I agree with smckoen.
Adding more TLDs will just create more confusion as everyone (squatters, companies,
general public) will rush to grab the names that they want. The problem is
that the naming system is ambiguous; different entities have the same "natural" name.
As another example, icann.org could just as well refer to the International Conference
on Artificial Neural Networks.I guess that adding more TLDs might be useful for
ICANN to demonstrate their authority.
The long-term solution is to establish a
universal naming system that avoids naming conflicts and permits resolution of ambiguous
names. The only way to get this done is to do what the post office does.
Generally, no one can register for any arbitrary mailing address. Nor can anyone
expect to receive mail with just a name (no matter how famous) and no address.
There has to be sufficient information to map each letter to a single mailbox.
Of course, this already exists on the internet with IP numbers, but we want to avoid
this.
Instead of registering name.tld addresses, I suggest that all entities on
the web register by filling out a form that classifies all the relevant names the
entity wishes to be listed under, e.g., company/owner name, occupation, products,
physical address/location, trademarks, abbreviations, etc. To find a particular
entity, the user also fills out a form or uses a special shorthand notation.
If the user's information is ambiguous, then the user gets a list of choices.
This should not be as bad as getting results from search engines because the user
is only looking for a site, not a particular web page. Once disambiguated,
browsers can remember the result to make life easier. HTML links can use physical
addresses, or perhaps aliases defined in the HTML document.
There are certainly
a lot of details to be worked out, but I think something like this is inevitable.
Anything else is just a short-term fix. Again, as long there is ambiguity,
there will be confusion and complaints.