> After a long and expensive battle, news just dropped that Verisign is retracting its plan to terminate 22,000 domain names and email redirects. Although they will be closing new registrations for 3rd-level .name domains, all existing domains (including this website) and email redirects will remain indefinitely.

This was what I figured SHOULD happen when they did this. Allow existing customers to keep renewing, but nobody new allowed, if a tld frees up over time, reclaim it completely and sell it off.

What they were proposing should really be illegal...

WHAT‽ I let my "first.last.name" registration expire because of the impending shutdown!

I did notice that my domain kept working past the supposed shutdown date, but I let the domain registration expire.

I'm so mad now! I assume there is no way to get my domain/email forwarding back :(

I suppose I could try to ask the registrar, but I highly doubt they can do anything...

(Edit: I'm not actually mad, but it was annoying to have to move accounts from my first@last.name email to another one)

It is best to stick to the main top level domains. I bought into multiple 'new' domains and most of them caused me issues. A few of them jacked up their prices like crazy compared to when I first bought them. They can also be difficult to move between providers.

Unfortunately I am stuck in commitments on a few of these domains and just had to eat the cost increases, the rest I moved to .com/.net.

.consulting was the worst offender.

There is a residual cleanup problem with registrants who were with Tucows/OpenSRS and had their domains come up for renewal since late August. Tucows would not renew them and it was hard for registrants to find another registrar that would. Doytchin spent quite a bit of time looking and I think the only one he found that would accept a transfer of both the third level domain and the email forwarding service was 007names.

This meant a lot of domains expired. Worse, some entered the Redemption Period, where they can no longer be transferred to another registrar - the only option is to redeem through Tucows and they will not do it.

The practical solution seems to be: 1. If the domain is expired but still within the grace period, transfer it now; 2. It it entered the redemption period, wait until it becomes available again (up to 35 days) and re-register through a registrar like 007names to recover it.

Quite unsatisfactory on the part of Tucows (the biggest registrar of third level domains by far), to let all this happen and they really should offer subsidised redemption for affected domains in the redemption grace period.

previous discussion on the predecessor post, 69 days ago, 547 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49550772

Why would they even want to close it? It is probably close to 0 cost tot hem. Or am I wrong?

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.

Vive la résistance!

Resistance is not futile.

Great to see a sane outcome but if I relied on one of these domains I'd still be moving away from it. Clearly they have no desire to maintain it.

Nicely done. (I moved a few family email accounts from .name to .net years ago because it was a much cheaper option and the .name TLD was still so uncommon in our bubbles it led to questions when they gave their email addresses to someone else.)

I have bought my *.name domain a decade ago? Why was this ever a thing? Was there some limitation i'm to stupid to get or did one company just register some common last names?

The title of this submission is misleading. This is only for "3rd level" .name domains. The title makes it seem like normal .name domains were being deleted.

Is Verisign’s promise to keep at least one registrar supporting third-level domains and email forwarding written into a binding agreement or is this the only announcement?

A few years ago I was able to register <first name>.<last name> I was so excited until I realized how potentially precarious the domain was. My established domain is <first><last>.<forever tdl>. I'm not too worried about it having a problem (although as some have mentioned here I wish we had more rights, as individuals, to this IP). So I keep the new domain more as a personal toy...

Weird, I registered a 2nd level .name domain years ago and never knew about 3rd level...

Congrats to those wanting to keep their domains! I'm surprised they went with perpetual (well, as much as anything is) support, i.e. allowing renewals and such rather than just letting it naturally expire (the initial proposal was to immediately cease these records at a given date with no clear communication on how they'd be protected or not from re-registering the upper level domains or not).

Can anyone speak to which specific registrars support setting email forwarding settings with these domains?

How does one register a domain under .name ? I can’t find info through search because it discards the dot no matter what I try.

Are the running costs of a single tld that high that is was worth getting rid of?

This type of posts is why i keep comming to YC. I love finding out about small bloggers and stuff like this

I've had a .name for almost a decade now and was not aware of it's history.

Shame I didn't register on my lastname .name , I had thought it was a much newer gTLD.

They shouldnt this easy to take away tbh

> thanks to ... Jim who flew to Bali to make the case to ICANN in person

What the heck is ICANN doing in Bali of all places?

Kind of off-topic, but I wonder what will happen to .io in the end.

https://itp.cdn.icann.org/en/files/consensus-policies/kane-t...

Success is possible. Well done to all.

Here's what I don't understand: if Verisign is too lame to continue handling .name domains, why wouldn't ICANN insist that it auction off that TLD to someone who isn't, and just take control of it and do it themselves if they don't?

I've spent the past month setting up a new domain and feverishly tracking every contact and website that had my address to update what needed to be. Glad to know it was for nothing.

And one good aspect of this is that I hope I'll get less spam as a result.

Thousands of .name owners nearly became .gone owners. Nice to see Verisign choose the one migration plan every engineer secretly loves: don’t migrate anything.

Certainly nice to know they would've almost certainly proceeded as normal if the concerns didn't blow up online

For people who rely on DNS as if it wasn't a shitshow, the mere fact that this was a possibility should be an eye opener.

A new decentralized name system is necessary.

Good for them. I just wish I could register a new .yu domain…

I want to edit this comment.

If you are into stories about weird and obscure domain happenings: https://eualternative.eu/guides/bulgaria-bg-private-registry...

So glad this happened. When I first heard, I assumed that all the folks wronged would simply be disregarded even though Verisign was blatantly breaking consumer protection laws (I assume. If it wasn't, those laws are incomplete). The fact that Verisign even tried still makes me upset though. It's really annoying what several companies will do as long as their hand isn't forced due to legal or social repercussions

glad this got resolved, bummer it was thrown into question at all

Congrats!!

I wonder how much the midterm elections influenced Verisign in this decision to bend the knee in this "David v Goliath"-esque win.

I was expecting for Verisign to take this to court, drag it out, and bleed the opposing party out. I suppose the judges that Verisign lawyers depend on did not get favorable re-election.

Ofc it’s probably something less nefarious, and boring. Verisign probably did some basic math and determined that taking this to court with their army of overpaid lawyers was simply not cost effective compared to just supporting 3rd level domains.

im about to register one. what should i get?

Reliep.Com

It's disappointing that only .name got this treatment. ICANN should grandfather all domains. The idea that it's perfectly fine for domains to just disappear is ridiculous.

I'm glad that the article writer got his domain back, but I wish we had a better term than "grandfathered". The origin of this term goes back to Jim Crow, when to stop Black people and newcomers from voting, many places in the American South imposed a near-impossible test you had to pass to register to vote, but also added a loophole: if your grandfather voted in your county (or sometimes your state), you could vote without taking the test. This was called the grandfather clause.

Well done, sometimes it's about the principal.

Why do they care about third-level domain names anyway, not really much admin costs leaving them active.

Now you can join us in 2026 and work on your website design and remove that hideous lavender background color? :)

So, turns out Verisign is not the Devil incarnate?