I wonder why couldn't Verisign just grant most people the second level domains here. I imagine there aren't too many people holding onto 3rd level .name domains here and the set of people holding onto 3rd level domains that share a second level domain with someone else is probably very small, a few hundred at most.
For all the ones holding exclusive second level domains, just give them the second level domain. For all the ones holding shared second levels, offer a buyout and/or allow parties to negotiate with each other on a shared ownership structure of the second level.
I suspect for most of the second level domains, there's only one registrant of a third level domain.
However, I also suspect that for most of the third level domains, they're on a second level domain with multiple registrants. And several of those shared second level domains will have a lot of registrants. If the registrants are in different jurisdictions, it becomes a pretty nasty process to develop international consensus, vs just keeping the status quo going (which IMHO, can't be that hard).
Still, it makes sense to have a process to normalize the single registrant second level domains, because less work.
22,000 third levels total, spread across about 12,000 second levels, about 10,000 of which have only one third level. Of the approximately 2,000 with multiples, many have all of the third level registrants being apparently close relatives.
That leaves quite a few with lots of unrelated registrants, mostly in Japan (tanaka and suzuki being the biggest).
Most japanese third-level .name domains were registered with YahooDomains.co.jp which ceased its activities in 2025. Almost none of them have been transferred elsewhere so there's no response to DNS requests for them…
While I sympathize with Tao, I can’t help but think this is the math world reaping what it has sown. There was little holistic about the previous math institutions, to the benefit of a few and the detriment of many. There was little reward for trying something new and failing, for doing something old in a new way, it was results and little else that mattered, the same publish or perish across all academia. And now that these few have found a force they cannot contend with, suddenly we are demanding holism.
They are right at the end of the day, but it still smells of hypocrisy to some degree.
A few years ago congress had a nice solution via a market mechanisms, have sufficiently large banks be required to have their cards support at least 2 card networks, via which the merchant may at at swipe time decide which network to run against. Unfortunately like any good idea, it died in congress.
For all the ones holding exclusive second level domains, just give them the second level domain. For all the ones holding shared second levels, offer a buyout and/or allow parties to negotiate with each other on a shared ownership structure of the second level.
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