Re: Question on New gTLDs ...

[Bob Helfant <bhelfant@globecomm.net>]

In case none answers you, I will.  The issues you bring up have been
discussed many times since this began late last year.  Ask for access to
the old correspondances.

At 02:53 AM 7/9/97 -0400, Infobahn Consulting wrote:
>
>Hello Everyone;
>
>I subscribed five minutes ago and I'm going to get the burning issue off
>my chest pronto!
>
>What has surprised me the most about it to date is the amount of fuss and
>bother being expended by greedy entrepreneurs over the "unfairness" of a
>lottery system and the "unfairness" of the geographical distribution and
>all the rest of it without one drop of ink being spent on the question of
>the choice of new gTLDs themselves.
>
>I think there are some serious problems with the seven gTLDs under
>consideration. And I think there's too much of a rush to get some new
>gTLDs created just for the sake of expanding the pool and taking the
>pressure off good old .com. I can appreciate this -- it's long overdue --
>but me must face the reality that the .com space will be a horrendously
>disorganised mess for years to come and that this is no reason to risk the
>same fate for the new gTLDs. What I mean is: .net doesn't mean a net
>anymore and .org is not non-profit anymore and .com may not be for profit
>either, when it comes to that. We need to make some rules and stick to
>them and we need to be prepared to expand those rules as the Internet
>grows, but without ever setting them aside in exasperation.
>
>Here are the seven:
>.firm, .store, .arts, .rec, .info, .web, and .nom
>
>Things I like & don't like about the current proposals:
>
>1): .store is excellent. It focusses on companies that have goods to sell,
>while many .com sites are corporate information sites and not markets.
>
>2): .nom is also excellent, if there are some rules. The registrant must
>be able to demonstrate a clear connection to the name being registered.
>These sites will be fan sites: www.johnlennon.nom or www.celinedion.nom
>and www.toriamos.nom. Currently, because personal names are not
>trademarked, celebrities have no means of wresting personal domain sites
>away from speculators. The .nom should not have any trademarks in it, but
>it will need to rely on some other tests of eligibility in registration.
>
>3): .arts is good, but the field of arts may need some definition.
>Obviously, this will be all the online galleries and theatres and museums
>perhaps too? What about publishers in the arts -- borderline, I guess. All
>in all, fairly secure description.
>
>4): .rec is okay. I have a personal dislike of this abbreviation, but
>that's just me. I would have preferred maybe ".fun"?? But tourism sites
>would go in here and sports and hobbies of some types.
>
>5): .firm is bad unless rules are made for it. What's the difference
>between .firm and .com ?? It invites duplication and redundancy. We must
>devise domain space for each category of site, but we must build only one
>of each, or else it all falls apart. This .firm space should be restricted
>to the professions and business partnerships: lawyers, accountants,
>agencies, consultant firms, advertising agencies, health clinics maybe and
>stockbrokerage houses and insurance partnerships and this sort of thing.
>Companies named after their principal partners. If these rules are not set
>in stone, then Day One of its launch will see every .com try to get the
>same .firm name. It will be bad enough with the rush on .store ... :-)
>
>6): Likewise, .web and .info are bad because they are utterly
>undescriptive, redundant and unbounded. Every site has info on it. Every
>site is a web site. What's the point? Actually, .org does a good job of
>covering many of these, but there may be some better ideas -- see below.
>
>
>What we're missing:
>We need to establish domains that reflect the evolution of the Net and
>that better reflect what the user could expect to find there. The .store
>and .arts are good starts in this direction. But there are many more that
>are missing.
>
>1): .zine: Surely we need .zine space. THere are thousands and thousands
>of small web publishing projects out there that call themselves zines. So
>why don't we have gTLD space for them???
>
>2): .stn: General English abbreviation for "station" -- web broadcasting
>and web simulcasting is the new big push. Every TV and radio station with
>a bit of financial clout is going to want to try parallel netcasts in
>their local areas. Each station has unique call letters (CKCO, WBLT, KGMT,
>whatever) which nicely nips the trademark problem in the bud. Cable modems
>and high-speed data transfer to residential users will make these sites
>more common, but also off-limits to most Third World users for a decade
>or two. So setting up a .stn gTLD serves both as a magnet for these
>high-powered users (I know I can find gobs of content here!) and as a
>warning to tech hamstrung users (No point in looking there!). We need
>cnn.stn and pointcast.stn and so forth.
>
>3): .dom: The top level domain of each nation should include .dom space.
>Ever wondered where to look for a complete list of all domains in the
>Romanian space? Well, just look at www.ro.dom to find out. One .dom name
>should be issued to every registrar authority on the planet. And this site
>should contain full details on how to register new domains in that space
>and include a searchable database of existing domains. So internic.net
>gets replaced by www.com.dom, www.org.dom, www.net.dom and so forth. Think
>of all the people out there now who don't use the search engines to find
>companies -- they just guess at it: www.waltdisney.com,
>www.walt-disney.com, www.disney.com -- until they get it right. Let's end
>the guessing. And, of course, www.us.dom for .us domain space, but also
>www.mn.us.dom for Minnesota domain space and so forth. One for every
>registrar.
>
>4): Variant on the above: .dir or .ndx or .idx. Every region on the
>surface of the planet will soon be bursting with searchable directories
>and indexes of local Web resources, if not already. I *think* this may
>have been what the IAHC was aiming at when it coughed up .web and .info,
>but these are not specific enough to be workable -- too easy to stretch,
>bend and twist. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could type in
>www.ontario.dir or www.ontario.idx and get a search engine of Ontario
>webspace. This is somewhat more general than the .dom idea: .dom is
>devoted to the business of registering domains and checking for taken
>domains, while .dir or .idx gets you searchable databases of pages and
>resources.
>
>5): .xxx: It would be nice if we could shove all the porno sites into
>their own domain space. It makes it easy both to find them and to avoid
>them, according to point of view. We could not keep obscene material out
>of private unregistered urls on large ISPs, but this would separate out at
>least 90% of what's out there. Yeah, I know censorship of the net is
>almost impossible. But this isn't censorship: it's just an effort to bring
>order out of chaos in a useful fashion.
>
>In every case here, I'm trying to pave roads where the trails already go
>and to create gTLDs that are genuinely useful to the average surfer or
>researcher.
>
>I also think we need a two month moratorium on new coms, nets and orgs
>after the new gTLDs are launched, in which time the netgods can sweep
>through the sites and force some of them out into the new spaces. But
>that's another story (and, yes, good luck to me getting it!).
>
>That's my two bits into the pot. Comments please??
>
>Bryan Trussler
>(bryan@i-bahn.com)
>
>******************************************************
>             Infobahn Consulting Services
>Mail: bryan@i-bahn.com  ||  Web: http://www.i-bahn.com
>******************************************************
>"All good Web sites resemble one another; every bad
>Web site is bad in its own fashion"
>       -- Leo Tolstoi in "Anna Karenina" (sort of ...)
>
>
>