Gandi Bar - General - Comments

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:37:14 +0100

Dominic Search has an interesting comment, but cooperatives are far from arcane organisations and I thought Poptel broke up rather than exactly going defunct (although I suspect it might have gone that way if it hadn't) because of its lack of asset lock.

Why domain name services are not all equal - منتدى

منتدى — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 04:57:11 +0100

Hi Joe, thanks for your very kind comments (and great name). It almost looks like I've written this myself!

Anyway, thanks again, and we hope to continue to bring you and your clients great products and services for many years to come. Take care,

Why domain name services are not all equal - watches

watches — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:42:05 +0100

I can no longer use Gandi for various reasons, and finding a decent alternative is proving quite difficult.x1201

Why domain name services are not all equal - metin2 yang

metin2 yang — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:41:09 +0200

wow gold wow gold wow gold wow gold wow gold wow gold wow gold

European weekend!!! - rvb

rvb — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:45:23 +0200

Yes, get out and vote! It seems that the call was not very well heard... I am a French citizen, and registered to vote in Ireland for the European elections and for the local elections, but obviously that is not enough. Anyway, looking at the European extensions, some calls seem not to be heard too... hey!! Gandi !! 6 are missing among the EU-15 (EU accession date before 2004):

.ie Ireland (1973)
.dk Denmark (1973, not Euro zone)
.gr Greece (1981)
.pt Portugal (1986)
.fi Finland (1995)
.se Sweden (1995)

It was stated here by the Gandi UK Team, that the Irish ccTLD is quite expensive... well, from 19.50 to 30 Euro (excl. VAT) depending on the provider. But what about registering a .cat (36 E) .lu (30 E) .tv (36 E) or .tw (36 E) ? And some Irish providers are really small business. Nothing compare to Gandi's services and features, and to the support team. I tell you, I have some weird and contradictory answers sometimes from my Irish registrar... So, come on Gandi \ o /
UK joined the EU in 1973, too, and smaller countries or "later adopter" are already in the extensions list !! I am happy that .gr and .se are on the wasy, but maybe we have to push the IE domain registry to make it easier for EU registrars. And you, Irish customers, let Gandi know that you are waiting to transfer your .ie domains! Should we write to the IEDR: do you have some points to relay/ask to them? There is a solution, I am sure, and if I can be of any help to you about this little part of Western Europe, you more than welcome (Céad Mile Fáilte) to ask, anytime. Slán!

European weekend!!! - Nicolas (Gandi)

Nicolas (Gandi) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:55:38 +0200

Tim: we are almost accredited for .se. Just need to validate technical tests.
Nicholas: for .gr we are waiting for the greek registry final answer.

European weekend!!! - Nicholas

Nicholas — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:44:14 +0200

I wish you could offer .gr tlds...

European weekend!!! - Tim

Tim — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 12:45:00 +0200

Please add .se (Sweden) too! The one-time application fee is only about 600 euro including VAT, and if you register at least 100 domains per year there's no yearly fee. See http://www.iis.se/en/kundtjanst/sa-... for more information.

New tools for .TEL domains - library

library — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:20:02 +0200

And a plugin for free software (Evolution, KMail, Tunderbird,..) ??

Virtualisation - and why it is the future of web hosting - pester

pester — Wed, 20 May 2009 10:59:21 +0200

Read more info about webhosting here - http://www.frogmix.com/search/webho...

Why domain name services are not all equal - Zhang

Zhang — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 02:30:36 +0200

I just noticed that miconian.com (Mentioned at your post) just changed their registrar to Dreamhost.

Why domain name services are not all equal - wow

wow — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:29:39 +0100

wow......

Dodgy domain practices, the story contines... - Rhys

Rhys — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:30:20 +0100

Indeed, it's a nice question where it's better to comment on the content))) But, in any case as every one whose comments are there under the note, I'd like to say thanx for sharing this nice piece of information with us! have a nice day!

Dodgy domain practices, the story contines... - Remington

Remington — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:03:04 +0100

Right you are, it is very nice that you have followed this line. It is very detailed and I'd like to say thank you for the links.

Why domain name services are not all equal - hoodia

hoodia — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:33:51 +0100

hm, interesting explanation! never thought about these reasons... I thought it is just a question of prestige and price... And how do you think, if there will appear a new country who will give it the domain name?

