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Comments: 223 +- News: Rival Green Groups Bid To Snatch .eco Domain on Sunday August 09 2009, @09:50AM
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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.'"
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Green is the new black (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgive my cynicism but in my experience, humans are not altruistic at all. Like monkeys, we do what we do because it benefits us.
While I fully support green causes for my own selfish reasons (my children), I am skeptical about the motivations of "green" groups. They seem to be using green as a fashion statement and an identity, and don't seem all that motivated to be effective.
But if given a chance to push us around for not being green... they're good at that.
Can't we just create the "Green Police" that ecosopher Pentti Linkola recommended, and be done with these irksome charities?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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And "Green groups" can't even agree on what's "green".
Nukes? ...Ahhh, were all gonna die!. ...Causes medical problems and kills birds. ...Heavy metals in the manufacturing process. ..."Doesn't that take energy from the environment?" ...from a real Slashdotter.
Wind?
Solar?
Oil?...yeah, right.
Harness ocean waves.
GeoThermal?...causes earthquakes, kills the geysers.
And you want them to agree on managing a domain?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Green is the new black (Score:4, Insightful)
And sure, these are businesses in the end as well. Seems they both mean to make a profit off this, so naturally they compete, what's so crazy about that?
Parent
No (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason we deride them is because they are all about problems, not about solutions. It is easy to point out the problems in life. Why? Because everything has a cost. Anything you do, there's a cost to, there's a downside. As such, no matter what choice you make, you can always say "This is the problem with that choice." That isn't hard, nor is it productive.
What is needed is to weigh the costs, and by costs we me economic and non-economic, of various solutions and then attempt to choose which one gives the most benefits with the least costs. They ALL have costs, downsides, that isn't the issue. The issue is which is the best.
Well green groups are notoriously bad for simply not caring. They just hate on all solutions. They say you are doing X poorly. So you say ok, well here's a way we can address that. They then hate on the new solution. They are whiners, not problem solvers.
The only thing they ever seem to agree is a solution is to give lots and lots of money to green organizations. They don't have a clear goal as to what will be done with it that'll make an improvement, but they need lots of money. That seems more than a little self serving.
That's why many people give them crap. If they want more people to take them seriously they need to grow up. They can't just point out problems, they have to start coming up with solutions. Also those have to be real solutions, not "We should all go back to preindustrial society, never mind that 90%+ of humans have to die for that to happen." So long as they just hate on any real solution, people are going to keep ignoring them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Well green groups are notoriously bad for simply not caring. They just hate on all solutions. "
No, it's more that like Richard Stallman they keep rudely pointing out whenever someone proposes a 'solution' that is in fact a bigger problem because it violates the laws of physics.
The free market doesn't like to hear that! The free market knows you can just keep drilling for oil forever! The free market knows cabbages grow just fine on oil-based herbicides and pesticides and hormones! The free market knows fre
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Re:Green is Population Control (Score:5, Insightful)
China is their model. Our model I dare say. Modern population growth is preposterous. Unsustainable doesn't even begin to describe it.
We have too many people on this planet as it is, and there's no good way to get them off the planet, the energy requirements are simply too great. If we're going to colonize, we won't be sending more than a few thousand to start the colony, and then it will not be able to support any significant migrants from a Terran perspective. Population control is essential.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're completely wrong. Our planet could sustain 8 billion people, 9-10 billion if we really tried. Come on. Rationing is never the solution. Necessity is the mother of invention. When we need more food, we'll invent more efficient processes of making it. The Earth will find its own equilibrium, we don't need to do it for it. That's terribly Arrogant and Elitist.
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Well, the Sierra club was thought to have been started by a bunch of lawyers and land barons who wanted to lock everyone's land out but their through conservation efforts and lawsuits so when a city went to expand, it created an artificial shortage of land that they benefited from. The conspiracy goes that this is the reason why the Sierra club's member ship and leaders are all closely kept secrets.
As for the World Widlife federation, the most notable thing I can remember from them is getting the WWF wrestl
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Can't we just create the "Green Police" that ecosopher Pentti Linkola recommended, and be done with these irksome charities?
