Yahoo! News reports:
France strongly attacked the US-based body that assigns Internet addresses on Wednesday, saying it was not a fit venue for Internet governance and that alternatives should be sought.
The Eurozone's second-largest economy has been at war with the body, which assigns domain names like '.com' and runs crucial Internet infrastructure, over the '.wine' and '.vin' suffixes being rolled out as part of an unprecedented expansion of domains.
ICANN did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But earlier this week, ICANN's president Fadi Chehade said that France had not yet exhausted all avenues to voice its concerns, and that it should do so. "We all get frustrated sometimes when we don't get the conclusion that we want," he told a press conference.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Friday June 27 2014, @07:03AM
So, if ICANN had done what France wanted, it wouldn't be considered unfit, I suppose. They didn't care about the entire gTLD money grab until they had a problem with one specific domain being created.
"I want mine, fuck everybody else." Typical selfish short-sighted bullshit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @07:23AM
Even so it's true the ICANN hasn't been doing a great job. They've been producing too many "Yet Another dot Com" domains and not reserving domains that will actually help the Internet in the long term.
For example they should have reserved .local a LONG time ago but they didn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local [wikipedia.org] (and the recent move to reserve it was via the IETF not the ICANN).
In my opinion they should also have reserved at least one TLD for "user level" private use only similar to the reservation of IP addresses for private use in RFC1918. e.g. http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01 [ietf.org]
.local has too many other uses (software/network level) to be used without potential conflicts/confusion.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Friday June 27 2014, @07:41AM
As you can probably guess by my calling the gTLD thing a money grab, I agree that they're not doing the best job, and selling off gTLDs while leaving other things messy just makes it seem like they're more interested in filling their pockets with money than doing anything else.
However, I don't know who I would trust to do better; certainly not France or any other government, nor most corporations. (Imagine Google in ICANN's place, for example)
(Score: 2) by RaffArundel on Friday June 27 2014, @01:13PM
I'm not perfectly clear what France wanted. I read a few of articles about this, most of which were dupes, and it appears that France doesn't want people to have "wine" and the variations as a gTLD - I think to protect their wine industry?
From the BBC:
"But France said addresses like .wine would put trade agreements regarding the sale of region-specific products like champagne at risk."
I'm completely baffled what that argument could possibly be. How could "boonesfarm.wine" going to destroy the French wine industry? Are they afraid that people are going to notice that there are a lot of other countries in the world producing really amazing wines? I figure anyone who drinks wine is already aware. What about Italy, Spain, Argentina and Australia - no comments from their representative?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday June 27 2014, @05:46PM
At a guess, France would want the ".wine" suffix to belong to them. Because, of course, only France produces good wine. Pardon the snark.
This is the country that strong-armed the WTO into preventing wine producers in the the town of Champagne, Switzerland [wikipedia.org] from putting their location onto their wine bottles. Even though the town has never produced fizzy wines - just standard whites and reds - because somehow some consumer somewhere might confuse ordinary white wine with the fizzy stuff.
The great TLD rush is stupid, no question. However, it exists. France is just going to have to pay the owner of ".wine" for the address "french.wine". Or not. Who really cares?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @08:20AM
Please remove in the future the colon (:) from the headline, it's always kinda implied! (Or, don't add it if that was your contribution.)
(Score: 2) by n1 on Friday June 27 2014, @01:37PM
We seem to be having a little issue with the slashcode at the moment causing colons to be inserted at the end of article titles. It seems to happen at random, I am trying to keep ontop of it though, when I see it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @02:48PM
Ah, now wonder. I guess a colonoscopy might be needed...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 27 2014, @08:50AM
I though Napoleon had died...
(Score: 4, Funny) by Geezer on Friday June 27 2014, @09:25AM
Watch out! Those brave and cunning French are likely to shock the world if they don't get their way. Be careful, or they might do something truly terrifying, like...surrender. /s
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday June 27 2014, @01:23PM
Oh, whew, that was close. With all of their enthusiasm I thought they were going to hit me with that pole with the white flag or something.
also /s
(Score: 1) by multisync on Friday June 27 2014, @02:15PM
I had high hopes for this site, but comments like this being modded "Informative" sure makes it look like a joke. What a shame.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Friday June 27 2014, @02:32PM
If you never hear things that you consider low or uninformed then you are likely in an echo chamber. A high mix of people makes for many viewpoints and perspectives. Of course not all perspectives are right or even useful. But that is really up to individual readers to decide.
That being said, judging the entire site (which includes me) by this guy's comment and mod is heavy handed : ) It would be nice to see who modded what though. Not sure what is gained from secrecy?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Friday June 27 2014, @05:29PM
Be nice, children.
But if anybody is interested, I have some genuine French World War II rifles in perfect condition. They have never been fired and only dropped once.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by stderr on Friday June 27 2014, @02:28PM
I think most of ICANN have been busy the last couple of days [icann.org].
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 27 2014, @05:59PM
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. These disputes are the product of trying to run the Internet like there's a single planetary government, when there isn't. These problems could all be solved by entirely changing the way domains are managed, so that they're managed at the national level, instead of by an international body. (Note: this won't help with the IPV4 problem, only DNS names.)
How? It's simple. No more .com, .org, etc. All those domains need to be eradicated. Instead, the only TLDs will be 2-letter national domains: .us, .uk, .de, .cn, etc. Each one, obviously, will belong to that country. Inside each one, there will be a national registrar (if that's the way the country wants to do it) to manage the domains, and they can do it any way they want. If they want to have .com, .org, .wine, .biz, .wtf, or whatever, they can do that. However, it'll end up being .com.us, .wine.us, etc. Countries would be able to pass laws on websites within their national domain. So, for instance, ebay.co.de would not be allowed to list Nazi paraphernalia, but ebay.co.us would. Anyone who ventures out of their national TLD, to websites under other countries' domains, would automatically know they're now in a place where the laws are different.
Of course, this will probably never happen because it makes too much logical sense and eliminates conflict. Why would national governments want to give up on something they can bicker endlessly over?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 27 2014, @09:58PM
(But isn't it the French who are best known for not wanting Nazi paraphernalia on the internet? Their crazy polices go back well over a decade - Yahoo, IIRC.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday June 27 2014, @07:14PM
ICANN hasn't been fit as a unit of Internet governance since they started collaborating with the US Congress. Some of the original members tried to stop this, but unsuccessfully.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.