Dodgy domain practices, the story contines... - Arjun

Arjun — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:44:39 +0100

yeas the information is really useful... thanx for the links to those posts, I do not know where it' better to leave a comment on the content here or there, but still I'd like to say out my reaspect and best wishes to you!

Who is Dabest? - GreggT

GreggT — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:36:02 +0100

I tried sending mail to whoisdabest@gandi.net and it bounced as address unknown.

Dodgy domain practices, the story contines... - Zhangjia

Zhangjia — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 14:18:54 +0100

Thank you for sharing this information.....

Why domain name services are not all equal - Colin

Colin — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:55:24 +0100

Well, I've just completed transfer of my two personal domain names (mine and my wife's) from another registrar to Gandi. The previous registrar didn't try to rip me off, but its administrative interface was a usability hell ridden with bugs, and any DNS change was really, really painful to complete.
I went to Gandi because I already knew it, for it is the registrar of my workplace's professional domain names, and I knew the service is good.

Please keep it this way!

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - mc

mc — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:39:48 +0100

There was an undetected (?) dose of sarcasm in my opening paragraph. While non-profit ICANN may not stand to cash in, this non-profit has a history of acting more like the US Dept. of Commerce in preparing the ground for various undesirable practices that certainly don't benefit those simple souls that 1) buy a domain name 2) develop a web site and 3) run a business based on it. New "innovations" are geared toward feeding the continued expansion of the secondary markets that we love to hate.

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - Dominic Search

Dominic Search — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:15:24 +0100

Interesting stuff, and I largely agree with Joe's analysis.

Partial liberalisation of the domain space has never made long-term sense to me. New domains that have no intrinsically useful meaning within the domain hierarchy are simply a benefit to the domain registration industry... they offer little of value to anyone else. Either we stick with the original ccTLDs plus gTLDs with some limited but genuinely useful expansion, or we abandon the entire domain hierarchy and go for full liberalisation.

Think mass-market fully personalisable online identifiers. Sure this presents some major technical and legal hurdles, but as some of you may remember in the 1990's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altern... had an alternative DNS root that did exactly this (they came a sticky end after an audacious hijacking of the official Internic domain during a public dispute).

--------------------

At this point perhaps I should share a story with you that has relevance here. Apologies for its length... it started small, but you know how these things grow. Hopefully you'll find it an interesting read about a part of the Net's lesser-known history

In a former life I was involved with ICANN's first wave of domain liberalisation back in 2000. I wrote the technical parts of the application for http://www.coop/ while working for a now defunct UK ISP that specialised in the Public, Social Enterprise, and not-for-profit sectors ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poptel - a 'pedia entry that so needs improving).

On 01/08/2000 when ICANN opened the tender process to expand the TLD space, Poptel happened to be in a position to respond. However ICANN didn't exactly make the process easy... they wouldn't say how many new TLDs they would be approving, and gave only scant information on the criteria by which applications would be assessed (probably because they would only know after a looking at all the applications). Oh, and they charged 100,000 USD per TLD for the privilege. We applied for two (dot-coop and dot-union). The applications were paid by our investment company (Sum International) and the two sponsoring organisations ( http://www.ncba.coop & http://www.icftu.org/ respectively).

Our applications are archived at http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/co-op1... and http://www.icann.org/en/tlds/union1... if anyone is interested in the gory details of becoming an accredited registry operator. Remember this was ground breaking stuff with no precedent or ready-made solutions - I had to invent the technology architecture from scratch in a couple of weeks knowing that we'd probably have to tear it up and start again if we won. That was fine because I like difficult and creative challenges, and it seemed highly improbable that we would win anyway =)

Incidentally, http://tucows.com/ developed what became http://opensrs.com/ as part of their own application for another TLD (I forget which). We suggested a partnership or even a licensing deal from them, but they felt they had a strong hand and we had little to offer them, so they declined. On one level this was an accurate assessment... except perhaps for the http://www.nominet.org.uk/ factor (who by contrast were fantastically helpful). Founding chairman Dr Willie Black and current CEO Lesley Cowley loved the idea that a small slightly anarchic British worker co-operative was up for playing with the big boys in the ICANN game. We gained Nominet's full support, and they were the designated fail-over operator should we go bankrupt (an ICANN requirement).

Judgement Day was the 2nd AGM of ICANN's Board on 16/11/2000 (the same meeting at which "the father of the Internet" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinton... was elected Chairman of ICANN and then presided over the TLD deliberations). It was a tense day in our office. First dot-union was rejected for being too much of a political hot potato... it had attracted intense negative lobbying by corporate interests in the USA, and the discussions about it at the ICANN meeting were describe to us as being "heated".

