Re: New TLDs and Registry charters

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@imc.org>]

At 2:42 PM -0800 12/6/96, Gilles LERAT wrote:
>I think the management of a domain name and the trademark problem are two
>different issues and should not be mixed.

	I agree with your sentiment, but I'm not sure we can successfully
separate them completely.  Trademark contestants will choose any and every
field they wish, on which to do battle.  It's not clear that the current
round of iTLD work can force the contestants out of the space.  On the
other hand, there well might be steps that reduce or limit the degree of
overlap.  I had not heard of .tm.fr, although I've heard proposals for
similar constructs (schemas).

	What do folks think of having space which is marked of explicitly
for trademark owners?  I doubt that one can RESTRICT them and their claims
to such a space, but it does gove them a venue that carries the explicit
sematic of a trademark?

	Your other point is that we need more iTLDs to "expand" the name
space.  This is an interesting issue, since of course the .com iTLD name
space is far larger than is currently used.  In fact, it is large enough to
be called "infinite" and only have mathematicians object.  What, then, is
the problem?

	The problem is that the name space is not equally interesting or
useful.  ibm.com is more useful, one suspects, than is xyz.com and xyz.com
is probably more useful than mqb.com, although one needs to be careful,
since the Machinery Quotent Barometer company might disagree.  Hence, the
phrase "more interesting or useful" probably misses the point entirely.

	That leads me to view the issue simply as one of statistical
collisions.  Some strings have more people seeking them than do others.
The solution to collisions for a scarce resource are well known:  Add more
resources or reduce the demand.  The latter requires having requests
retargeted to other strings.  This is exactly what we are all now finding
problematic.  If you are the Foo Express Company, then you typically want
foo.com, rather than foo-exepress.com. But the Foo Communications company
beat you to it.  Adding more resources, by virtue of more iTLDs, becomes
the appealing path.

	But it only works if we add enough alternatives, relative to the
demand.  If 100,000 organizations seek to use the string 'acme' and we only
create 10 itlds, we have not done anything useful to remedy the problem.
So, how many will it take, for dealing with a global "collision space"?
And mediating that answer is a concern for operational safety, making
changes incrementally and carefully.  I.e., it would probably not be
operationally responsible to instantly create thousands of iTLDs, even if
it IS reasonable soon or eventually.

d/


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Dave Crocker, Director                                       +1 408 246 8253
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Also:  IAHC member, expressing personal opinions