Q10: What lessons, if any, can be learned regarding new
gTLD introductions from the experience of the ccTLD registries?[Chad] I won't
argue with AIM's point, that people appreciated the additional categorization of
charters. ccTLDs were a necessity based on the growing size of the Internet.
How effective are they, really? They've opened up possibilities for other countries
to parcitipate, but it hasn't really affected the US's participation in ccTLDs.
The UK uses .co.uk in the same way the US uses .com's, but nothing encourages US
companies to participate in a similar heirarchy. How many .co.us sites have
you seen? I would argue the answer is "none" to "very few". The most
effective use I've seen of such domains in the us is with the K12 (Kindergarten through
12th grade) schools or perhaps city marketing sites (www.city.state.us).
[Chad]
Added TLDs can be beneficial, but only if they're used.
Q11: Can lessons relevant
to introduction of new TLDs be learned from the recent decisions by a number of them
to operate in a globally open manner? If so, what lessons?
[AIM] Scarcity forces
bad behaviour to the detriment of honest net users.
[Chad] I think you missed the
point of the question, AIM. Are you saying that because certain TLDs have opened
their registration and dropped certain selective requirements, that they've promoted
scarcity in the domain name space? I would argue that the lesson to be learned
here is that the Internet is growing at an alarming pace, and the desire for unique
and recognizable names is growing equally fast. Opening up registration and
management of TLDs only demonstrates the desire of the public to get their fingers
into the action.
Q12: Is the Names Council's recommendation that a "limited number
of new top-level domains be introduced initially" a sensible way to minimize risks
to Internet stability?
[AIM] It has dangers if scarcity leads to a land rush and
unneccessary pre-emptive buying of otherwise unwanted domains by brand owners.
[Chad]
There is truth to what AIM is saying. I really don't believe that the current
schema for namespace management is going to fly for long. It's simply not scalable.
Regardless, you must work with what you've got (for the time being). I would
like to present argument to a different schema in another post. To answer this
question, I would say that you fall victim to current trends in namespace hording
if you open too few or too broadly classifiable TLDs.
Take, for example,
the recent case brought against the owners (previous) of PETA.ORG. However
you might take your humor, PETA.ORG was an acronym for "People Eating Tasty Animals",
an obvious spoof web site/domain to the advocacy group People for the Ethical Treatement
of Animals, whom had reserved and owned PETA.COM. IMHO, the judge made a bad
decision ruling in favor of advocacy group, but I digress.