NOTICE-97-02
ACTION: REQUEST FOR COMMENTS
ANNOUNCEMENT DATE: September 13, 1997
CLOSING DATE: October 13, 1997
SUBJECT: Review of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs)
ADDRESSES: Electronic comments should be sent to notice-97-02@gtld-mou.org.
Comments submitted can be in ASCII, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or HTML.
Comments related to this request for comments can be found at
http://www.gtld-mou.org/notice-97-02/
Written comments or comments submitted on diskette can be sent to:
gTLD-MoU/Notice-97-02
ITU
Place des Nations
1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland
If further information is required on this notice, please contact
poc-submit@gtld-mou.org.
A. BACKGROUND
[...]
B. GENERAL QUESTIONS
1. Number of gTLDs
Generally, how many new gTLDs do you think should be created?
[0 __] [1-10 _X] [10-50 __] [50-150 __] [150 or more __]
C. CHOICE OF gTLDS
1. Review of IAHC-Suggested gTLDs
How would you rate each of the following gTLD names selected by the IAHC?
a) .firm (intended for businesses, or firms), check one of the below:
[strongly approve __] [approve __] [no opinion __] [disapprove _X] [strongly disapprove __]
If you disapprove or strongly disapprove, what gTLD would you suggest in
place of .firm in this category? .biz
Special note: A common suggestion is that business term-related gTLDs like
.inc, .corp, .ltd, .plc, .gmbh, .sarl should be selected instead of general terms
like ".firm". However, these terms have legal significance and it is typically
illegal to use them unless the registering entity actually is "incorporated",
a "limited liability company", a "public listed company", etc. Verifying this would
most likely require pre-screening activities by domain name registrars (as is
the case in the UK with plc.uk and ltd.uk) and probably result in increased
registration costs and submission of proof of related legal status. Also note that
since all 2 letter TLDs are reserved for ISO 3166 country code delegations (e.g.,
.us, .fr, .au), equivalent business legal abbreviations commonly used in other
languages (e.g., "sa", "sc", "oy", "ab", and "sl") could not be allocated.
Considering above, would you still prefer to have legal term gTLDs? [yes__] [no__].
If so, which ones (in order of preference)? _____________________
b) .store (for businesses offering goods to purchase), check one of the below:
[strongly approve __] [approve __] [no opinion __] [disapprove _X] [strongly disapprove __]
If you disapprove or strongly disapprove, what gTLD would you suggest in place of
.store in this category? .shop
Special note: There have been many suggestions that .store be replaced by .shop
which has significance in multiple languages and, unlike .store, has related
verb and noun meanings. Do you think .store should be replaced by .shop?
[yes_X] [no__]
c) .web (for entities emphasizing activities related to the World Wide Web),
check one of the below:
[strongly approve _X] [approve __] [no opinion __] [disapprove __] [strongly disapprove __]
If you disapprove or strongly disapprove, what gTLD would you suggest in place of
.web in this category? ______
d) .arts (for entities emphasizing cultural and entertainment activities), check
one of the below:
[strongly approve _X] [approve __] [no opinion __] [disapprove __] [strongly disapprove __]
If you disapprove or strongly disapprove, what gTLD would you suggest in place of
.arts in this category? ______
e) .rec (for entities emphasizing recreation/entertainment activities), check one
of the below:
[strongly approve _X] [approve __] [no opinion __] [disapprove __] [strongly disapprove __]
If you disapprove or strongly disapprove, what gTLD would you suggest in place of
.rec in this category? ______
f) .info (for entities providing information services), check one of the below:
[strongly approve _X] [approve __] [no opinion __] [disapprove __] [strongly disapprove __]
If you disapprove or strongly disapprove, what gTLD would you suggest in place of
.info in this category? ______
g) .nom (for those wishing individual or personal nomenclature, i.e., a personal
nom de plume), check one of the below:
[strongly approve __] [approve __] [no opinion __] [disapprove _X] [strongly disapprove __]
If you disapprove or strongly disapprove, what gTLD would you suggest in place of
.nom in this category? none
Special note 1: Since this gTLD is for individuals and registrations could number
in the millions, if not hundreds of millions, there is naturally concern about the
scaleability of a personal name space gTLD. There have been suggestions that in order
to improve the scaleability of the .nom name space, a numerical identifier should be
added to the .nom gTLD from the outset (e.g, .nom1, .nom2, .nom3, etc.) Do you agree?
[yes__] [no__]
Special note 2: There are often suggestions that names like .id, .me, ind, or .per
should be used as a "personal" gTLD. Please note the following reasons for rejecting
these names:
TLD Reason for Rejection
.id .id is already allocated as the ISO 3166 two-letter country code for Indonesia
all two-letter top level domain are reserved for future ISO 3166 country-code
allocations
.me all two-letter top level domain codes are reserved for future ISO 3166
country-code allocations
.ind .ind is the three-letter ISO 3166 country code for India, we considered it
prudent to hold this code in reserve
.per .per is the three-letter ISO 3166 country code for Peru, we considered it
prudent to hold this code in reserve
2. Creation of gTLD Indicating Adult-Oriented Content
There is often the suggestion made that a dedicated gTLD indicating the equivalent
to a "red-light-zone" would be useful in isolating and filtering adult-oriented
content from minors on the Internet. There are differing opinions on how effective
this would be. The most common suggestion is the request to create a gTLD .xxx. Do
you think that a sort of "red-light-zone" gTLD should be created?
[strongly approve __] [approve __] [no opinion _X] [disapprove __] [strongly disapprove __]
If you strongly approve or approve, do you think this should be the gTLD .xxx?
[yes__] [no__].
If you have replied "no", what gTLD would you suggest in place of .xxx in this
category? ______
3. Other Suggestions
Please make any other suggestion concerning the names of the new gTLDs not covered
above.
The creation of a small set of new gTLDs must proceed, and the names
don't really matter that much. In the long run I favor MANY new TLDs
-- in the thousands, perhaps. In the short run, however, after the
creation of this first few I think the POC get out of the TLD creation
business entirely. Instead, it should bend its efforts to creating a
formal method, agreed to by IANA, IETF, and a variety of other groups,
for creating new TLDs, whether generic or not. In my eyes the MoU
will have served its primary purpose by making shared registries the
standard at the TLD level.
The problem of TLD creation remains unsolved, and it needs to be
solved. Even within the above short list of gTLDs there are
significant problems lurking -- you hint at them in the .nom domain,
and in the .firm domain when you mention the legal designation
domains. Legal designation domains *should* exist. Registrars that
register for them *should* do the checking, and *should* charge extra
for the service. What is needed is a mechanism for enforcable
charters for TLDs, and a method for creating TLDs with such charters.
I believe we now know enough to proceed on this problem, and the POC
and PAB should address it.
-- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html