Re: First come/First served

[John R Levine <johnl@iecc.com>]

> >extremely important to customers.  If I see DukeU, I want
> >to know that this is the University, not some flim-flam
> >artist using DukeU.com to make it seem like messages are
> >coming from a university.  In the commercial world, there
> 
> You raise another really critical issue area - authentication
> of domain names.  This is most important for businesses and
> the general public, for electronic commerce and agent technology
> deployment, for Internet critical infrastructure, national
> security, and law enforcement purposes.

Well, maybe.  I note that the Yale Adult Cinema has been in business in
Santa Monica CA for quite a few decades without any reported trouble of
outraged patrons demanding compensation for being shown a blue movie
rather than provided with a four-year degree program.  Similar names don't
immediately mean confusion. 

But if you think that people have trouble now telling the difference
between .COM and .EDU, imagine what a mess it will be if there are dozens
or hundreds of different domains, be they Simon Higgs' trademark domains,
generic ones like .WEB, or even deliberately meaningless ones like .X01. 
This sounds like an excellent argument for NOT creating any new iTLDs but
rather providing multiple competing registries for the domains that
already exist. 


On a tangentially related note, someone suggested that the owner of
BLATHER.COM be allowed to reserve BLATHER.xxx in any new iTLDs that are
created.  When the 888 area code was opened up as an alternative to 800 in
North America, after a lot of political fooling around, any holder of an
800 number was allowed to reserve the corresponding 888 number.  (I
reserved all of my numbers, heck, it was free.) The result was a million
888 numbers reserved and unusable.  This is not a promising parallel. 

Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Trumansburg NY
Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies"
and Information Superhighwayman wanna-be