Next up for discussion was dot-coop for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-ope... an arcane organisational structure that was off the lobbyist radar in the USA, but at the time very much on the political agenda in the UK. New Labour came to power in 1997 promising a "Third Way" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_...) ), and then struggled to define what the hell they actually meant. For a while they latched onto the co-operative movement as being an answer, and Peter (now Lord) Mandelson, until recently the EU's Trade Minister, was citing the Co-op Bank, John Lewis Partnership, and Poptel as notable examples of successful British Third Way companies.

However I suspect it was just the relief of having their first non-contentious application to discuss that lead to ICANN's rapid approval of our 2nd application... and so we became one of only seven new first-wave registry operators. Privately ICANN told us that Nominet's support was an important factor in our favour. I fell off my chair at the news... and then promptly resigned (let's just say I jumped before things got nasty). Tucows lost their application, however their subsequent success with http://opensrs.com/ is highly commendable and I suspect far more profitable than dot-coop will ever be.

But there-in lies the difference... whilst dot-coop & dot-union were designed to generate healthy trading surpluses for the registry operator, they were not in themselves ever going to be the big money earners. Both were sponsored, meaning the rules governing domain registration were to be strictly set by a sponsoring body for the benefit of their defined constituency (in this case restricted to accredited coops / trade unions to provide clear & verifiable authenticity of their online identity). This keeps out the speculator & squatters, but greatly reduces the demand and so increases the percentage of overheads that must be recovered with each domain transaction (hence the very high cost of dot-coop domains at around £80 + VAT each).

Our vision was to leverage the TLDs and our position / reputation within the target sectors to create a wide range of related organisational IT services that we knew our clients wanted (or were about to want) - a technology platform that included domains, outsourced billing, payment processing, business directories, identity verification, services aggregation, VOIP, unified messaging, content management, and a whole host of other typical buzzwordz of the time. Our bold conception was that Dotcoop was the totemic representation of the wider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social... movement - it was the Internet flagship for an alternative business model to the rampant consumerism as embodied by Dotcom. Heady stuff. Exciting times. Shame the dream never got to be market-tested...

A combination of bad organisation habits (from Poptel's long and strange past), internal stresses (from near bankruptcy to a £2.5m capitalisation, and staff growth from 20 to 60, all within 9 months), a dysfunctional management structure until too late (all too common in third-sector organisations), and the bursting of the Dotcom bubble caused Poptel to spectacularly implode a year or so later. The Dotcoop Registry was run as a separate company and the TLD went live on 21/11/2001. After the fractioning of Poptel into several splinter companies, and with great irony, the registry was for a while effectively controlled by the venture-capital investor, Sum International. Eventually it was bought by the co-op movement and is still in operation today.

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - Joe

Joe — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:02:45 +0100

Hi Wes, I'm not sure WVHs reply was quite the attack on US sentiment that you took it to be. The US should be very much admired for its role in supporting and sponsoring many of the valued 'global' institutions, e.g. NATO, WTO, World Bank and indeed ICANN itself, that are mostly based and take funding from the US itself.

It is admirable that with its reasonably unique position in global politics as the established superpower that the US supports these 'global' institutions though it does not always agree with them.

I agree with your point that 'government' control of the internet would be tricky, as you rightly put - which government would you trust it with? Which is why ICANN exists as a 'global' institution, and should be supported in this way. ICANN needs to find its voice and be more bold in representing the views of the 'users', though I can appreciate this can be tricky with different interest groups, including those focused solely on profiting from the web.

I think this was the point WVH was making, that we should be careful about not trying to exploit and profit from everything, and should place limits on ourselves. In much the same way that we have national parks and reserves to stop the exploitation of the planet, perhaps we need stronger rules to stop the exploitation and pollution of the name space.

I don't think this is a US problem, but a global problem. The internet is too big to be considered the property of a single country (though again, as you say much of the initial technology was sponsored by the US), it is now a shared resource for all of us, and the distribution of DNS would ensure that it would continue to function even if whole countries were taken offline.

So, international politics aside, what do you want from the domain space? Are you completely free market focused, or do you believe it should be regulated with some protection? Even free market economists believe in the case for regulation regarding scarce natural resources where there is some scope for protection to the benefit of us all (e.g. parks, areas of natural beauty). Is the name space like this, or is it something else?

