Re: Thread 5: Defining the namespace

[Simon Higgs <simon@higgs.com>]

At 4:35 PM -0500 12/26/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> Simon Higgs writes:
> > At 12:10 PM -0500 12/26/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> >
> > > Simon Higgs writes:
> > > > Mmmmm... The equation is broken. The only one that stands out as valid
> > > > is .HOME. The problem with the other examples is that they fail to
> > > > divide the name space in a meaningful way.
> > >
> > > That wasn't one of the criteria listed in the document.
> >
> > Forgive me for being blunt.
> >
> > If the committee can't divide up the name space in a meaningful way,
> > they have fucked up their number one goal, which is the consistent
> > administration of the name space.
>
> Consistent administration isn't a goal, actually. Making sure the
> system as a whole works well for its users is a goal, but as just one
> example .INT is administered very differently from the way any of the
> new TLDs will be, which is reasonable.
>

I think you missed the point. Consistent administration sets policies
for all TLDs with allowances for each grouping that differs slightly.
Thus my three TLD classes. Ignoring the pTLDs, that leaves two classes
- shared and non-shared. It is very straitforward to make consistent
policy across those two classes even if the registrars are not the
same. That is why the distinction between shared and non-shared is more
important than gTLDs and ISO TLDs.

> As for whether the new domain names are meaningfully different from
> each other or from existing ones, that was not a listed goal. It might
> be reasonable, it might not, but the stated notion was to set up new
> fairly "generic" top level domains, not application specific ones.
>

Then the stated notion has failed to create a new area of the name
space consistent with the requirements of trademark law of
distinguishing the source of goods and services.

Regards,

Simon

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