Re: Lost without Industry Associations or Specific Groups

[Vince Wolodkin <wolodkin@digitalink.com>]

Perhaps an Industry Association should act as steward in such a case?

Vince Wolodkin

Werner Staub wrote:
> 
> 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
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