Re: Registries and iTLDs

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 11:01 PM -0500 12/6/96, Ron Fitzherbert wrote:

> I appreciate Don's comments with regard to the "high-level" view of
> things.. I can also understand why some people feel that they should be
> able to make money off of domain names (I don't happen to agree with them,
> but I can understand them).  I also know that 99% of the people here are
> not going to be 100% happy with anything that the IAHC may recommend.
>
> What I would really like for someone to explain slowly and rationally to
> me (if the would be so kind) is why do we need any more iTLDs if not for
> profit reasons?  Would it not make more sense to go through the current
> process and straighten it out?
>

We need to do both. The ideal situation is to place the US trademark
codes as mnemonic (NOT numerical) subdomains of .US and make companies
use the .US domain. That would effectively resolve just about all the
US-based .COM disputes. NSI obviously has zero incentive to lose $50
per domain per year to make this happen.

Don Heath now says 'I do not think we (the IAHC) should do anything to
allow anyone, or any company, to "get rich"'... let's see what happens.

Other iTLDs need to be created to create a more managable name space.
The majority of registrations are in .COM. You're not going to be able
to close it down for a number of reasons. One of them is that the
<TM>.US solution doesn't apply to non-US registrants within .COM. Other
organizations there don't really belong in .COM, but don't fit
elsewhere either.

When the generic TLDs (.COM, .NET, .ORG, .EDU, .MIL, .GOV) were
created, they served to identify the function of the organization. The
other ISO domains served to identify geographically where to host was.
At that time, these were the key distinctions needed to divide the name
space. Time passed and the distribution got very uneven, with the load
on .COM far outweighing the others (and thus the recommendation by NSF
for NSI to begin charging). The purpose of creating new domains is
really to redistribute the load more evenly again. Think of it like
cells replicating - the original .ARPA divided into the existing TLDs.
.COM has now grown exceedingly large and needs to divide into smaller
cells, each of which indentify their respective function within the
body of the commercial internet. I don't think it's a case of forcing
people to move. If there's a TLD that will identify your business or
organization better to the public, then it makes sense to use that
instead of .COM. New registrations will go where they belong, and, give
it two or three years, most of the existing domain holders will
gravitate over too. And if they don't, who really cares?

Registries are irrelevent in all of this. If the delegation of registry
services are not part of the TLD creation process (i.e. registries just
apply to for each TLD they wish to manage from a larger pool, and are
not solely responsible for it's creation), you now have some accurate
reasons for opening the name space up. This is the opposite of
draft-postel, which creates new registries based on technical & ability
criteria, who then choose their own TLDs to manage with no regard for
the overall design or composition of the top level name space. This
just duplicates the all the problems of the existing flat namespace.

I hope this makes sense.


Simon

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