"Q 19: Would the introduction of additional undifferentiated TLDs result in increased
inter-TLD confusion among Internet users?
No. Commercial TLDs will have every
incentive to differentiate themselves from others through marketing and branding.
Non-commercial TLDs will also have adequate incentives to appeal to specific communities."The
fact that there are incentives for the owners of domains to clarify things, does
not mean that there will not be confusion... This simply does not follow.
"Furthermore,
I reject categorically the premise that DNS should serve as an intuitively accessible
catalogue of the Internet."
Fine. I would like to cherish it.
"For American Internet
users, the paralysis on new TLDs has made dot com the defacto root, the default value.
Any name that does not use .com or that is not readily guessable within the com space
is just as likely to generate "confusion" as ten new TLDs."
1. The USA is not the
internet.
2. Loose reasoning, Doctor. There are now three gTLDs. Ten will certainly
make things worse. This is more so because the .net and .org are still, despite the
stupid opening up of these to all, largely used (as different form being just registered...)
by network providers and organizations. Alternative coms will work quite differently.
"Here is the critical point: The larger the Internet and the name space become,
the more domain names will devolve into what they ought to be: unique identifiers
with mnemonic value to those who know them -- nothing more, nothing less. Any attempt
to make domain names into keywords that can be used on a global basis as a directory
or intuitive locator is bound to fail and should not be encouraged. Such an approach
to domain names only exacerbates name speculation and trademark problems."
You
are right here. But it does not prove your point. And it will certainly not have
any impact on the level of speculation and trademark lawsuits. So why then? Let's
keep it beautiful as it is.