Re: TLDs & identity

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>]

Simon Higgs writes:
> > That may be regarded in some ways as a historical accident. Were
> > things being done afresh today, the U.S. Government would probably
> > have domains under .GOV.US and under .MIL.US or something similar. The
> > fact that we have any organizationally limited TLDs at all is because
> > when the DNS was created the internet was still almost entirely a
> > U.S. based network with only a tiny set of outposts in the U.K.
> 
> So place them both under .US now. It can still be done.

Thats not nearly a sure thing. I agree it might be nice, but its not
clear it could actually be done.

> Several organizations on the WIPO list already qualify in such a way
> that prevents anyone else from using those names as TLDs.

Its possible that no one else might be able to use the marks as TLDs,
but its not clear the holders should be able to use them as TLDs,
either.

> Eventually one of them will wake up and put in a TLD request.  If
> you want to deny them a TLD later, you have to put .MIL and .GOV
> under .US now before it's too late.

I don't see that the existance of historical domain names belonging to
the U.S. Government would necessarily mean that requests for exclusive
TLDs would have to be granted, especially if no such requests were
ever granted. The world is full of historical artifacts.

> > They do not ease registration problems; they do not ease technical
> > problems.  All they do is flatten the namespace, which I do not
> > regard as a goal.
> 
> That's a completely false assumption. If you delegate ".IBM" to IBM,
> there are no registration or technical problems for the internet
> community.

Thats not what I said. I said this does not ease technical problems or
registration problems. Indeed, it may even create them, and it would
be an unfortunate precedent. I'm not in favor of such things.

Perry
Speaking for myself, not for the IAHC