.name Termination

> Its enduring mission is to ensure the stable, secure operation of the Internet's unique identifier systems.

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/about-icann

Arbitrary termination of service is not stability.

Enabling name hijacking is not security.

The answer cannot be a rival name scheme based on decentralization or crypto or whatever. Those are never going to help normal non-wizard users. The answer has to be to make the regulators do their job.

Still a crappy thing for people, but it does not affect owned second-level domains.

Domain names are leased. Things that are leased can disappear. The company leasing these assets could go bankrupt. They could weasel their way out of agreements as Verisign has done here. Any identity that is grounded in leased assets is built on shaky ground. It's also why I'm dubious of the way that e-mail addresses have become tied to online identity.

I'm not saying that what Verisign has done is right, but this behavior is expected. Those of us who went through the (dot) bomb era remember just how shaky this infrastructure can be.

I'm sorry that .name people are going through this. Even though it's a risk I expected, that doesn't make this okay.

Joe Smith and John Smith can independently register joe.smith.name and john.smith.name, do browsers have a wildcard suffix list for the 2nd level of `.name` specifically, or can Joe set a cookie on all of .smith.name?

Well, it's still not affecting me, personally, but wow, seeing articles like this makes it feel just a tiny bit more real.

What's to stop someone from doing that, and keeping the status quo? Sure, it might be expensive, but pool together a few frasers for the initial buy, and make the money back on the sublets.

The .name scenario is even worse. One domain gives you access to tens of thousands of users email. It seems like a privacy nightmare.

I’m not sure how future auth and privacy will work, but my child lost a tracfone phone and some mixup had separated it from my account. There was no way to recover the number. If that was my personal phone, how difficult would it be to restore banking, medical, and government access to things that assume I’ll always have that number.

Doing the same with personal email seems like too big of a risk.

Never dreamed that such a supposedly durable thing would just disappear. How hard is it really to preserve a global resource like this that exists only in software?

Did buy https://ycombinator.us

Didn't buy https://ycombinator.co.uk

https://ycombinator.de

What useful functionality is there in selling these domains?

Expiring domains is bad for the web and selling them to someone else is as terrible as the article makes it out to be.

    > 2.1. What effect, if any, will the proposed service have on the life cycle of domain names?
    > None. There will not be any effect on the life cycle of domain names.

Many years ago I wrote articles bringing attention to the negative effects of Verisign's SiteFinder [1] - if you don't remember this, it's when Verisign hijacked NXDOMAIN by redirecting any unresolvable domain to a site they owned and controlled.

[0] https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/consensus-policies/rsep-2... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site_Finder

That said, my domain is simply unusual.name, and everybody in my family has email addresses in the form first@unusual.name. So this is a no-op for me, and I gather www.unusual.name will also continue to work, since I own the 2nd level outright.

"2.1. What effect, if any, will the proposed service have on the life cycle of domain names? None. There will not be any effect on the life cycle of domain names.

...

2.3. Explain how the proposed service will affect the throughput, response time, consistency or coherence of responses to Internet servers or end systems. There will be no effect on the throughput, response time, consistency or coherence of responses to Internet servers or end systems."

My registrar is also suggesting that they are going to just keep the money I pre-paid for years of registration, which is a minor annoyance compared to the loss of my entire online identity but an annoyance nonetheless.

Since ICANN is a non-profit that is required to operate in the public interest I do hope there can be some pushback on this. I will be writing to the CA AG myself.

How is this possible? I thought there was a 10 year limit.

[1] https://blog.asmartbear.com/free-markets-bad/

Gotta wonder what other possible disasters introduced with gTLDs.

> "will increase efficiency for the operation of the .name TLD."

What a preposterous excuse -- especially for something already up and running. Sounds like they probably want to change the backend in some way - or adopt some kind of off-the-shelf software - which doesn't jive so well with this unique TLD, and they figure "Ehh, fuck 'em, let's just pull the plug on these tens of thousands of people."

  > 3.6. Have you communicated with any of the entities whose products or services might be affected...
  > "No. Not applicable."

IMHO, this whole TLD seems kind of messed up from the start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.name

Should I rush to reserve y.name so my email address and personal website can stay online?

First, that a legit dealer could/did(does?) sell third-level domains at all (Verisign, no less) Second, that the top-level is staying available, allowing for second-levels to be bought/sniped like you mention.

If you do lawyer up and need help with legal fees, I think this would be a worthy cause.

