I'm trying to avoid not to dwell into the details, but it looks as if you
are not aware of the fact that there are several countries connected to the
Internet. Several (often unrelated) companies/organizations with the same
name operate in these countries and even within one country. In fact, the
same company names are used even within the same city, provided that their
businesses are unrelated and thus would not have been confused in the
pre-Internet era. As a result, additional levels of distinction are needed
to properly identify the target, nothwithstanding the fact that several
company names have been "reserved" as domain names (I'd say stolen) by
unrelated third parties trying to make a quick buck. Also, when you say:
"Nobody is ever going to visit domains with names like .shop, anyway," you
seem to forget the info dissemination needs of the whole SME marketplace.
Another point: I cannot register kolehmainen.fi as my domain name, since
that would be grossly unfair to all the other individuals with the same
surname in Finland, which I find quite acceptable. I could have tried to
register kolehmainen.com and would have succeeded, had I done it early
enough.
Erkki I. Kolehmainen
TIEKE Tietoyhteiskunnan kehittämiskeskus ry
TIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centre
Salomonkatu 17 A 10, FIN-00100 HELSINKI, FINLAND
Tel: +358 9 4763 0301, Fax: +358 9 4763 0399
http://www.tieke.fi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Atkielski [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 9:16 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Competing Domain-Name Registries Creating Tower of
Cyber-Babel
It doesn't really matter, since, for the average user, there is only one
TLD,
and that is COM.
The whole concept of a TLD is an anachronism that does not apply to the
interests of multinational businesses and organizations. It should be made
invisible to users who don't wish to specify it explicitly. I have long
advocated a system that uses multiple hidden TLDs that are hashed from the
second-level domain name, but nobody seems interested. For example, you can
take the first and last alphanumeric characters of a second-level domain
name,
put x in front, and create a hashed TLD which you automatically append to
the
name, so that the user doesn't have to enter it, for example:
"ibm" entered in a browser generates "web.ibm.xim"
"disneyland" entered in a browser generates "web.disneyland.xdd"
"coca-cola" entered in a browser generates "web.coca-cola.xca"
and so on.
This randomly distributes second-level domains over 1296 implicit TLDs, and
since a given name can hash to only one TLD, the TLD can be computed from
the
name, and so the user need only enter the second-level name. The "web." on
the
front just provides a distinct hostname for the Web server for the
convenience
of the domain owner. By doing this all the TLDs are eliminated (except for
those who still wish to type a TLD explicitly--obviously .COM et al. will be
around for some time to come), and you don't have this nonsense about a
hundred
different companies trying to come up with hundreds of different TLDs.
Nobody is ever going to visit domains with names like .shop, anyway, so it
doesn't matter who actually owns domains in those TLDs.
The current arrangement of TLDs is like requiring every company in the U.S.
to
append the abbreviation of its home state to its name: IBM-NY, Coca-Cola-GA,
Adobe-CA, Microsoft-WA, and so on. It's a technical requirement that has no
utility from a mnemonic or business standpoint. By using implicit, hashed
TLDs,
you can eliminate the need to specify a TLD explicitly, and you can
distribute
the second-level domains evenly over a large number of TLDs without any fear
of
duplication or any need to register any name for more than one TLD (namely,
the
TLD to which it hashes).
The glaring error being made by everyone right now is in the assumption that
more explicit TLDs are the answer. In fact, they just add to the problem,
by
making a bad design worse. TLDs are for the computer and the occasional
specialist to type in explicitly; for everyday use for businesses and the
like,
the TLD should be inferred by the computer from the second-level name.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Fleming" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "ietf@ietf. org" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2001 01:06
Subject: Competing Domain-Name Registries Creating Tower of Cyber-Babel
> http://biz.yahoo.com/st/010705/27694.html
> Competing Domain-Name Registries Creating Tower of Cyber-Babel
> By James Ledbetter - European Executive Editor
>
> Proof of Concept TLD Development...and Multiple TLD Clusters
> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/msg12215.html
> "Multiple TLD Clusters are new. There is merit in having redundancy.
> Unfortunately, consumers will have to learn through their registrar
> or registry, that they would be prudent to register in BOTH TLD Cluster
> for the most reliable, stable service, with the widest reach."
>
> http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/msg12574.html
> RFC-2001-07-01-000 IPv8 Expansion of Proof of Concept TLD Development
>
>
> Jim Fleming
> http://www.DOT-Arizona.com
> http://www.DOT.Arizona
>
>
>
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