Re: Where are we going?

[Vince Wolodkin <wolodkin@digitalink.com>]

Donald E. Eastlake 3rd wrote:
<snip>
>  But both people with
> names to register and people with names to look up act as if they wanted only
> a few iTLDs and perhaps only one default iTLD.
> 
> As far as I can see, the only major current problem in the NSI monopoly
> leading to unilateral policy changes and similar sorts of fallout typical of
> a monopoly.  But it's not clear to me that creating just .biz or creating a
> 100 or even 10000 TLDs is actually going to solve this problem if most people
> just continue to use .com.  And it ceratinly will create a lot of confusion
> in people's minds.  If creating officially blessed new iTLDs will solve the
> NSI monopoly problem, then most of the benefit will come from the first few
> additional iTLDs.  After a dozen or so new competing iTLD services, each
> additional one is likely to add little marginal benefit.
> 
> And exactly why is it that all these new services have to be top level
> domains instead of under .alt (or .x if you want it shorter) or (except for
> the NSI problem) under .alt.com?
>

For that matter, the NSI monopoly problem could be solved by simply
making .com a shared iTLD.  Multiple registries could be allowed to
register names in .com.  

It would need to be determined how registry policies would arise, but I
think having a thousand "little NSI's" running around making their own
rules for their own registries is about 1000 times worse than one
monopoly.  Also to be determined would be a method of
timestamping/distributing the registry so as to ensure FCFS for domain
names.

Under this structure, people would not pay for $50/year, but instead
would pay $XX for registration of a new domain and $YY for modification
of an existing domain.  Domain holders could move freely from registry
to registry and registries could, for example, have monthly specials. 
"The XYZ registry is having a $10 special on domain modifications. 
Modify your domain at XYZ in the next 2 days and receive a $5 discount
off our already low $15 regular price"

You might want to add a new TLD for registries .REG or they may just
want to use .NET.  By the way, since .REG sounds like a good idea to me:
I hereby claim on behalf of the Washington Post Company, first use of
.REG.  Believe it or not, I've seen sentences like the last one before,
so just ignore it, I only put it there in case it ever matters.


Vince Wolodkin