I'm referring to the recent situation where Dataroom Corgi copied code from the @Papermark project.
The topic feels even more personal to me because I know one of Papermark's founders, and I've seen how many years she's dedicated to building the project.
I know many countries (especially in the European Union) are moving toward requiring AI-generated content to be distinguishable from human-generated content. Gemini already does this with images, and now Claude does it with text.
Social platforms are also creating their own identifiers that can detect and label AI-generated content, such as AI labels on X and LinkedIn.
I understand all sides of this:
Governments want to prevent misinformation. AI companies can use it as a way to promote their tools. Companies and SoMe platforms can distinguish AI-generated content from human-created content. And AI tools can essentially create their own trademark on the content they generate.
We might adopt a style of leadership when we lead for the very first time. After trying and learning from different leading experiences we tend to stick with the one that works best for us. Let me know about yours in the comments below :) I d love to learn from your approach.
TL;DR: .agent is the most strategically important TLD still without an owner. ICANN's application window opens in weeks. A company is going to bid for it - unless a community claims it first. Here's the story, and two questions I'd actually like pushback on. --- Agents already need real addresses. I've been working on this for over a year, and the pitch just keeps getting simpler. Right now agents mostly live at a subdomain of whoever built the framework platform.com/yourname-7. Borrowed identity, borrowed trust. If you want the concrete version, look at OpenClaw. An autonomous agent running on your machine with its own email (real OTP codes, real password resets), OAuth credentials across hundreds of thousands of SaaS apps, sub-agents spawning and talking to each other, webhooks, the whole thing. A worker, not a demo. And in its first three days live, OpenClaw had to rename itself twice. The name it launched under - gone. That's the whole argument in one news cycle: agents running real lives from borrowed names are one legal letter away from disappearing. .agent is the most strategically important TLD still without an owner. ICANN's next gTLD round opens in weeks. And once .agent is claimed, it's claimed - the internet's naming system doesn't hand these out twice. If one company wins it, .agent becomes their product. They'd set pricing. They'd set policies. They'd decide who gets yourname.agent and who gets blocked. One company choosing shareholder interests over an open internet - because that's literally what it would be. The community bid is a formal ICANN community application its own specific path with its own process. The goal, if approved: keep .agent open infrastructure. Open standards for agent discovery. No gatekeeper. Governance by the people actually building agents, within ICANN's rules. 23,000+ members have joined. Esther Dyson, who used to chair ICANN, and Illia Polosukhin, who co-wrote "Attention Is All You Need," are advising. It's not done. ICANN scores community applications on size, governance, nexus, and endorsement depth. You need 12/16 points to beat the corporate applicants who are absolutely going to file. Every signal matters. Two questions I'd genuinely like pushback on: 1. Is the naming layer for AI agents something the community should own, or is it fine if it goes corporate? I have a strong view, but makers building agents every day see things I don't. 2. If you think it should stay open - what governance rules would you want locked in from day one? What would make you still trust the TLD in 5 years? If this resonates, the non-binding endorsement is here (30 seconds). The one-pager has the deeper version. Either way, would love to hear what you think. Especially the pushback.
Hi Makers! We spend a lot of time focused on problems and obstacles, but research shows that there are benefits to acknowledging our achievements and celebrating our wins -- no matter how small. So let's use this discussion to share something we've done recently that feels like a positive. It may be something that happened in work life or personal life. Mine is that I recently accidentally adopted a stray cat, she's been a lovely addition to our house so far.
