Open DNS Plus
Hey Open DNS... I have an idea. Seriously, you should listen to this:
Make a custom URL service available to those who use your DNS, which allows them to assign a string of virtually any characters to behave like any ordinary URL. Make it as easy to set one up as it is to sign up for free subdomains. Let folks flag their URL shortcut as private or public as they like. When set as public, anyone using your DNS servers will enjoy normal IP address resolution using this same string in their browser or other programs. Basically, it would be a free/cheap and more flexible replacement for TLD (Top Level Domains) and subdomains, freeing folks from the literal tyranny of ICANN and the fees of registrars.
If you don't understand what I am suggesting, picture this: folks could type http://theregister into your browser and it will work. You can make your own pseudo-TLD like http://the.register.rocks and it would work too. Since your service would be optional and opt-in, you could override existing ICANN TLD addresses to go to alternate sites; you already essentially do this with your website-blocking service which redirects to message pages. Or you can avoid dealing with a baseless legal tantrum from ICANN, and reject public URL shortcuts that resemble existing registered ones.
You're perfectly positioned to make this possible. It might be a challenge to get people to adopt your service at first, but you could cover a lot of distance by providing browser plugins which check a URL with your DNS server when it's generated a 404 at the ISP's DNS or otherwise doesn't contain TLD strings. Could this service be misused? Well, duh. But ill-doers don't face any real obstacles to using ICANN TLD and working through classic registrars. The idea that URLs have to contain a bit of text that must be expensively approved by a gargantuan and opaque for-profit organization is so last-century. Please help the Internet's citizens obtain this valuable liberty.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
