Re: More on New TLDs and Registry charters

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 6:39 PM +0100 12/6/96, Daniel Kaplan wrote:

> At 12:10 -0000 6/12/96, Daniel Kaplan (my own self!) wrote:
>
> >4/ While I support open creation of new iTLDs, I believe the Internet
> >community should "reserve" some of them for common interest purposes, and
> >grant one or more registries the right to run them after a bidding process
> >whose criteria will include the will and ability to run the registries in a
> >not-for-profit way:
> >- names that point out to a generic portion or designation of the Internet
> >(ie, .web, .net...)
> >- some names which may help not-for-profit organizations become visible at
> >a low price (ie, .org, .ngo, .hum...)
> >
> >5/ Should 4/ be decided, or should the IAHC decide to go for a proposal
> >such as Simon Higgs', ie create only a limited set of new iTLDs, the IAHC
> >should keep in mind that English is not the only language in the world. New
> >iTLDs should not be mnemonic only for English-speaking people.
>

I think this is right on the money. :) The original intent of my draft
was to allow the name space to be organized as efficiently as possible.
I've always been under the assumption that:

 1) the trademark situation can be addressed to a large extent by careful
    design of the namespace using a pre-defined template. Just like ISO-3166 is
    a template for country TLDs (it's NOT mapped 100%), the international
    trademark schedule of goods & services should be a template for
    trademarked/trademarkable names that cannot all exist within .COM

 2) additional TLDs are required for a number of reasons outside the realm
    of the existing catagories, and there should be provision for them. The
    often quoted example is .XXX for porn, which would allow parental control
    software to automatically lock out these services. There are plenty more
    similar needs.

> After some good advice from acute readers, let me expand on this:
> If we settle for a limited number of new iTLDs, or if we reserve some
> "common interest" names, we should make sure that each continent gets some
> (equal, let's not argue about how many each one gets) share in the list to
> be created/reserved. The Internet is global, but national/regional
> interests do conflict at times and there are many languages: being truly
> global requires taking this aspect into consideration.
>

It's more a question of supportable character sets in DNS. How about
Russian, Chinese or Japanese TLDs?

>;0p

> This means that IAHC should *not* itself draft a list of new domains,
> rather it should suggest a method to collectively draft this list,
> providing the necessary time for all stakeholders to take part in the
> process.
>

There are currently, what, 168 requests for new TLDs on the IANA list.
Eliminating the duplicates that leaves about 150. Some have a lot of
merit, others I'm not so convinced about. But that's around Jon's magic
number of 150 new TLDs. Like I've said before, all these are valid
applications, but nobody said anything about who would host
registration services for those that eventually get approved.


Simon

--
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.