Overall this seems like the right move, either they all are trusted or none.

Again, you're security is only as strong as your DNS.

This is ridiculous.

>2.1. What effect, if any, will the proposed service have on the life cycle of domain names?

>None. There will not be any effect on the life cycle of domain names.

>2.2. Does the proposed service alter the storage and input of Registry Data?

>No. There will not be an alteration to the storage and input of Registry Data.

This sounds wrong? Is this just a knee-jerk form-filler reaction? It seems to me that the admitted "Upon discontinuation, no new third level domain names will be registered and existing third level domain names will be terminated."

In general this sounds like a grotesque misplay that is wildly uncharacteristic for the entity behind the timeless .com

It has been established that national identifiers are protected by it, and a domain works as a sort of international identifier, in this case a personal one.

No one is obligated to give you a domain, but by contracting an obligation to provide that identifier until 2040, they would at least be liable for those damages, but there's an argument that depriving you of an identifier already granted is a more fundamental violation of a right to a name, an identifier and recordkeeping of them.

So, where is our fully decentralized TLD alternative, free of ICANN or any central authority to handle how we grant names by conventions, without any money scheme in the game that attracts malevolent actors moving only through greed strings?

Also, this time let’s make it like usenet, so "person:named:Neil Fraser" or even "::Neil Fraser" (harder to type but less culturally entangled into English).

...minutes?

”Greetings from ICANN Global Support.

I am sorry to hear you are experiencing this domain access issue after your registrar's transfer. I will happy to provide you with relevant information and guidance.

Please note that, ICANN accredits companies as domain name registrars and works to ensure contractual compliance with the terms and conditions of the 2009 and 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreements (RAAs).

ICANN does not provide domain name registration or manage domain accounts. As a result of that ICANN is not able to perform domain management for you.

If you need help to access and manage your domain, you will need to contact your domain service provider or registrar for assistance.

You may check who your registrar is by doing a domain search at lookup.icann.org.”

Absolutely infuriating

But, assuming that Verisign can’t keep third level domains (as a DNS implementer, I don’t think third level domains is a huge deal; see thread below):

* Third level names where only one person has the second level domain should be transferred to whoever owns that single third level name.

* Third level names where multiple people have the same second level domain should be put up for closed bidding: Only current owners of .name domains with a given second level domain name (e.g. last name) will be able to bid for the second-level domain. So, if one has john.smith.name and joe.smith.name, Joe Smith and John Smith will be in a bidding war for smith.name.

If the issue of .name not being in public suffix is a real issue, Verisign can handle that by disabling new third-level .name registrations, and provide Public Suffix with a list of those registrations (just send all the owners a privacy notice, making it clear that the existence of the name will be made public for security reasons). More reading: https://github.com/publicsuffix/list/issues/2306 (There seems to be issues with this list being too long to keep in the Public Suffix because there’s too much software out there which can’t handle it. That seems strange to me: Even here in 2026 where RAM costs far too much, Deadwood can store a list of 240,000 blacklisted entries in under 10 megs; there are about 22,000 three-level .name domains and I could store that list in a way that could be very quickly looked up in about a meg of memory)

Now, personally, I think Verisign can keep these messy third level names, and are doing things this way so that Neil Fraser has to compete with every single 2-bit cybersquatter out there for the rights to fraser.name.

As an aside, it’s trivial to have DNS servers handle multi-level domains without having to have a zone file for every level; e.g. https://this.is.a.long.name.maradns.org works, and there’s no zone file for name.maradns.org, long.name.maradns.org, a.long.name.maradns.org, and so on.

Also, since people have brought up the “org fuckery” without providing details: https://bluecatnetworks.com/press/the-org-domain-sale-explai...

You know dang well if .org was owned by an investment entity, they would had jacked up the prices as much as they could get away with.

I don't know what that history is, but did it really make a tld used by only 22k people more appealing?

While changing email is inconvenient, I don't understand the point about IoT devices. IoT devices should not depend on the Internet at all for obvious privacy and security reasons. If you are using IoT devices with "cloud" accounts, then this is a blessing in disguise. Put that garbage in the trash and rebuild around HomeAssistant, Zigbee, RTSP, etc. I find it hard to believe that someone hosting their own website would fall for the cloud IoT scam.

It's a pretty bizarre exception to the normal, intuitive ways that domains work.

I'll admit that it's a crappy situation and I would be frustrated in his place. But if I were in his place, I probably would have also thought it prudent to have a backup plan.