I sincerely hope that is sarcasm [wikipedia.org]. Especially when these guys [wikipedia.org] seem to be some of his inspiration.
Re:Green is the new black (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't we just create the "Green Police" that ecosopher Pentti Linkola recommended, and be done with these irksome charities?
I think they're called the EPA.
The unfortunate truth is that only so much can be done by political activism and passing laws and funding bureaucracy. What really needs to be done, on a larger scale, is train or corporte leaders to understand the business case for environmental responsibility. There is one, although many refuse to see it because it does require investment.
Furthermore, the real environmentalists are the scientists and engineers that come up with better, safer ways to manufacture goods and dispose of them, and who convince their corporate overlords to put their dollars there. All the external activism in the world won't convince a hard-nosed businessman to burn cash on making his company produce less waste: it usually takes someone on the inside. The thing is, those people never get much credit: unsung heroes they are.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
The EPA only has control in the US.
And whatever - when there are TLD:s on the net for political groups then you may want to have .fascism .nazism .liberalism .g-marxism .communism and .capitalism just to name a few to add to the pot.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
we do what we do because it benefits us.
Or at least because we believe it does.
-jcr
Re:Green is the new black (Score:5, Insightful)
God forbid that they might have some differences in viewpoint or emphasis, despite a generally shared goal.
There are some green groups that focus on biodiversity and preventing extinctions. Others focus on creating large undeveloped wildlife preserves. Yet others are worried about contaminants and pollution, or on green design of industrial objects, or an reducing the impact of processes and pricing externalities. The larger goals overlap, but the foci are very different.
Parent
Re:Green is the new black (Score:4, Insightful)
This just doesn't make sense to me... How can they be rival groups if they clearly have the same goal?
My naive self didn't think Corporate America's greed had made its way to environmental groups...
My you are naive, if there is money or power or prestige, greed will follow.
Parent
Obviously Dot Eco should get it... (Score:4, Funny)
...'cause Al Gore invented both the Internet and ecology!
Who says that only those two ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who says that only those two ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the thousands of domain squatters and assorted bozos who would actually want to buy an .eco domain. Why do TLD's remind me of real estate sales in Second Life?.
Give it up already folks.
Parent
Re:Who says that only those two ... (Score:5, Funny)
Why do TLD's remind me of real estate sales in Second Life?.
In the .eco case, I'd say it's because you're going to get fucked by someone who loves animals a lot.
Parent
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Like the thousands of domain squatters and assorted bozos who would actually want to buy an .eco domain. Why do TLD's remind me of real estate sales in Second Life?.
Give it up already folks.
Yeah. Now if someone would just come up with a more useful TLD, say ... XXX.
Re:Who says that only those two ... (Score:4, Informative)
As an aside, it's totally crazy that someone would change their organization's name simply for a domain name.
Parent
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> organizations should have claim to an entire TLD?
I think you have confused those who want to *use* a .eco address with the organisation that would *administer* it. TFA is about the latter, and IIRC is the same as all other TLDs (1 organisation to administer it).
Silly... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Green" is all the rage at the moment(or, at least, greenwashing is); but I don't see that changing the basic fact that, for anything besides highly recognisable
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Re:Silly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, I wouldn't say they're completely useless. If we could get all the tree-huggers to use a .eco address, it would be very convenient for filtering them out.
-jcr
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, I wouldn't say they're completely useless. If we could get all the tree-huggers to use a .eco address, it would be very convenient for filtering them out.
-jcr
Good point.
No one cares (Score:3, Insightful)
There are lots of TLDs that no one ever thinks about and hardly ever use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains [wikipedia.org]
When was the last time you visited a .biz site? Have you ever found a position using the .jobs TLD?
How cool is it that the TLD for mobile devices is longer than the usual 3 letter TLD?
Found a lawyer or doctor using the .pro TLD lately? Could you point someone to a good travel agent on the .travel TLD?
Face it, there are only 5 real, non-national TLDs: .com, .org, .edu, .Net, and .gov. All the others are just a waste of time.
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.
