Re: Jeff Williams' anti-Warehousing idea (Re: Warehousing, TM violations & the new gTLD's)

["andi payn" <payn@null.net>]

>> I noticed that a few of the proposals for expanding the gTLD space
required
>> an "info" SLD under each, and a web page for each reachable at both
>> "www.info.TLD" and "info.TLD" with certain specified information; I think
>> that what you're proposing is basically the same thing for SLDs, but I
>> wanted to make sure.
>
>Back to my suggestion of about a month ago. We need a *.dom TLD to be
>issued to all ISO and gTLD registrars (or registry federations, in the
>case of the UK). Most people don't know what a "NIC" is or why they should
>go to internic.net, apnic.net or ripe.net or whatever. If I want to find
>domains in Argentina, then www.ar.dom should get me there. Or www.ro.dom
>for Romania. Or www.ca.dom for Canada. Or www.au.dom for Australia. Or
>www.us.dom for the United States or www.mn.us.dom for Minnesota in the USA
>or whatever. Not to mention www.com.dom, www.net.dom, www.org.dom and so
>forth. These sites could be operated jointly by multiple registrars of new
>gTLDs and the ISO TLDs. They should maintain a linked list of *all* the
>registrars operating within that registry.

Actually, I think having info. as a prefix rather than .dom as a suffix is a
better way to go. With a .dom domain, the entire tree has to be known "from
the top"--that is, someone has to know how far down to go. Presumably, any
domain name that you get from a registrar--an SLD under .com or .cl or .us,
a 3LD under .co.uk or .ca.us, a 4LD under .la.ca.us, etc.--would be indexed
in the .dom domain. Presumably any domain name that your company, your ISP,
you yourself, etc. gives you underneath a registry-given domain name--a 3LD
under ibm.com or earthlink.net or whitehouse.gov, a 4LD under senate.ca.us,
etc.--wouldn't be indexed (otherwise you'd end up indexing a whole lot of
people's www, ftp, ftp1-ftp10, mail, etc., and the individual "personal web
sharing" type servers on every MacOS 8 or NT 4 machine in a LAN).

So how do we distinguish between, say, hack.clubnet.ca.us (a 4LD that refers
to a specific machine in the clubnet.ca.us statewide domain clubnet.ca.us
given by a registrar) and hack.la.ca.us (a 4LD that refers to a domain
assigned by a registrar for the la.ca.us citywide domain)?

If we require each domain to have an info. page, it's up to the individual
site administrators to keep this straight, and the people "at the top" don't
have to worry unless they get a complaint about a site.

>Among other things, they might maintain a topical directory of domains
>within that TLD. You know how, when you register the domain at NSI, it
>asks you for a brief paragraph outlining the purpose of that domain? Well,
>that's as good as a site description on Yahoo.

No it's not. There can be many sites on one domain--e.g., most corporate
domains and especially most ISP domains. So a domain description doesn't
serve the same purpose as a site description.

>The database could be
>searchable on that field. Maybe the *.dom sites are even organised like
>little Yahoos, grouping the domains by purpose and subject and topic. I've
>always thought it a shame that Yahoo has emerged as the only viable global
>topical index.

If you want a domain topical index, why does it have to be in a bunch of
separate sites in *.dom? Why not just create a Yahoo-like directory for
domains instead of sites? Of course you need to find some way to fund
this...

This really seems like the kind of thing--like search engines--that private
industry can do and will do as soon as the need is apparent. For that
matter, there would be competition for Yahoo if there were a demand;
obviously directories aren't as in-demand as search engines.

>But Yahoo is also getting very hard to deal with in terms
>of getting sites registered there.

It's also hard getting sites unregistered... I have an orphaned web page I
haven't been able to update or delete for two years, and I can't get Yahoo
to stop listing it...

Overall, this isn't a bad suggestion, but it doesn't seem necessary. The
listing function can be handled by making each site admin do the work, and
the directory function can be handled by private industry if it's needed, so
I don't see any reason to create more work (hence more cost, more
bureaucracy, etc.) at the top.