2ld's vs. 3ld's

[Joe Kelsey <joe@zircon.seattle.wa.us>]

I really believe that Michael has an excellent point about DNS that a
lot of people are simply ignoring.

One of the major reasons that there is so much trouble in the current
gTLD's about trademarks and so on (aside from NSI) is that it is a FLAT
namespace. There is simply no room for categorizations that are
absolutely required by the trademark system.

If you take the idea that Michael has proposed, which is to use
arbitrary *meaningful* strings (instead of *random*) as 2LD's and
combine it with the idea behind the 60-day waiting period, you have an
instantly useful solution. The compromise is that a company can receive
an instant award to use a 3LD using Michael's rules, or it can apply for
a monopoly on a 2LD in another gTLD and wait 60 days for it.

Think about why there is a rush to acquire .COM 2LD's. It is simply
because misguided movie companies and other comercial interests don't
understand the DNS. Why should we allow a movie company to purchase
volcano.com when they could use volcano.mca.com or even
www.mca.com/volcano/? If we impose an across the board 60-day wait on
all 2LD's within all gTLD's (except for those allocated according to
Michael's rules), then the movie company can create a 3LD in a domain
that they already control. What is so onerous about that? It saves the
company money and time and it solves a *lot* of problems.

I propose that the IAHC should re-think the number and make-up of the
new gTLD's. You need to decide on a set of categories for these gTLD's
and also policies to apply to each. I believe that you should designate
at least half to operate under the 3LD-only policy with instant access
to the name requested and half to operate under the 60-day waiting
period policy. Then, Christopher Ambler can apply for .WEB.BIZ (or
whatever) in the exclusive-use gTLD and he can develop that particular
domain to his heart's content.

Michael's solution is such an obvious way to solve all sorts of DNS
problems that I don't understand why anyone else hasn't picked it up.

The other problem that desperately needs to be solved is NSI. The IAHC
needs to get together with NSF and NSI and come up with a solid solution
to that problem *before* publishing another draft. Sneaking around the
issue in the current draft (by not mentioning NSI by name!) is just
avoiding the thorniest issue in this whole mess. Start out by
encouraging NSF to publish the full and complete details of its current
contract with NSI for all to see. Everyone should know what the details
are and whether or not there is any hope of removing NSI from their
current position before 1998.

/Joe