It is truly bizarre that so much controversy and investment has gone into
the DNS battle with so little information about how domain names are
actually used.
People assume--and it is basically an undocumented assumption, supported
only by anecdotal evidence--that people guess the name and type it into
their browser. That behavior would make a common domain name
extraordinarily valuable. Certainly it occurs, sometimes--but what about
bookmarks, search engines, catalogues? Let's not forget that the last
generation of browsers had a built-in assumption that if you typed "ebay"
you wanted "ebay.com." So what happens if there is a "ebay.inc, ebay.ltd.
ebay.foo?" Would users still make that assumption? Wouldn't they check
more carefully? If users are confused and a site deliberately exploits
that confusion isn't that a standard trademark issue, not a domain name
issue?
The newer generation of browsers will have keyword functions that decide
what TLD you want for you--if you type in "whitehouse" you no longer get
"whitehouse.com" you get "whitehouse.gov". We also seem to be forgetting
that new "common-name resolution protocols" are on the horizon. All these
developments dramatically decrease the value of domain names--they also
undermine their character as "business identifiers." Go to RealNames.com
and type in "decision support." You will get five or six companies'
listings, and few if any of their domain names could have ever been
"guessed" by someone interested in decision support systems.
The TM lawyers' essentially static mode of thinking looks at the domain
name resource as if the current situation will never change--that the
market for names will ALWAYS be artificially restricted to a gew gTLDs,
that user's navigation of the net will ALWAYS be based on the assumption
that there is only one "com" TLD or "co" SLD, etc., etc.
Based on these flimsy and unsubstantiated assumptions about user behavior
and name space economics, we are redefining the nature of DNS and creating
an entirely new global system of administrative law that diminishes the
individual users' rights.
It's wrong.
By the way, I hope those prospective registries who speak of thousands of
new TLDs don't also make the mistake of thinking that that market will
support thousands of new registries. Even many official country codes
don't support enough registrations to make an attractive business out of
it. Real user behavior takes time to change. It will be hard to gain user
acceptance of new TLDs. The foolish US policy of forcing all new
competition to be undifferentiated registrars of com, org and net will
exacerbate the problem.
--MM
Greg Skinner wrote:
> Stef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >So, the mystery of what is the ORSC "policy postion" is that ORSC
> >advocates opening up the root to as many TLDs as the market wants.
> >No more, no less! And sooner rather than later!
>
> Hmmm ...
>
> Does anyone have an idea of how many TLDs potentially will be
> registered? For example, how many types of business (or any other
> organizational) classifications exist? Would TLDs be restricted to
> marks only?
>
> The reason I am asking is because once we get to the level of hundreds
> of thousands of TLDs, we risk the DNS performance problems that have
> been discussed earlier. That would have an effect on the entire
> Internet. So it seems at the very least, we need to proceed slowly in
> adding TLDs, so we can study its effect on DNS performance and make
> changes to it if necessary to allow it to scale.
>
> Also, in response to Martin Schwimmer:
>
> >In other words, if you added .inc, .ltd., .firm, .shop and .store
> >tomorrow, then anonymous folks could tomorrow register ebay.inc,
> >ebay.ltd, ebay.firm, ebay.shop and ebay.store, all of which, in my
> >humble but professional opinion, are likely to create confusion with
> >our friends over at ebay.com.
>
> This seems to be a reasonable concern, given that there is already
> quite a bit of registration of companies in ccTLDs. Wouldn't the
> companies who are interested in having those names in all (or even
> most) TLDs pursue the same avenues they are pursuing in the existing
> gTLDs?
>
> --gregbo
