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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