Re: Thoughts at the moment...

[johnl@iecc.com (John R Levine)]

>> IMHO, additional iTLDs should NOT be added at this time.
>
>You fail to address one very important point: there is, already, a
>registry for the existing iTLDs that is enjoying a monopoly, and is
>making quite a bit of money.

No question, the InterNIC is raking in the cash and putting a lot of
it into a pile that nobody seems to know how to spend.  Fortunately,
this is a problem that can be solved merely by waiting, so long as the
IAHC and IANA make plans about what to do when the current NSF/NSI
agreement runs out in 1998.  I realize that there are some people who
don't want to wait for two more years, but if history is any guide,
that's how long it'll take to shake out the issues anyway.

My personal suggestion at that point would be to convert the existing
public iTLDs to shared registries, and then once that's done see if
there's still significant user (as opposed to registry) demand for
other iTLDs.  While we're at it, we might consider whether it'd be
worth formulating non-binding guidelines to make ISO 3166 registries
more attractive, e.g., encourage them all to permit consistently named
country-wide domains such as .COM.US.  That might also be a good
testbed for ideas for potential new iTLDs, by trying subdomains like
.BIZ.CA or .WWW.UK or .MARCA.US or .MUSEUM.JP.

Needless to say, if people have made business plans based on
speculative estimates of when or whether new monopoly iTLDs will be
awarded, that isn't the IAHC's problem.

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

PS: I never would have thought I'd read an entire message from Karl
Denninger and agree with all of it, but his recent note on the real
issues of Internet fragmentation was 100% on the mark.