Rival Green Groups Bid To Snatch .eco Domain 223
Peace Corps Library writes "BBC reports that two rival environmental groups are lining up supporters to try to take control of the new .eco domain aimed at green groups. In March, former US vice president Al Gore backed a bid by the California group Dot Eco to operate the .eco TLD, but now a Canadian environmental group known as Big Room has launched a competing bid to manage it. 'We're two different applicants with two different business ideas. Ours is to sell domain names to raise funds for organizations who can effect change,' says Minor Childers, co-founder of Dot Eco. The group has already entered into contracts with its supporters — such as the Sierra Club and the Alliance for Climate Protection — to give away 57% of its profits from sales. Big Room also plans to generate money from the sale of .eco domain names to fund sustainability projects around the world, however, the consortium, which includes WWF International and Green Cross International — founded in 1993 by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, also believes that .eco could be used as a labeling system to endorse companies with green credentials. Despite having differences about a model for .eco, both groups will 'definitely have to sit down' together at some point, says Childers. 'We could be one of the biggest contributors to environmental causes anywhere in the world.'"
Deprecate .com etc and emphasize country TLD's (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is why we should deprecate them and turn toward country level TLD's. Let individual countries have control over what domains are allowable. If a company, say Google, has a server in the US, their .com name would end up as google.com.us, if they have a server in Germany, it would be google.com.de. A government web site in the US would be congress.gov.us or in Germany, bundestag.gov.de.
This could even extend to political organizations with in a State. So, in the US, fl.gov.us would be the root to all of the Florida state government web sites, where as ut.gov.us would be for Utah's state government.
There are plenty more examples, but it comes down to de-centralizing control over DNS to the lowest level of political representation.
Re:No one cares (Score:3, Interesting)
.gov is "non-national"? Since when?
Re:Green is the new black (Score:1, Interesting)
And what "benefits me" is - as applies to all humans - what feels good to me. And what feels good to me is to have nice unspoilt land and to see animals thrive in a healthy ecosystem. I don't feel better than when I'm reclining with a cat on my lap, or following them on the hunt, or playing tug or catch with a dog, or sitting in a field watching cows chew the cud, or assisting my girlfriend bring up chicks (who reward us with lovely eggs), or watching a graceful deer half way up the neighbouring hill, followed by young. What makes me feel bad is to see one species dominate and destroy ecosystems and individual organisms. I see an animal suffer, and I close my eyes and my brain provides me with images of me being given the same treatment. I see it on a large scale and I do not tolerate it, so I work to stop it, whether that means shooting a fox which wants to kill all our chickens or campaigning for laws to stop man rape hundreds of acres for oil so he can get fat and drive a larger car. Balance with a tip to parsimony, you gluttonous cunts!
FWIW, I'm a mathematician and a strong advocate of science where the scientific method may be applied. But the modern technocracy thinks that science can be applied outside of the falsifiable to conclude a particular "correct" value system - this hypothesis is itself untestable! On the contrary, notions of good/evil are conjured up in our imagination specifically because we have such incredible brainpower - probably as monkeys don't - and to say "you're evil if you like to dominate and use hand-waving to justify causing suffering to others" is entirely arbitrary from a logician PoV.
But correct, because suffering hurts.
Re:Green is Population Control (Score:2, Interesting)
Historically, the most effective methods of reducing population have been illnesses and wars. Therefore we should start a world war with biological weapons. That will certainly reduce the population. :-)
Re:Anyone here old enough? (Score:4, Interesting)
No it is not true. It may have been at one point in time but hasn't been true for longer then Captain Planet has been on the air. That was because of regulations too.
Then you are old enough to have questionable memory. This was never a plan offered by the republicans. There was some talk about limiting Sulfur emissions a while back in a manner similar to cap and trade but it was never a party line stance and never as far reaching as the current debacle has gone.
Ideas are different in minor details but the democrat's plan would cause far more harm with little to no results. You need to focus on the details or end up passing a bail out plan that pays Executive bonuses just to find out that you are the congress critter who put that into the law at the request of the administration after both of you are criticizing it. When a democrat congressman stands on the floor ridiculing all of the calls to read a fucking bill before it get voted on by saying you would need two days and two lawyers just to understand it, then there is a problem. A serious problem.
In short, the details are important and if your stuck on the concept, then you might as well trade in a Jaguar for a ford pinto because the concept is the same even though the details are completely different. I know most democrats do not read the bills they vote into law because they don't think they have two days or two attorneys, but at least lets find out what is being pushed. And yes, the Cap and Trade they are pushing is a nightmare for the US economy. They know it and wouldn't even add three simple exemptions to the bill that would halt it if unemployment went up more then so much from the already high 2009 rates, if gas got over $5 a gallon or if inflation skyrocketed to a certain point above the 1008 levels. They know it will happen and see those amendments which I would call reasonable safeguards as ways to defeat the cap and trade.