Parent
Re:Deprecate .com etc and emphasize country TLD's (Score:5, Insightful)
And what about multinational companies? International treaty organizations? Free software projects (should it be linux.org, or linux.org.us, or linux.org.fi?) or other web sites that have no desire to be associated with any particular country, but consider themselves Citizens of the Net? IMHO, true gTLDs are just as legitimate as ccTLDs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
.gov is "non-national"? Since when?
Re: .jobs (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
We'll donate 57% of our profits! (Score:5, Insightful)
If organizations with "green" or conversationalist initiatives as basically your sole customers, why would you charge more than you need to for a domain name and then hand some of the profits back to the same set of companies? In this case, wouldn't it be best to just lower your prices and run as a straight non-profit?
Or for all the giving back bullshit, is this yet another poorly conceived attempt at cashing in on the popularity of the green movement? Who am I kidding? This yet another poorly conceived attempt at cashing in on the popularity of the green movement.
Pop Quiz: What's 57% of 0? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just how many domains do they think they're going to be selling? At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away.
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At competitive rates you'd have to sell tens of thousands just to keep a single person employed to maintain the TLD, never mind having some money to give away.
Competitive rates compared to what?
All these new TLDs serve nothing more than either vanity, or marketing purposes. .com .net and .org don't provide that same marketing/vanity. I do think you're right that this is a niche market and they won't
Anyone here old enough? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone here old enough to remember the first ecology movement? It, too, was lame, with it's own lame, green flag. Just green-n-white bars like the US flag, but a silly character in the middle of the field.
Being good stewards, yes. Endocrinating young children into fairy tales, no. Things like Captain Planet get under my skin. The science they point to is grey at best, and it all serves political parties.
I mean, whether it's hotter than usual, or colder than usual, BOTH are a sign of ManMadeGlobalWarming(TM) for which money must be sent to Washington. That's not science, that's religion!
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Captain Planet served no one at all, except maybe those who were directly involved in making the show. Not politicians, not the people, and definitely not the planet.
All the villains in Captain Planet wanted to trash the planet for no reason at all. They'd build factories that did nothing but pump (glowing green) toxic waste into the ocean. If that show wanted to really get things done, it would have vilified the real culprits in ruining the planet. I don't mean anyone who burns more than their share of fos
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the message was that all factories pollute and all CEO's investors whatever are out to destroy the planet if they can make a dollar.
You may not see it as out to serve anyone but it was. Just read a few comment from slashdot about how those kids are indoctrinated into believing all corporations are evil intent on destroying the environment. There are quite a few of those idiots around here and that sort of proves his point.
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.
Parent
TLDs supporting particular causes now? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the flipside, it would be kind of nice to have a .nut domain for all the right-wing neocons and nutjobs out there. It would be easier to just block anything in that TLD,... ;-)
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" I'm not sure if I like the idea of handing out a TLD that is basically going to support a groups in a particular cause. In the .eco realm, it seems to me like .org would work just fine, and it's broad enough to be all-encompassing of many points of view. Speaking of which, I think Wikipedia addresses this quite well"
It's interesting to compare the difference between Wikipedia and ICANN, who administer these top level domains.
Wikipedia is 10 poeple in a office, who work in New York and stay there. They re
So lets say they get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Will anyone even know its there, or care?
.eco (Score:2)
I'd like to see Mr Gore's financial connections to Dot Eco.
See, your message of world-saving altruism is corrupted when everything you're preaching ends up somehow making you the big $$ personally.
Oh yes it's "all about the green" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh yes it's "all about the green" (Score:5, Funny)
As in $$$$$. Sheesh. The usual pattern: From cause to movement to racket. And then the bureaucracy takes it all over. Repeat as needed.
You PETA believe it!
Parent
If they were really green (Score:5, Funny)
Instead of creating new domains, they should be recycling old ones.
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
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.
Re: (Score:2)
spoil the Net, don't they? I mean, come on. Wouldn't dot-org suffice for things ecological in a sense?
Not really, no more than too many channels spoil cable TV. Nobody says you have to actually go there. This is really about people that wanted to have "mygreendomain.com", but found out that somebody beat them to it, can have "mygreendomain.eco", thereby convincing themselves that they're "on the Web" when in reality they've just ensured that nobody will ever find them. Or worse, that everyone trying to find them will actually find "mygreendomain.com" which is not at all what they want.