BOD, IANA, NSI, gTLD, and other alphabet soup

["Michael 'traP' Bourdaa" <bourdaa@chem.ucla.edu>]

Quite frankly, I just see nothing really getting accomplished here.  Most
of the public commentary seems to be accusations and bickering over the
Board seats.  Most of the REAL action is going on behind the scenes..
which makes the new IANA little better than the old NSI.

Considering that the process will, in the end, be run by the elites..
after all, any non elite members of the Board will be mere tokens (not to
mention that they will become part of the elite merely by being selected
to the board). I think a few questions need to be asked.

1)  Just how long DOES it take to establish a coup?  I've seen
dictatorships rise AND fall in less time than this! ;-)

2)  How will the internet community AT LARGE benefit, in the long run,
from IANA?  I really don't see any focus on that question.. it seems to be
a case where people don't want to answer that question.

3) Has there been any serious consideration to having some sort of
bicambrial system (assuming my basis of a total 'coup des elites' is
flawed), where the elites (mostly supporting organization members) sit on
the upper 'house' (the Board), and perhaps several to a dozen times as
many members serve on a sort of 'house of representatives' electronically,
selecting a few of their number to join the Board itself, but mainly there
as a counter-check?

It seems that, if the lower 'house' is dominated by the usership of the
network, and the Board is dominated (as it inevitably will be, I believe)
by the Supporting Industries, then anything that gets by both groups is
going to be acceptable to most people.. it will necessitate both
comprimise, and concensus, rather than the bickering we have now.

4) As for gTLDs - IANA definately should consider adding at minimum an
.xxx/.sex domain, and making it mandatory for such sites that would be
covered by such a domain to use a domain within this gTLD, and no others.

The second is catagorical domains.. .com has become synonymous with "the
internet".. most 'newbies' recognize web sites only because they "start
with three w's, and end with com."

What if, rather than bothering with a complicated set of gTLDs such as
.store, .firm, .etc, we did something along these lines (which some
national gTLDs are being used for already I believe)

www.delta.air.com  (air.com being reserved for airlines)
www.delta.net.com  (net.com being reserved for isps)
www.fox.tv.com     (tv.com for television)
www.1100.am.com    
www.fosters.ag.com
www.fosters.beer.com.au  (ok, I'm being silly now. ;p)

etc.

For BIG companies, perhaps have a .inc domain (which would cost more than
a catagorical .com), which is simpler (i.e. www.disney.inc)

Implementation wouldn't be impossible.. a six month transition period
during which .com and .inc were identical could be implemented, followed
by a three month suspension of .com

During that time, second-level domains within .com would be created as
soon as a fair number (say, 10) had requested it.. the gSLD would be
restricted to a size range of 2-6 letters.  

Domain name registrants would be wise to select names that have something
to do with their product/service (i.e. delta.air.com)

The additional advantage is with, say, all the airlines under air.com, we
could then put an index page at www.air.com, with links to all the third
level (corporate users) domains within that namespace.

Delta faucet and Delta airlines could easily co-exist here, since one
wouldn't type 'air' to find the faucet company, and no one would type
'faucet' to get to the airline.  Trademark issues would still exist
(especially in the 'old rules' .inc) but would be less cumbersome.

Of course, the rate things are going, who knows if IANA will ever even be
seated..





----
Mike 'traP' Bourdaa
bourdaa@chem.ucla.edu
http://trap.home.ml.org