Re: Trademarks, random strings, sharing, reserved words

[Brad Templeton <brad@alto.clari.net>]

Once a user takes the step of going to a directory, almost all DNS issues
become moot.

It is my presumption, however that we seek to not making going to
a directory obligatory, the way it is for telephone numbers.  Otherwise
let's just give people telephone numbers.

People want names they can tell people, or put in ads, that will be
remembered.   Names that people can just roll off the fingers when
they want to email somebody.   While we should indeed have a directory
when people need to guess names or they forget a name they were told,
this doesn't work off-line, and it's a 2nd step people would like to
avoid as much as possible.

Has anybody suggested they would find a random string in a domain name
acceptable if there is an alternative?