On: ICANN’s First Test of Accountability

[gwu78]

You can do this easily if you run your own nameserver, e.g., with tinydns.

   1 ycombinator:
   60 bytes, 1+1+1+0 records, response, authoritative, noerror
   query: 1 ycombinator
   answer: ycombinator 1 A 104.20.44.44
   authority: . 259200 NS ns

But the conventional wisdom is that you should let someone else run nameservers and give them your IP address. As such, they get to make the rules. Not to mention they also are often in the business of selling domain name registrations under those TLDs you wish to do without.

Further, assuming you plan to use your domain name in a web browser, browser authors can make a second set of rules about what domain names are "acceptable". They can block your TLD agnostic domain name. No DNS is involved.

You could edit the browser source code to modify any such rules and recompile. But as with nameservers, the conventional wisdom is to let someone else, e.g., a company, write the web browser; users are not meant to edit the source code.

You can do many "unconventional" things with DNS. But maybe your question is not what you can do, but why the third parties who control DNS for the masses do not do these things?

[hackuser → gwu78]

> You can do this easily if you run your own nameserver ...

Thanks; I didn't realize that was technically possible on the public Internet.

> But maybe your question is not what you can do, but why the third parties who control DNS for the masses do not do these things?

Yes.