Re: Monopoly/Ologopoly

[Stephen Harris <sweh@mpn.com>]

In a recent message, Kent Crispin said:
> 
> Alan Sullivan allegedly said:

[ Actually, I said it ]

[ Snippage - my .MEDICAL example ]

> where a monopoly TLD would be appropriate.  But this analogy is badly
> flawed.  The single .MEDICAL registrar you postulate is also going to
> have a hard time enforcing the standards world wide -- are the medical
> standards in Bolivia the same as those in China? In fact a shared

That's part of the beauty of the system - since I had deleted ISO country
codes as SLDs to each country, it can be assumed that the regsitrations under
these SLDs would be qualified practioners/whatever in that country.  If I
had shared registries, there would be nothing to enforce this.  I wouldn't
want a Chinese registry to to register in .US.MEDICAL.  

> example -- the Chinese registrar for the .MEDICAL domain would be

Yes.  But this isn't a SHARED domain.  We have an exclusive registry at the
top level, with delegated exclusive SLDs to each country.  Further, the
SLD space is essentially closed and fixed, allowing no further SLDs to be
created, unless ISO codes change.

> In a worldwide environment shared registries are the only viable
> solution that allows for the infinite cultural variety the net can

Tosh and balderdash.  By sharing registries you are restricting the variety
of cultural types to those that are able to follow the shared rules.  The
medical example I promoted fails this test.

rgds
Stephen