New TLDs

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Wed, Nov 12, 1997 at 09:03:35AM -0500, Steve Heflin wrote:
> > 
> >   I think that you misunderstand what Bob means.  I doubt that he
> > is talking about everyone getting their own little pet TLD.  We have
> > had this topic of discussion several times I believe.  But to only
> > admit 7 new gTLD's is simply to silly to even be considered
> > reasonable.  Yes, I know the restriction on only 7 new gTLD's
> > was lifted, but if this is truely to be the case, why not allow
> > .PER or some of the other RSC TLD's into the ROOT as well at the
> > same time.  With a reasonable restriction as to how many of 
> > course.
> 
> Not being a member of IAHC or CORE or anything along those lines, I can't
> say for sure but isn't it reasonable to believe that they will allow more
> after a time?  Or that these seven are a start?

It is my opinion that the question is almost completely open :-). 
There are arguments that there should be no new TLDs at all; there are
arguments that there should be hundreds or thousands.  The IAHC needed
*something* to get the whole thing off the ground, though, and they
picked 7.  

The MoU pretty clearly delegates to the POC the ability to create new
gTLDs; it clearly does not delegate the ability to create all kinds of
TLDs (the ISO TLDs being an obvious example); and IMO it is still open
for IANA to support creation of other TLDs (with very good
justification, of course). 

Overall, IMO, this is an unsatisfactory situation.  In fact, because
of name collisions, there can ultimately be only one authority that
decides about *all* the TLDs, whether gTLDs, nTLDs or whatever.  What
is missing is a coherent set of policies/procedures/mechanisms that
define how new TLDs are added.  There have been various proposals in 
the past -- hopefully, after the dust surrounding the creation of 
CORE settles, some work can be done on this problem.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
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