Re: Monopoly/Ologopoly

[Alan Sullivan <sully@frontiernet.net>]

Kent Crispin wrote:
> 
> Perry E. Metzger allegedly said:
> >
> >
> > Kent Crispin writes:
> > > This homogenization almost completely
> > > negates one of the principles of the draft, that the primary
> > > competition is between TLDs.
> >
> > Competition between TLDs is not one of our primary principles. Overall
> > competition is certainly desirable, but competition between TLDs is
> > not the only way to achieve that. Making sure that all gTLDs are
> > ultimately open to all registrars also achieves competition.
> 
> Your are probably sick of looking at the draft, but perhaps you should
> reread it.  From section 3.1, "Whether to Create New gTLDS":
> 
> "IAHC has decided to create further gTLDs as a means of
> increasing the level of competitive supply and access to the
> gTLD space for the global Internet community."
> 
> "In addition IAHC has decided to ensure that the new gTLDs
> are all to be operated in a shared fashion across a number
> of domain operators. This is regarded as a secondary
> mechanism to ensure that each of these additional gTLDs are
> operated in an environment of a competitive market for
> access to these name spaces, and the same checks and
> balances of the competitive inter-gTLD access space also
> apply to the intra-gTLD space through this mechanism."
> 
> Competition *between* TLDs is cited as the *primary* reason for
> creating new gTLDs.  Sharing is explicitly noted as a *secondary*
> form of competition.
> 
> As you know, I am a strong advocate of shared TLDs.  But I also think
> there is a real advantage to allowing meaningful competition between
> TLDs.
> 
> --
> Kent Crispin                            "No reason to get excited",
> kent@songbird.com,kc@llnl.gov           the thief he kindly spoke...
> PGP fingerprint:   5A 16 DA 04 31 33 40 1E  87 DA 29 02 97 A3 46 2F
Hi Kent,

How would you propose to allow meaningful competition between TLDs 
and allowed shared TLDs? I would think that allowing registries
exclusive use of gTLDs would be the best way to accomplish meaningful
competition. Then sharing could be done by letting those registries
which have exclusive use of those gTLDs let other registries to register
names in their domain.
Thanks,
Alan

-- 
Alan Sullivan
President
Top Domain Registry Inc.