I notice a confusion between generic TLD's and US TLD's.
I fear that allowing
more generic TLD's will enhance the trouble we have with copyrights en lawcases in
an international internet. The problem is the implicit assumption in the USA that
especially .COM and .ORG domains are US domains, while the rest of the world believes
the word "generic" means just that.
Already we see that an US company can go to
a judge in a chosen US state and claim a .COM name, and the judge feels qualified
to rule over an European, Asian or whatever legal entity. And the US-company can
choose from over 50 states to try this trick!
If gTLD's were really generic, this
should be out of the jurisdiction of, say, a Florida judge or even a national judge.Great
Britain has solved this problem by defining the 'country code generic' domain, .CO.UK.
This is in my opinion an elegant solution, and I'm sorry that other countries haven't
adopted it.
I guess it's too late to add .US after the generic domains, and giving
all registered organisations the option to switch to their own .COM.XX?
In fact,
I don't even know whether the country code for the USA really is .US, which is a
nice illustration of the way US- and generic domains are mixed.
An additional
benefit of really using the .US suffix would be that it confronts US citizens and
companies with the international nature of the internet, which they are often sadly
ignorant of. I don't want to start a flame war on who invented what, but the present
day reality is that the internet is globally used, and this is benefiting everyone
- also those US companies, who should realize it enables them to suddenly reach a
much bigger market.
I myself am from a country which has ages of experience with
earning money, assembling knowledge, and getting all kinds of other benefits from
an open attitude for other nationalities, (.NL), I can attest that this works. Inez{R}
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