Q25: Is increasing the utility of the DNS as a resource-location tool an appropriate
goal in the introduction of new TLDs?A25: While the creation of "chartered TLDs"
will be surely welcome in some specific areas, the proposal to use the DNS increasingly
as a resource-location tool is just wishful thinking at this point in time (if it
ever was viable at all).
As an example, there will be no way to convince or oblige
commercial companies in the travel business to migrate from their current .com into
a future .travel. And this is even more true for a .sex or .xxx.
We have also
to take into account that the resource-locator mechanisms of the future Internet
will be much better achieved by systems more similar to Directory Services (white/yellow
pages, ...) or intelligent search engines rather than straight-jacketing the DNS
into something it was not designed to do. The success of this operation of transforming
the finality of the DNS will, moreover, be extremely doubtful, considering the amplitude
of the market forces operating in this domain.
To a certain extent, this is clear
even from the text preceding the questions, where it sais that:
"The definitions
of the uses of .com, .net, and .org, however, have not been enforced since 1996,
when it was decided to suspend screening of registrations to reduce delays in processing
applications for registration."
In other words, chartered TLDs will never be able
to provide successful competition to fully open TLDs because they have to bear the
additional cost of screening.