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - Joe

Joe — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:33:05 +0100

Hi mc, I think we're in agreement aren't we? My point is that the liberalisation is probably unnecessary and will only fuel ad sites and domain speculation. So yes we would appeal to ICANN for some common sense and as a top 30 global registrar, we hope our views would be heard. We're interested in a functional domain market that meets the needs of real customers, not speculators. It may be less popular view among registrars, but that is what we believe.

ICANN will certainly generate fees from this, though as a not for profit organisation, I don't think it is trying to 'profit' from it, as it has no shareholders to benefit. The money will ultimately be funnelled back into the domain infrastructure (as they themselves say "If fee collection exceeds ICANN expenses, the community will be consulted as to how that excess is to be used").

It is unclear where the pressure for this move has come from, other than the desire to 'liberalise' as an apparent end with intrinsic worth. It may come from vested interest groups (registrars, speculators) who will both profit from it. But in terms of the end user interest, I can't see it. If the domains held by auctions and speculators were returned to the pool, there really would be enough to go around without the need for further extensions.

So I hope that makes our views clearer and you can see why it's not so surprising that we would feel this way and want to represent the interests of our 'real' customers. Thanks,

Joe

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - mc

mc — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 11:21:48 +0100

I find it slightly puzzling that someone in the domain industry actually appeals to ICANN for some common sense on behalf of customers who use and rely upon their domain names (for other things than speculation). Does ICANN stand to make a buck here? Yes, they do. What were your misgivings again?

What we are seeing is the creation of the same boundless derivative structures that eventually brought down the financial markets.

While domain squatting may be the core of the problem, I will give you a related example: do a Google search these days, say for a small business, and you easily end up with page after page of portal pages that have these wonderful directories lifted from public records and stuffed with ads. After a few clicks on these, you may come across a listing that includes the actual domain for the business you sought (who may or may not have paid to enhance their listing in said directory). Not only does it make Google far less effective, it pollutes the entire internet landscape with middlemen who offer little but monetized _redirections_ through a space already equipped with fully functional addresses.

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - Wes Peters

Wes Peters — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:14:47 +0100

Nameless Doofus said:
There never should have been any TLDs beyond the country-specific ones...
This is just Amer... eh... capitalism to its worst</quote>

Ahem. OK, if you don't like our DNS, or our Internet, go make your own. It works (sort of) for China.

I believe the domain market is one thing that could actually benefit
from being under government control instead of being liberalised,
commercialised and thrown for the lions (spammers, speculators,
phishers, etc).

Uhhh, ok, I'll bite. Whose government? *Your* government? Hahahahahahaha, now you're an internet comedian! I wouldn't trust the administration of DNS to *my* government, let alone yours. Here, how 'bout we delegate some little two-letter subdomain to your country, whatever that is, and you have can *your*government administer that. Oh, wait, it probably already does. Fine. If you don't like that the Global, er, American DNS works, just stay out of .com, or .info, or whatever other piece of internet real estate causes you so much heartburn.

That said, I'm selling my house this afternoon so I can raise the capital to become the registrar for the .OMG GTLD. W00t! I win!

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - WVH

WVH — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:36:45 +0100

I'm completely with Gandi on this one. The last thing we need is more domain names being bought up by shady companies and turned into billboards forever. There never should have been any TLDs beyond the country-specific ones. This would also have kept the juridical scope clear in case of disputes. This is just Amer... eh... capitalism to its worst, turning everything into commodities for sale and rent, while there is a clear need for rules and responsibility to end the abuse. I believe the domain market is one thing that could actually benefit from being under government control instead of being liberalised, commercialised and thrown for the lions (spammers, speculators, phishers, etc).

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - Zhang

Zhang — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 02:12:17 +0100

Too many GTLDs is very complicated and costly, specially for small medium companies. Adding 1-3 new GTLDs is good enough, but too many GTLDs will only polluted domain space. CTLD is good, every country have it's own CTLD. One country one CTLD.

ICANN - domain name extension liberalisation - who benefits? - jackbravo

jackbravo — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 16:29:01 +0100

I agree completely with what you said. We shouldn't stand for this, and the state of things is pretty depressing right now. At my company for example we'd love to buy axai.com, but is taken by one of those bill board pages =(.

Damn them!

