix 4 hours ago
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).
a1o 5 hours ago
How does one register a domain under .name ? I can’t find info through search because it discards the dot no matter what I try.
delecti 5 hours ago
Start from the TLD lists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom... led to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.name led to https://www.verisign.com/domain-names/name-domains
toast0 4 hours ago
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.
SahAssar 5 hours ago
Available under standard registrars that offer many TLDs, like inwx.com: https://www.inwx.com/en/domain/check?domain=testtest123.name...
peesem 4 hours ago
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?
scott00 an hour ago
xigoi 4 hours ago
mercurywells 4 hours ago
zamadatix 4 hours ago
lambda 4 hours ago
Did you read the link?
"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.
ksala_ 4 hours ago
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.
lambda 4 hours ago
eloto333 an hour ago
I want to edit this comment.
doublepg23 5 hours ago
I've had a .name for almost a decade now and was not aware of it's history.
Shame I didn't register on my lastname .name , I had thought it was a much newer gTLD.
asdfasdkljfhkah 2 hours ago
Thousands of .name owners nearly became .gone owners. Nice to see Verisign choose the one migration plan every engineer secretly loves: don’t migrate anything.
xydone 4 hours ago
Certainly nice to know they would've almost certainly proceeded as normal if the concerns didn't blow up online
bilalabdullahi 2 hours ago
They shouldnt this easy to take away tbh
walthamstow 3 hours ago
> thanks to ... Jim who flew to Bali to make the case to ICANN in person
What the heck is ICANN doing in Bali of all places?
erk__ 3 hours ago
Its where their yearly general meeting was hosted: https://meetings.icann.org/en/meetings/icann87/
Last year it was in Spain and the year before it was in Mumbai.
wmf 2 hours ago
It's NGO pork disguised as woke inclusion. Meetings in Africa or Asia Pacific are (theoretically) cheaper for historically disadvantaged people to attend.
charlieyu1 4 hours ago
Good for them. I just wish I could register a new .yu domain…
xyst 2 hours ago
I wonder how much the midterm elections influenced Verisign in this decision to bend the knee in this "David v Goliath"-esque win.
I was expecting for Verisign to take this to court, drag it out, and bleed the opposing party out. I suppose the judges that Verisign lawyers depend on did not get favorable re-election.
Ofc it’s probably something less nefarious, and boring. Verisign probably did some basic math and determined that taking this to court with their army of overpaid lawyers was simply not cost effective compared to just supporting 3rd level domains.
kinabalu76 4 hours ago
glad this got resolved, bummer it was thrown into question at all
toomuchtodo 5 hours ago
https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/consensus-policies/kane-t...
Success is possible. Well done to all.
sparkling 4 hours ago
If you are into stories about weird and obscure domain happenings: https://eualternative.eu/guides/bulgaria-bg-private-registry...
eks391 4 hours ago
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
charcircuit an hour ago
It's disappointing that only .name got this treatment. ICANN should grandfather all domains. The idea that it's perfectly fine for domains to just disappear is ridiculous.
not2b 2 hours ago
I'm glad that the article writer got his domain back, but I wish we had a better term than "grandfathered". The origin of this term goes back to Jim Crow, when to stop Black people and newcomers from voting, many places in the American South imposed a near-impossible test you had to pass to register to vote, but also added a loophole: if your grandfather voted in your county (or sometimes your state), you could vote without taking the test. This was called the grandfather clause.
EnergyAmy an hour ago
This sort of priggishness belongs in the past, let it be
tln an hour ago
"Legacied"
dist-epoch 5 hours ago
So, turns out Verisign is not the Devil incarnate?
brettermeier 4 hours ago
Why do you think that???
cobbzilla 4 hours ago
The Devil is no match for a sufficiently talented attorney
NateEag 4 hours ago
c.f. Benét: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0602901h.html
mh- 4 hours ago
In 1997, this was explored in a documentary featuring Keanu Reeves.