Comparing .eu and .asia
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I actually do see one distinct difference between the .asia proposal and the .eu proposal: The .eu TLD is associated with a formal body (the European Union, obviously) that has a clearly-defined membership *and* a formal rule-making process that gives every member nation input into the rules. Given the "shared responsibility" for those rules (and the general trend towards legislative consistency between EU members), the .eu domain is unlikely to ever have policies that clash with the laws or Internet regulations of the EU's members. The .eu domain will have a very clear and non-negotiable meaning of "this registrant must comply with EU rules". .asia, on the hand, doesn't have a rule-making process that takes into account the differing policies of Asian nations. (Some of the strictest laws about Internet content are is Asian countries.) .asia will never be as "meaningful" (to end-users) as .eu, because it doesn't guarantee any signficant policy, let alone that the domain is compliant with the policies of a end-users's nations of residence. (I do commend them on how many organizations they have sought input from, however.) All that said, I'm not sure there *isn't* a place for continent-level domains (there's already .aq for Antarctica, after all), I'm just not convinced they'll mean as much as .eu could/would. In the end, I can probably live with .asia being approved as a test of the concept. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (MingW32) - GPGshell v3.01 iD8DBQFAkKRkcpuEJT2bpHsRApATAJ90dt4kyrk79f/Ra4erSuH51auE0QCfe5hm utFZjm3mG/bfizkqXELUinE= =ee/8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- |