Why domain name services are not all equal - LC

LC — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 04:49:19 +0100

Wow. Very informative post. Until now, I had been looking at registrars with the lowest prices. This really opened my eyes.

Why domain name services are not all equal - Jakob S

Jakob S — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 21:44:17 +0200

@joe , I'd be happy to tell you the story. Feel free to email me at the email address I used to post my last comment (putting jakob together with mentalized.net works).

I am sure you'll also be able to pull up the story from your support system if you search for that email address

Why domain name services are not all equal - Joe

Joe — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:22:44 +0200

@ ret, yes we do try to make sure we represent the customer interests rather than bowing to pressure from comanpies to block domains on even the smallest issue. A claim should be proved and substantiated, and action take as appropriate, not guity until proven innocent.

@ jakob, I'm sorry to hear you can't use us anymore (sounds intriguing). There are other good registrars out there. The smaller companies can offer good value and good terms, just make sure you check the details before you buy!

Thanks,

Joe

Why domain name services are not all equal - Jakob S

Jakob S — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:04:41 +0200

Hear hear, Gandi is probably the best registrar I've used. Unfortunately, I can no longer use Gandi for various reasons, and finding a decent alternative is proving quite difficult. I wonder if you Gandi guys and gals can provide any recommendations?

Why domain name services are not all equal - ret

ret — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:05:20 +0200

Talk about peace of mind using Gandi. I've heard stories on what happened to a fellow who owned a domain name: someone who was offended at his website content called the registrar with a highly dubious legal claim or whatnot, and that registrar (one of the top registrars, the man who runs it is weird right-wing loudmouth) instantly disabled/locked the domain and froze the account of the domain owner without any regard to due process. I don't ask a registrar be a potential haven for criminal or unethical activity, but at least I know Gandi will stand for due process and my rights as a world citizen (should MY website rub the wrong person the wrong way and they attempt to take revenge).

Why domain name services are not all equal - Joe

Joe — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:23:55 +0200

Hi Zhangjia, glad to hear it. We want to keep our customers up to date with what we're doing, and get their feedback and comments so we can make sure we're on the right track. So please do post and let us know when you find something interesting. Thanks,

Joe

Why domain name services are not all equal - Zhangjia

Zhangjia — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:07:43 +0200

I love Gandi. I think you are one of the best registrar. Excellent service and support.
Also I love how you communicate with your customers, using Gandibar blog. It give me update on "what happen".
Keep up the wonderful work!

Why domain name services are not all equal - Joe

Joe — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:18:10 +0200

Hi Joe, thanks for your very kind comments (and great name). It almost looks like I've written this myself!

Anyway, thanks again, and we hope to continue to bring you and your clients great products and services for many years to come. Take care,

Joe

Why domain name services are not all equal - joed

joed — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:36:21 +0200

Gandi is in my opinion the best registrar/ISP around. They consistently provide fabulous service at an excellent price. They never have problems and if they do they are on the ball and get it fixed. Since joining Gandi and setting up our clients domains etc we have never looked back.

Well done all at Gandi!! Keep up the fantastic work!.

Joe.

Yet another "Nu" extension! - Skippy

Skippy — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:12:56 +0100

For what it's worth, "nu" also means "no" or "not" in Romanian. This could also make for some interesting domain name combinations.

Yet another "Nu" extension! - Ryan (gandi)

Ryan (gandi) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:49:36 +0100

Hello Tururú,

Yes, we will soon be offering .es domains as well! Please check back here for developments!

Yet another "Nu" extension! - tururú

tururú — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 14:44:10 +0100

Will Gandi offer .es domains?

Yet another "Nu" extension! - Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:22:35 +0100

Hi Lars!

Thank you for correcting me on that! I did indeed confuse it with ny. That has been corrected in the text.

Yet another "Nu" extension! - Lars

Lars — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:04:18 +0100

No, 'nu' means 'now' in all three scandinavian languages. You are probably confusing it with the word 'ny', which indeed means 'new'.

/Lars

The "HATW", Part III - Ken

Ken — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:59:35 +0100

Wonderful read. Best of luck (and will). You are to be congratulated. Keep up the good/hard work and you will be/are victorious.

I have two daughters; they make me exhausted...

Cheers from a friend in the US.

Yours, Ken.

P.S. "PLUS ÇA CHANGE, PLUS C'EST LA MÊME CHOSE"

My French is limited by my command of your beautiful language. I hope you are not offended. I wish to learn more, but my luck and will are limited. Time will tell...