Re: [alac] new gTLDs

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2003-03-05 07:20:18 -0800, Wendy Seltzer wrote:

> To this point, the gTLD Committee has heard from the business
> constituency and non-commercial.  The business constituency has
> recommended limited rollout of sponsored, restricted TLDs;
> non-commercial has called for more rapid expansion, including new
> generic, unrestricted names.

One of the key points of the BC principles seems to be that no two
TLDs should address the same market.  This approach is fundamentally
wrong, since it would effectively prevent real competition between
different registries (or, more precisely, TLDs).  

That said, the ultimate arbiter on the question what kinds of models
for TLDs are successful and what kinds are not can *only* be the
market.  In particular, any a priori decision to, e.g., only permit
sponsored TLDs would be as wrong today as it would have been in
2000.

An a priori taxonomy of the namespace (which seems to be what Stuart
Lynn's original question was about) would also be the wrong
approach: It's the logical equivalent of making central decisions on
what kinds of services users should be allowed to use.  Avoiding
that kind of decisions has been key to the success of the Internet,
and would be a good idea for the future, too.

Regards,
-- 
Thomas Roessler                        <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>