The .MAIL Proposal
I've commented on all the other new TLD proposals in this round, so I'd better say something about this one! .MAIL appears to be the most complex and novel proposal in this whole bunch, proposing to set up an entire system for (allegedly) reducing or eliminating spam through the use, in a specialized manner, of this new TLD. Proposals to get rid of spam through technical, social, or legislative means are commonplace, and there's a tongue-in-cheek form letter response circulating on newsgroups and Web forums to reply to all of them, with checkboxes indicating the various ways the proposal won't work. Of course, nobody will know for sure until it's actually tried. Some other comments here express concern that the high registration fee will exclude individuals and small businesses, who won't be able to afford the .MAIL adjunct to their domains, and hence will wind up with their mail subjected to heavy filtering compared to the few rich companies and organizations who do use .MAIL domains. I don't think it would be nearly as bad as this; as I read the proposal, the main place where .MAIL domains will be desirable is for the hostnames used directly as mail servers sending mail on to other sites -- where mail01.example.net is a current mail server, they would be encouraged to get mail01.example.net.mail and use it in the SMTP transactions so the system at the other end can verify it by reverse DNS lookup. Since most individuals and small businesses don't own their own mail servers -- their mail, even if it uses FROM addresses in their own domain, actually goes out through an ISP or hosting provider, and it is the provider who would need to get a .MAIL domain to participate in this system. However, other parts of the proposal do refer to the use of .MAIL domains as something users can enter into their browser to check on the status of a particular sender with regard to spam complaints and the like; for this to work well, there would indeed need to be .MAIL domains corresponding to the domains used in FROM addresses, as most end users aren't sophisticated enough to read mail headers to find the actual server the mail passed through. So there might indeed be pressure on senders, even individuals using "vanity domains", to get the corresponding .MAIL domain; this could price the use of vanity domains out of the reach of most people and cause them to choose between being more heavily spam-filtered, or switching away from their own domain to use an ISP or mail provider's domain instead, losing their independence. The providers, in turn, would need to crack down heavily on spamming to keep from losing their .MAIL domain. If .MAIL is approved at the same time as the .POST proposal for domains related to postal systems (i.e., snail-mail), there could be some public confusion as to which of the new TLDs relates to paper mail and which to e-mail. -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/ |