I've long felt the only sane approach is to define country-level TLDs (via the UN or something) transition everything under them, and then let each legal jurisdiction handle (or mishandle) their own shit.
While it's far less-convenient for global companies and "ignoring borders", it decentralizes the system. Compartmentalizing failure and allowing some kinds of competition.
That would be lovely, but I don't see any way of such change actually happening. The current hierarchy is extremely entrenched and heavily supported by the most powerful entities on the net.
I wonder if using the validation of the DNS record and all the surrounding nonsense is really a useful function though.
I mean, if we created a new distributed system, and grandfathered the old one, how can the current incumbents stop it? The control over a name pointing to an address could be done with a blockchain, I'm hearing.
So we move to a new naming convention. An arbitrary prefix on the end of a name shouldn't mean $$$$.
I'm saying we (techies anyway, not money-grubbing VC's), can make the decision for them, en masse. When they say "But, we need to make money from this!", we reply, "No, we need a naming service for these internet addresses. Go get stuffed."
The finer details of how it all works can be left till later.
> I mean, if we created a new distributed system, and grandfathered the old one, how can the current incumbents stop it?
That's a weird way of putting it. Anyone can create DNS roots based on any hierarchy they want, no-one will stop you from doing that. The meaningful question is how do you get anyone to use your fancy new roots?
Basically, it'd mean the (virtually impossible) task of deprecating the non-country TLDs with X years before they stop working, and saying: "Okay, .us is managed by whatever infrastructure the USA sets up, and .uk is managed by whatever the UK sets up, etc."
So the US might choose to allow cocacola.us, while the UK might have on a grouping scheme like cocacola.co.uk, and meanwhile North Korea refuses outright or insists on cocacoala.obeys.dear.leader.nk, whatever.
Countries can break up, dissolve, or form too. I'm not sure that making all domains depend on things that exist in the real world is a good idea. They should depend on abstract ideas that are less liable to change and can be resold easily to different operators.
Not that often, and even when they do it often means very real issues in terms of governance of internet infrastructure.
> I'm not sure that making all domains depend on things that exist in the real world is a good idea.
But domains already depend on things which exist in the real world! Not only are they leased by real-world entities, but even the names of domains already refer to countries, companies, brands, products, activities, clubs, and people.
The real difference with what we have now is that it's a weird global monopoly that has shown it's willing to erode organizational principles in order to make a buck.
Splitting it up by sovereign nations is actually moving back closer to the decentralized principles of the internet, avoiding a single point of (political) failure, and creating subsections which can evolve separately and cover for one another.
Ex: Turkey's emerging dictatorship refuses to let anyone register erdogansucks.net.tr ? Fine, go register erdogansucks.net.de , and advertise with that instead.
While it's far less-convenient for global companies and "ignoring borders", it decentralizes the system. Compartmentalizing failure and allowing some kinds of competition.