Lost without Industry Associations or Specific Groups

[werner@axone.ch (Werner Staub)]

I went through all the previous emails in the thread 
"Re: Thread 5: Defining the namespace" and compiled 
the following list of new TLDs as suggested in various 
messages. 

 .aid .alt .arts .biz .cat .cult .cyber 
 .ent (Entertainment) .geo .glob .home .inet .inter
 .iway .law .mall .mail .med .movie .news .now .ppl .radio
 .rec .ref .sci .sex .soc .web .www 

That brings us to about 30 - a far cry from the IAHC 
self-imposed limit to 7 new TLDs. 

Only some of them - maybe .sex, .ref, .movie, .aid, 
.med and .law - are clear enough, have sufficient 
financial thrust and are therefore likely to succeed. Most 
of the other ones, IMHO, have a 30% chance of success. 
Depending on how the IAHC selects the 7 TLDs, there is a 
big risk of reaping more problems than solutions.

However, at least .aid, .med and .law if not all of them must 
be run by an appropriate international industry association 
- or just a loose group of national associations - 
if IANA, ISOC and the IAHC don't want to get into big 
trouble. Or just how else can ISOC avoid being sued for
indirectly allowing a questionable mail-order drug firm
from registering under .med? Lets face it: only an industry
association has the know-how that is needed in this case.

The IAHC may decide that this is indeed too dangerous and 
only allow fairly meaningless new TLDs like .biz, .alt or 
.geo. That would be a great loss for everybody, especially
the users. 

If the Internet needs the professional or industry 
associations, they should be contacted and encouraged to
take responsibility for a portion of the name space. The
fact that they did not contact the IANA only shows that 
they don't even know about the technical possibility of
running new TLDs.

The need for help from industry associations also shows
that one of the premises of the IAHC draft is fundamentally
wrong: the attempt to specify the same or similar administration 
methods for all TLDs. Fore some TLDs, sharing is good and 
for others it is pure nonsense. For some TLDs, a waiting 
period is a solution and for others it is pure red tape.

The IAHC draft does not even mention industry groups.
At the very least, the IAHC draft should formally ask for
gTLD business plans from industry associations and specify
that general rules can be waived if the management by the
industry association makes them unnecessary.

Talking about industry association or clearly-defined
groups, I would like to suggest three TLDs for which I just 
happen to know that there is a pressing need and for which
no name conflicts can arise.

.air   - Airports and Airlines: The fact is that they
 already are organised in a homogenous name space
 thanks to the International Air Transport Association 
 (IATA) which should obviously control the registry.
 Currently, finding an airport on the Web is an 
 adventure because the IATA codes cannot be projected
 into a existing registry. Airport and airline addresses
 can and should be guessable. There is _no_ potential
 for conflict because the codes are already managed.
 
 If the IAHC understands this early enough, people will 
 simply be able to type 
 
 http://JFK.air for John F. Kennedy Airport
 http://CDG.air for Charles-de-Gaulle (Paris) Airport
 http://GVA.air for Geneva airport.
 http://GRU.air for Garulhos (Sao Paulo) Airport
 http://SR.air for Swissair
 http://AF.air for Air France

 The airports and airlines can naturally continue to 
 use their existing names (e.g. Swissair.ch and
 Swissair.com)
 
.city  - Reserved for governments of internationally
 known cities or organisations formally delegated by
 the city government. 

 Each city has only one government (barring some 
 unfortunate cases). Identical names are rare and 
 up the Cities have already learned to live with them.
 It is therefore easy to establish rules for cities to 
 be registered under their English or native names, 
 giving precedence to the bigger/better known city in 
 case of identical names. 

 Right  now, under .com, .org and .<iso 3166>, we have 
 two problems: (1) it is difficult to find the official
 city server (2) it is often unclear who is behind
 the server (the city or the tourist office, or 
 is it a private company, or is it a little web
 entrepreneur who signed up a couple of hotels?).
 
 If the IAHC understands this early enough, people will 
 simply be able to type 

 http://NewYork.city  
 http://Frankfurt.city  for Frankfurt-am-Main 
 http://Frankfurt-Oder.city  for Frankfurt-an-der-Oder
 http://Geneva.city as an alternative to www.geneva-city.ch

.cci   - Chambers of Commerce and Industry directly or
 indirectly affiliated with the International Chamber of 
 Commerce in Paris  (http://www.iccwbo.org, not to be 
 confused with the Internet Chamber of Commerce alias
 www.icc.org). 
 
 There thousands of chambers of commerce in the World 
 and they need to have identifiable and guessable names 
 in the interest of the public at large.

 If the IAHC and the ICC in Paris understand this early 
 enough, people will simply be able to refer to a 
 homogenous name space for chambers of commerce and
 ICC national committees world-wide, e.g.
 http://icc.cci  (the ICC itself)
 http://kuala-lumpur.icc (the Kuala Lumpur Chamber of Commerce)
 http://saopaulo.icc (the Sao Paulo Chamber of Commerce)

If the IAHC really wants to limit the number of new
TLDs, I sincerely believe that clear-cut formal or
implicit industry groups should be given first priority. 
(As a matter of fact, .sex needs immediate action to allow
"interested" sites to disentangle from the rest as
quickly as possible.)

Unspecific TLDs like .www or so can wait until the
7-TLD-limit has been overcome.

Regards,

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