The .zip TLD really bothers me as well. It bothers me in the way I would be concerned if there were to be a .EXE tld.

Best case scenario - spam filters choke on this and accessibility of .zip domains is greatly reduced. Things get worse from there… decreased effectiveness of spam filters stopping malware, increased confusion for all users about what is a local link to a file vs. a link to internet content, opportunity for malware and ransomware purveyors to trick more people into clicking on links that aren’t what they appear to be.

I’m struggling to understand the positive side of the .zip TLD. Other than combatting the domain name real estate inflation for .com domains, I feel that “everything can and eventually will be a TLD” is bad for the future of the Internet.

-Ross

On May 29, 2023, at 8:12 AM, Jonathan Zuck via NA-Discuss <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:

 Certainly seems worthwhile to me and outweighs the value of having a .zip domain

Jonathan Zuck
Director, Future of Work Project
Innovators Network Foundation
www.InnovatorsNetwork.org

From: Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2023 8:09:11 PM
To: Jonathan Zuck <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org>
Cc: NARALO Discussion List <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Subject: Re: [NA-Discuss] Protecting the public interest: dot-zip
 
Very likely the name collision assessment came up clean -- against other domains.
But that's not the issue here.
Is there any requirement for applicants to do due diligence regarding collisions with other common non-DNS computer uses of the applied string?

There are some precedents, notably dot-onion being unavailable to reduce collision with the TOR network (which is certainly out of ICANN's jurisdiction).
But I don't know if, for instance, there would be any inherent ICANN-based opposition to anyone applying for, say, dot-exe or dot-bat (which, like zip, is also a dictionary word).

Perhaps there is room to develop advice to have a mechanism that measures evaluates conflict not just with other domains, but also common computer uses that could if implemented cause pubic confusion or harm.
There are a LOT of file extensions and not all need to be protected, but surely the most common file extensions (and perhaps also command-line utilities) need protections.
I see that dot-run is delegated, which could affect Linux systems (which run a lot of the Internet's infrastructure).
So is dot-mov which is a popular Apple file extension for videos.

Anyway, I leave it with NARALO's ALAC reps to determine if this issue is sufficiently end-user to care about and investigate.

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56


On Sun, May 28, 2023 at 7:35 PM Jonathan Zuck <JZuck@innovatorsnetwork.org> wrote:
I wonder what sort of risk assessment .ZIP has for the name collision study.

Jonathan Zuck
Director, Future of Work Project
Innovators Network Foundation

From: NA-Discuss <na-discuss-bounces@atlarge-lists.icann.org> on behalf of Evan Leibovitch via NA-Discuss <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 27, 2023 4:18:34 PM
To: NARALO Discussion List <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org>
Subject: [NA-Discuss] Protecting the public interest: dot-zip
 
While my hopes that ALAC will champion this are dim, and ICANN itself is even less likely to act, I draw your attention to a policy goof that is already causing public harm and is likely to cause far more.

Now anyone can buy a dot-zip second-level domain, ie evan.zip or naralo.zip

As anyone who works with computers should know, long before dot-zip was a domain it was a very popular computer-file extension to denote something that contained a file (or collection of files) in compressed form. Such a collection could easily contain malicious data or code.

Is anyone seeing the problem? People could be sent "attachments" that are really URLs and URLs that are really attachments. The potential for end-user confusion and harm is immense.


Is anyone in domain-world looking at this?

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56
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