Surely the author must have anticipated some heightened level of risk in pegging important parts of his personal and business life on a nonstandard TLD like this.

It's a pretty bizarre exception to the normal, intuitive ways that domains work.

I'll admit that it's a crappy situation and I would be frustrated in his place. But if I were in his place, I probably would have also thought it prudent to have a backup plan.

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swiftcoder 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> nonstandard TLD

What exactly is non-standard about an ICANN-approved TLD? Yes, the multi-level structure is a little odd, but given that ICANN approved it in the first place, one has a reasonable expectation that they would work as advertised.

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jawns 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have a .science domain and a .com domain.

Even though .science was launched in 2014 (more than a decade ago), I still consider it a non-standard TLD and still deal regularly with difficulties around its use. (For instance, you wouldn't believe how many online services reject email addresses than end in .science because they use regexes that exclude TLDs with 7 letters.)

Likewise, I've registered .lol and .fun domains but never would have assumed that just because they're available now, they will be available in perpetuity.

In that sense, .name as a third-level TLD is even more non-standard, because the standard way domain registration works is by choosing a single "second level" domain name, then adding subdomains.

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angoragoats 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Likewise, I've registered .lol and .fun domains but never would have assumed that just because they're available now, they will be available in perpetuity.

Why wouldn't you assume this?

> the standard way domain registration works is by choosing a single "second level" domain name, then adding subdomains

The entire ccTLD systems of the UK, China, Germany, France, Japan, and many others would beg to differ.

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jawns 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think those are comparable, because when you register a .co.uk domain, you are selecting one name that precedes .co.uk, similar to how you register one name that precedes .com.

Whereas with .name, you are choosing what appears to be a subdomain, followed by what appears to be a domain name. But under the hood, you do not own all subdomains for that domain name; you own only the combination of first_name.last_name.name.

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angoragoats an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure I understand. How is registering first.last.name not also selecting one name ("first") that precedes last.name, similar to how you register one name that precedes .com?

(And yes, I am aware that you can also register last.name by itself, but only if there are no third-level domains using it, so for practical purposes it doesn't change my question above. Plus, when the OP originally purchased his domain, you could only buy third-level domains for .name.)

	▲	jawns 44 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Present these two domain names to the average person: 1) benedict.cumberbatch.name 2) drstrange.co.uk I expect the average person would assume that for the domain 1, .name is the TLD, cumberbatch.name is registered by a private entity, and benedict (and any other subdomains associated with cumberbatch.name) is a subdomain fully controlled by that private entity. Whereas for domain 2, I think the average person will view ".co.uk" the same way they view ".com", even though technically it is both a ccTLD and a second-level domain.

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avazhi 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> What exactly is non-standard about an ICANN-approved TLD?

Uh, 99% of people would assume a .name address is a scam. Hate to break it to you.

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angoragoats 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

.name is in no way a "nonstandard TLD." It has been in existence for a quarter of a century and was part of the first batch of new gTLDs approved after the dot-com boom had begun, in 2000.

For the first couple of years of .name's existence, it only allowed registration of third-level domains, and the ability to register second-level domains was added later (and only if no third-level domains existed for that second-level domain).

The author is in no way at fault here, and I don't think I would have assumed there was a heightened level of risk if I were him.