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OtomotO

tbh, as an owner of a .name (tld) I don't understand how this worked in the real world.

I have subdomains like {myfirstname}.{lastname}.name ... {lastname}.name is mine

So obviously {myfirstname}.{lastname}.name is a subdomain...

Could someone now have bought {myfirstname}.{lastname}.name and DNS would go to their page?

If so, I find the new behaviour way more sane...

If I wanted to sell a subdomain, I could do this, no questions asked. I just point the subdomain to another IP.

But I pay for {lastname}.name so it should be mine, just like any other .tld I have!

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Yes, if you pay for {lastname}.name, the full domain is yours, including whatever you want to do with subdomains. However, .name also allowed direct registration of third level domains ({firstname}.{lastname}.name). These were mutually exclusive by domain… so if somebody registers the 3rd level, nobody can directly buy the 2nd level, and vise versa. As far as I understand, it was first come first serve based on the 2nd level domain.

There were also some shenanigans around automatic email routing in that case.

Ok. But why would anyone buy a third level domain when they could have bought the second level? It’s a strange thing.

Were the third level domains cheaper?

Me personally, it wouldn’t even occur to me to register a third level directly, because why bother when you can have the second level and do whatever you want with it.

Super strange.

Third-level registration was how it was designed. Second-level was added later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.name

Buying a third level also came with some email functionality, so if you owned first.last.name, you would be able to forward emails from first@last.name to you. If you have firstlast.name, you need something like first@firstlast.name

It was a bit odd, but well intentioned.

When the TLD first opened up you were not allowed to purchase {lastname}.name, it was restricted to third level domains only in an attempt to lure in customers wanting {first name}@{lastname}.name as an email address. But they didn't make it easy to configure that email redirect if you used another registar than verisign, and email has evolved.

Later in a desperate search for MORE MONEY, they opened up 2nd level if no 3rd level already existed under that 2nd. This sounds less like another search for more money with new sales as people are saying, but a reduction in unique domain handling and cost cutting (they can shutdown all those email redirection servers).

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