Say whatever you want, but you cannot deny that. If unemployment wasn't going to soar by design, that amendment should have went in, if inflation wasn't going to soar, that amendment would have got in. And if they didn't expect gas prices to soar, that amendment would have gotten in. But they do expect all that to happen which is why they wouldn't place any safe guards against it in the legislation and if you think that is acceptable, you are a fool.
Re:Green is the new black (Score:1, Interesting)
Linux advocates can't agree on which distro to use, so why take their advice on an OS?
Alternately: anyway, why does it surprise you that the answers are not always simple?
Re:Green is Population Control (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no 1st world country with an unsustainable population growth. The problem is mainly the population growth in 3rd world countries and in the lower classes. It is ironic for me that the persons who should actually get children (well off college educated people) are the ones that are the least likely to get children.
We need educated people in the future to solve our problems. Yet it seems that most educated societies are almost experiencing a population implosion.
New TLDs are all suck (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been watching the farce that is the new ICANN process. They seem to think that the only test for a new top-level domain suffix is that it will make money for the corporate owner.
I think it's bullshit. The new domains they have added so far - .aero, .coop, .museum, .biz, .info, .pro, .jobs, .tel - all suck. Okay, I quite like to be able to type http://british.museum/ [british.museum] - but .biz and .info are pretty much used exclusively by make-money-fast scammers, phishers, scammers and other assorted lowlife who like it because it costs a third of the price of a real domain name. I can think of only a small handful of .info domain names that are actually legit - http://rdfa.info/ [rdfa.info] comes to mind. .aero? What the fuck? Are Boeing and Delta Airlines really having difficulty with domain squatting? .tel and .jobs are complete bullshit. I mean, if you suddenly decide that you want to know the telephone number of your local Starbucks, are you more likely to (a) go to Google and type in "Starbucks Manhattan" or (b) type in manhattan.starbucks.tel. Same for jobs. If you decide you want to get a job working for BigCompany, you go to their website and you click on 'jobs' or 'careers' or whatever. Or you Google. You don't think "Oh, I better go to BigCompany.jobs."
We've also had .mobi, which is completely stupid. The current generation of mobile devices - iPhone, Android G1, Pre, Blackberry - are becoming increasingly capable of showing normal websites. And rather than registering .mobi, most sites seem to think m.whatever.com (for generic mobile: some are also doing i.whatever.com for iPhone-specific sites, and back in the day people had pda.whatever.com for PDA specific sites, wap.whatever.com for stuff written in WML and served as WAP content - I'm sure in Japan, there's probably i-mode specific subdomains or pathnames).
But now ICANN seem to want to make it so that anyone can have a TLD if they pay. There have already been people suggesting .nyc, .london, .paris and other city names (hint: .us, .uk, .fr). Big companies are thinking about putting in bids for their trademarks: I've seriously seen it suggested that someone like Michael Jordan register .jordan, then can have clothes.jordan, shoes.jordan, basketball.jordan and so on.
As for .eco: the only justification for it seems to be that the sale of .eco domains could be used for some useful social end - sell domains, plant trees, reverse global warming or whatever. Okay. Great. That's not nearly enough justification. Hosts that are going to want a .eco domain are either commercial entities (use .com), non-commercial entities (use .org), country-specific domains (use the country code TLD), government (use .gov or your local government national TLD - .gov.uk or whatever), or maybe academic (use .edu or .ac.uk or your country's national TLD).
ICANN are corporate whores and have proven they are completely untrustworthy. The domain name system needs to have a Revenge of the Nerds moment. We need to take it back and put it under the careful guidance of an IETF-like body who will decide TLD decisions on the basis of the needs of the Internet community, in an open and democratic process, rather than a process where you basically turn up with a wheelbarrow full of cash and a dumb idea and then get proclaimed owner of a new TLD. TLDs need to be distributed by IETF-like wise beardy Internet veterans rather than assholes who think the
Re:Who says that only those two ... (Score:1, Interesting)
They tried. The idea was shot down by the porn industry and parents thinking-of-the-children alike, but for different reasons.
It seems obvious to me that a .kids TLD is a much better idea. Concerned parents can simply lock their children into the .kids TLD via browser controls instead of relying on the unorganized international porn community to observe a new TLD (good luck with that).
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree, but only to the extent that you're describing the media-whoring environmentalist factions to which the Western Anglosphere is popularly exposed. For example, the International Institute for Sustainable Development addresses the same China/e-waste problem (http://www.iisd.org/trade/china/markets_research.asp) that Greenpeace does, but IISD provides substantial and achievable recommendations which are not reducible to simply stop, and have street cred among international organizations and businesses. Even Greenpeace officials based in China are clueful of the fact that science is stronger than whining (e.g. see http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/environmentscience/ewaste_dumping_ground.html [www.cbc.ca]).
It may be that we simply get more of the rage-based advocacy because that's the market created by the popularity of our adversarial style of infotainment.
57%? (Score:3, Interesting)
They are going to give 57% of the profits. 57% of the profit from selling property that they are saying ICANN should give them? They better give far, far more than that if they expect any sympathy.
Not to mention, this use is pretty idiotic. The TLD name should have some relation to what sites using it are actually for.