new.net and other gTLDs

[Daniel Chudnov]

Folks, there's a lot more to this story than any of these stories seems to
want to report. Essentially, beware press hype around stuff like new.net,
like Julia (I think) pointed out it's an ugly hack from the
not-necessarily-to-be-trusted incubator Idealab. But that doesn't mean
that a little bit of anarchy can't be a good thing.  Several other
collective or commercial efforts are working at the same goals, and
several of them are working together on coordinating certain aspects to
avoid name collisions and such.  Somebody pointed out on web4lib already
that there's already a .lib, right (see the pacroot link below for proof)?

Simply put, the domain name system with its current TLDs isn't set in
stone, it's just that most ISPs choose to go along with the well-known
names.  Lots of alternatives already exist, are up, and accessible, and
you can see/use them for yourself simply by adding one of their public
nameservers to your own machine's config.  There are also many, many
political angles to this, of which the ongoing fuss about the wacky "$50K
please, next!" policy we all heard about is only one.

Our community could do much to support these alternative efforts by, for
instance, encouraging our local institutions' dns admins to support some
of these alternate roots.  Wouldn't you want to be yourlibraryname.lib?

Check out the following, and click around for more, of course:

  http://www.opennic.unrated.net/
  http://www.alternic.org/
  http://www.pacificroot.com

The Librarian Playbook (tm) might suggest a response such as "Shocked,
shocked I am that anyone would propose to confront the existing technical
infrastructure upon which we depend with such a collectively sustainable
approach that forces us to reconsider how we might help enable more voices
to be heard in that great ether that is the Net even if acting upon such
reconsideration might only require a few configuration changes which might
actually result in increased freedom of expression for all and better
branding for our own services to boot."  But, ah, ahem, screw the
Playbook.

  -Dan