The idea of pre-registration and sale is something which has been playing on my mind. I believe it is something that Maidsafe absolutely should do both for funding and practical reasons.
Pre-Registration would be the process of registering:
All top level domains, as they will become obsolete and a target for fraudsters. E.g. .com, .org, .co.uk, etc. These should never be usable and remain unsold.
All popular second level domains (say, top 50k), as they will be targeted by squatters to the detriment of users, the companies associated with them and maidsafe.
The sale of these domains could begin as of now. The price of them would be tricky to set, but should not be extortionate or too cheap - big corporations can afford to give something back to help fund further development of the network. Moreover, it would be a one off fee to have the name forever.
Concessions could be made for those companies who are willing to create a SAFENetwork website, provide technical/development help, etc.
I believe the maidsafe foundation should own these names until sold and maidsafe should organise the registration and sale.
If maidsafe do not take this action, I fear it will not only be a huge financial loss for maidsafe and the network, but it will also harm NRS. If most popular clear net names lead to bogus sites, it will behave news all round - fraud of users and extortion of associated companies will become prevalent.
NRS as a concept and technology is superb and being able to freely choose names is brilliant. However, we must both be conscious of existing market forces and also on the windfall. The latter should go towards constructively building the network, rather than allowing parasites feeding off it while it is in its infancy.
Please could someone at @maidsafe comment on this, as I believe it is pivotal to the success of the company and the network itself.
I like this in the sense that the popular names are reserved or made unusable.
Referring to Domains might bring in confusions to people unfamiliar to NRS. Maybe refer to them as the TLD name without expressly saying domain as even the word congers up misunderstandings. Yea i know minor but we will require people who work with domains to change their perspective
Now to the problem I see with this. Will the default NRS be the only Name resolution system developed?
For example
Virus protection companies will duplicate the NRS but exclude certain known scamming names etc.
A commercial NRS where people purchase names that are reserved in the default NRS, and this commercial one is advertised as more inclusive than the default.
Maybe a pet name system will be established while basically nullifies any name reserved in the default.
After saying all that I agree that a set of names should be reserved in the default NRS and maybe sold by the maidsafe foundation.
SAFE NRS does not use domain structure, it is a flat naming system since there is no group of authorities to control each of their TLDs and the domains under them.
example.com is actually the NRS name of âcomâ and there is no name for âexampleâ that can be registered under non-existant TLDs.
âexampleâ can be registered as a NRS name on its own, but is not associated with âcomâ
Thanks, I think this is what @Traktion proposed. So examples would be registering the names âgoogleâ, âwikipediaâ and âfacebookâ. Just as top level names.
Well @Traktionwas saying the TLDâs could be used to trick people. A scammer could say register a NRS name of âcomâ and present their site as example.com
So by taking away all the TLDâs then the confusion is removed and scammers cannot take advantage of the confusion.
Then as you say also reserve âgoogleâ, âappleâ, âintelâ, âmaidsafeâ and so on. These can be sold to the respective companies for additional income for the maidsafe foundations OR the company.
NOTE: in SAFE it is the ID that is the closest to the meaning of domains, the NRS name is just a name and the ID is what âownsâ the site. Whereas for Domains the domain name actually owns a portion of the WEB. And the next level up TLD owns all the domains under it.
I mean reserving the likes of just âgoogleâ or âexampleâ with the TLD omitted. The TLDs are a relic from DNS and as you say, would block lower level domains.
Yes, just remove the .com, .org, etc from the system as they are obsolete and will just get abused. The maidsafe foundation could maintain this, but it would seem like a good opportunity to just get rid of them - they arenât needed to host or administer NRS.
Having the likes of safe://amazon, safe://google, etc, would seem ideal though and they can then manage sub names themselves through NRS for safe://books.amazon, safe://mail.google, etc should they wish.
My understanding is that if the browsers are to understand safe://books.amazon then its the site that creates a sub directory âbooksâ and the browser is effectively changing it to safe://amazon/books/
Or have I got that wrong?
But in any case my understanding is that NRS does not resolve books.amazon at all
Iâve not read that, but it sounds like a pretty flexible design if so? I know the CLI lets you create sub names in NRS which resolve as expected on clear net. Either way, ownership of the primary name is the key.
That is a change from the understanding I got from long discussions we had over NRS. Oh dear maybe we can have this confirmed by maidsafe as this could be quite dangerous due to unintended consequences and peopleâs gullibility.
amazon would in this case be a Resolvable Map located at hash("amazon"). With a âdefaultâ Sub Name pointing to a Files Container and the book Sub Name to another. Both amazon and book.amazon thus have their own directories.
The more I think about ânamingâ systems the more I dislike all of it. I grant that you can mix and match letters to come up with an inconceivable variety of pseudo-words but the majority of well known words (words good for advertising and marketing) is really LIMITED.
So if the next big INTERNET uses the same archaic system that ALLOWS monopolization, literally FOREVER, of some of the TOP marketing names/terms ⌠then that is not good IMO.
Perhaps âtagsâ are a better way forward versus names and/or categories (tlds).
So search for âamazonâ and âcommercialâ, find the site you want and bookmark it.
Alternatively, use a browser plugin for naming - and hence allow for competing plugins that allow for duplicate naming and thus break the monopoly. I donât like this as much as simple tagging though as it can be gamed more easily.
No matter the alternative there will be scammers ⌠but hey, even these existing companies scam us all the time - so why do we give them some sort of first preference to dominate the scene? just to be conventional? To acknowledge their power and dominance (to suck up)? To make some quick bucks selling the name to them? How many of these fish are even going to use the safe network (at least during the next decade)? Not many I think.
We have an opportunity to break away from the naming monopoly system, letâs do something different.
NRS is a fundamental component of SAFENetwork and a very useful one at that. People can use alternatives, but nailing NRS down from the start seems essential to me.
@JimCollinson So what is the story about registering âsub.nameâ. I thought it was going to be only ânameâ to be registered and if âsub.nameâ was to be allowed âsubâ would be a service like âmailâ etc
Otherwise I feel that ordinary people could be tricked by google.mail if a trickster registered âmailâ
Yeah, if you have the name then youâd get all the subs you want with it.
I guess my point about the ordering (as discussed in that thread) would mean that the TLD spoofing/scamming/confusion and the talk of locking down all the .com, .nets etc would be irrelevant.
And I agree on that point, and itâs one reason iâd advocate considering switching the order. subject to some testing.