FC: Is dot biz really a new domain? ICANN and alternative roots

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,40301,00.html

   Is Dot-Biz Really a New Domain?
   by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)

   2:00 a.m. Nov. 27, 2000 PST
   For Leah Gallegos, the recent news that companies might soon be able
   to buy dot-biz domains came as something of an anticlimax.

   Gallegos, who works for Atlantic Root Network, has been happily
   registering domain names with a "dot-biz" suffix since December 1995.
   The current cost: A handy $6 a year.

   There is, of course, a catch. Only a minuscule portion of computers
   connected to the Internet are configured to recognize dot-biz names,
   and unless you're using one, you'll get one of those irksome
   can't-find-that-site errors.

   The 56-year-old Gallegos is part of a small but growing number of
   entrepreneurs who have been participating in alternative root systems,
   which serve as a substitute -- albeit a little-known one -- for the
   action by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
   (ICANN).

   Now that has changed. ICANN has approved seven additional suffixes,
   and one of them -- dot-biz -- appears poised to conflict with domain
   names already in use. Gallegos refused to say how many dot-biz names
   have been registered.

   "ICANN should be recognizing this and over 100 other top-level domains
   and not allow duplication of those strings, whether it chooses to
   include them in the legacy root or not.... Causing a collision
   anywhere on the Internet is ethically wrong," Gallegos says.

   To the domain name digerati, this is an oft-discussed problem with a
   familiar name: Balkanization.

   On two different machines, the same domain name could lead to two
   different websites, depending on whether the computer is configured to
   point to the ICANN-approved server or to one that Gallegos supports.
   Think of it as the same phone number connecting you to two different
   people, depending on whether you use AT&T or MCI service.

   [...]




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