https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/05/the-new-zip-tld-is-going-to-cause-some-problems/ Terence Eden has a beard and is smiling.Terence Eden's Blog Mastodon. LinkedIn. GitHub. Email. The new .zip TLD is going to cause some problems * By @edent [a] on 2023-05-13 * google internet tld * 1 comment * 300 words --------------------------------------------------------------------- Many years ago, Google applied for the .zip Top Level Domain. ICANN, in its infinite wisdom, granted it. And now, I think, bad things are going to happen. You see computers try to be helpful. They see you wrote "visit example.com" and autolink the thing which looks like a domain name. That's handy - especially as most people don't have the time or skill to write HTML. So what happens when things which are not domain names look like they are domain names? I've been worrying about this for a few years: Grrr... Because .zip is a valid TLD, it's impossible to know whether http://t.co/webB2l1Y9w should be a URL or a filename. -- Terence Eden (@edent) February 17, 2015 Right now there is an old tweet, blog, email, or instant message from an authority figure which points to a non-existent .zip domain. people of Twitter talking about photos.zip there are lots of them. Is that domain available to buy? Well, let's look at Google's Domain Availability site Screenshot how exciting photos.zip is available. (No, I don't know where the missing "T" is either.) Yup! OK, premium domains like photos.zip appear to be about PS1,000 - which should put off some scammers. But the price for non-premium .zips is between PS10-PS30. Look, I doubt a former president ever Tweeted "Hey, anyone know how I extract files from something called blah.zip on a Mac?" but I'll bet you that something, somewhere, is going to be abused with this new TLD. I feel like a curmudgeonly old fart. Don't we have enough TLDs? What's the limit? There are very few meaningful controls on who can register all but the most retrictive TLDs (looking at you, .int!) So at what point do we just give up and same everyone can have their own Top Level? Anyway, have fun determining if the link you see was ever intended to link to a website! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Share this post on... * [s]Mastodon * [s]Twitter * [s]Facebook * [s]LinkedIn * [s]Reddit * [s]HackerNews * [s]Lobsters * [s]Pocket * [s]WhatsApp * [s]Telegram More posts from around the site: One thought on "The new .zip TLD is going to cause some problems" 1. 2023-05-13 12:56 [2c0fbd5b] [] Mike says: Offering .zip as a TLD seems both unnecessary and unwise. I wonder if anyone argued against creation of .com as TLD in 1985 due to clash with a filename extension https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/COM_file I wondered what reasons the proposal for making .zip a TLD gave for why it should exist. "The proposed gTLD will provide the marketplace with direct association to the term, "zip," which is often colloquially used to refer to a zip drive, a device used for digital storage. The mission of the proposed gTLD, .zip, is to provide a dedicated domain space in which registrants can enact second-level domains that relate to digital storage offerings and information or provide storage or other services. " The proposal was made in September 2014, so quite a lot closer to the time when Zip drives were at the peak of their really very limited popularity to now , but still far enough away from that peak to seem a weird reference to make to try to justify a TLD. The link between a briefly not very popular physical storage medium made by one company and digital storage offerings seems barely even tenuous. I assume the proposal was written in a room with a very large sign saying "Do not mention the extremely commonly used fileformat". https://icannwiki.org/index.php?title =.zip Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Comment *[ ] Name * [ ] Email * [ ] Website [ ] [ ] Notify me of follow-up comments by email. [ ] Notify me of new posts by email. [Post Comment] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] D[ ] To respond on your own website, enter the URl of your response which should contain a link to this post. Learn more. [ ] [Ping me!] Found this post useful? Click the icons to support this blog More ways to support my blog Search Search for: [ ] [Search] Get new posts by email Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive brand new posts by email. (Or subscribe to this [rss]Atom Feed.) Email Address [ ] Free Sign Up Join 427 other subscribers. 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