Re: Is stuttering the price to pay?

[werner@axone.ch (Werner Staub)]

Hank,

Please note that I write this because I do believe in what
the IAHC does. 

> > - Why ".tm.int" when it can be ".tm"?
> 
> tm from a global perspective will have to be run by some sort of
> International TM authority.  Therefore it makes sense to put it 
> under .int.

That is true, but hardly a sufficient reason to annoy millions of
people with useless characters in Internet addresses. Giving a 
.tm gTLD to the same organization as the one handling .int would
have exactly the same effect, but it would be immensely more
practical for users. 

Btw, why not give .tm to WIPO and let them administer it just as 
they like? They _already_ are a trademark organization.

> > - Why recommend .com.<ISO 3166> or .co.<ISO 3166> SLDs
> > when most of the names registered under that
> > ISO code are commercial anyway?
> 
> The good examples that uk and jp have produced of creating 
> logical categories of co or ac makes sense and works.  

These are far from being good examples. I must admit that
they looked good to me when I first saw them, but it is
clear that a ".co." or ".com." functional SLD is both 
useless and irritating. 99% of all potential registrants 
are commercial, so why bother to use a distinctive tag? 
Hardly any name clashes can be avoided thanks to a
".co" or ".com" functional SLD.

Maybe there is no particular problem with .net.il or 
asso.fr: in theses cases, the functional SLD can be a 
_useful_ distinctive tag. 

As a compromise solution, the IAHC might recommend 
functional SLDs for other categories than "commercial".
There is no problem with ntt.jp next to keio.ac.jp.

Take one the significant UK web sites: the London Financial 
Futures Exchange uses liffe.com and not liffe.co.uk. Or Virgin
who run their site as both vigin.com and virgin.co.uk. 

> One of the main reasons we are in this bind is that the USA 
> never got its .us domain in order and it never took off. We 
> would like that American companies register under .us and for 
> that we wanted to elucidate the structure in a general way so 
> that any country could pick up the strcuture and run with it.

Insisting on functional SLDs is the best way to _kill_ the 
.us name space, not to put it in order. No serious company 
will prefer ".com.us" to ".com"! Some might actually register 
under ".com.us" because their ".com" is already taken - at 
the risk of getting sued. Note that .ch has no functional
SLDs and works fine for over 12,000 registrants - 10,000
of which have been registered in 1996.
(check out http://www.nic.ch/charges-97.htm)

As an ex-IBMer writing to an IBM consultant, I cannot
resist the temptation to quote an the old IBM slogan: "Do it
right the first time". It is possible that .tm.int 
becomes .tm anyway (just because the second time the mistake 
is corrected). But all too often there is no second time,
and little things (like the backslash in MS-DOS) end up
bothering millions of people for many years.


Regards


Werner
-- 
Email: werner@axone.ch (... fortunately not "werner@axone.co.ch"...) 
Tel +41 22 8200074 Fax +41 22 8200073
http://www.axone.ch http://Finance.Wat.ch


-- 
Email: werner@axone.ch 
Tel +41 22 8200074 Fax +41 22 8200073
http://www.axone.ch http://Finance.Wat.ch