Re: "97% or so of .COM registrants are Americans." WRONG!

[Jim Dixon <jdd@matthew.uk1.vbc.net>]

On Thu, 11 Dec 1997, Ivan Pope wrote:

> Rather than a straw poll on some .coms, we actually analyse _all_ the
> domains in the world. As Mark says, over 30% of .coms are registered to
> non-US addresses, so he is disputing the 99% figure. And he does it on
> totally accurate and up to date information.

I never said that 99% were US.  I said that "something like 97%" were
North American, based on my recollection of Tony Rutkowski's research.

> If you add in the rest of the worlds Domain Names, US registrations are in
> a minority. Which sort of adds some weight to the proposal to move to
> Geneva.

How so??

This is very confused thinking.  The question is whether .COM should be
moved to Geneva.  The total number of domains in the national TLD 
registries is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

By this logic, British registrations in .UK, although they dominate 
.UK as American registrations in .COM do, are only a small fraction of
world domain registrations, and therefore .UK should be moved to Peru.

Let's try to keep things in focus:

*	If CORE is just handling .shop/firm/etc, put it in Geneva if 
	you like.  

*	If .COM, in which registrants are overwhelmingly American, is
	to be moved out of the US, this needs to be justified.

*	If .COM is to be moved anywhere, the jurisdiction chosen needs
	to be justified.

*	If a Geneva-based CORE claims universal rights over all gTLDs,
	this is absurd.

The question at the moment is why .COM, with an overwhelming number of
US registrants, is being moved out of the USA.  Your statistics are
interesting, but don't suggest at all that the move is justified.

If registrations in .COM showed that the number of US registrants was
in some sense proportional to their share of the Net, that could be 
used as an argument.  But your figures suggest very clearly that the
InterNIC is serving as the US national registry, just as Nominet 
serves as the UK national directory.  

What is the true reason for moving .COM to Geneva?  It's the money,
folks, it's the money.

--
Jim Dixon                                                 Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd                http://www.vbc.net        tel +44 117 929 1316
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