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Username: Wayne krut
Date/Time: Mon, July 10, 2000 at 7:54 PM GMT (Mon, July 10, 2000 at 3:54 PM EDT)
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Subject: NEW TOP LEVEL DOMAINS

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We must not complicate a simple issue.  Why do we have so much difficulty putting our trust in the open market?  The reason that .com represents about 80% of existing TLDs is because the Internet is driven by simple economic profit motives.   Intellectual ingenuity may have created it, but economic hunger carries it.

The Internet is the great equalizer.   No nation, group or person can have inherent advantage, or that equality is lost.   It just does not matter where or why the Web was born.  It is bigger than its parts.  The Web engages stunning world-wide economic cooperation, with immense promise for cultural and political understanding. 

The truth is that the Internet will survive and continue to expand until a better tool is devised, because business innovators will find a way to make it work no matter what rules or limitations are placed on them.  It may be clumsy, but a way will be found to make it work; and the whole world will adjust to it, whatever it takes.   Cases in point, the expanding global use of ccTLDs, the uses of prefixes and suffixes on the existing TLDs, and the growth of imaginative site names that no longer have any intuitive generic meaning.  You can also be sure that if new TLDs are not soon provided, more common business usage of .net and .org will rapidly spiral, reducing the significance of .com.

It's not suggested here that private business interests should govern the Web.  They cannot.   It would quickly be owned and operated for the wealthy, much the same as some earlier industries.  But collectively, those same business interests form a world-wide consensus, which polices each other from within.  It works.  We raised three children, and whichever one cut the remaining cake to be divided, he or she was the one having the last choice of the pieces.  Such fairness you have never seen.

Specifically:

1 - a single, tightly regulated, world-wide central registry is a must to preserve order.

2 - However, allow as many name registrars as can meet and maintain the high standards for organization, function, integrity and economic survival.  The market will set fair pricing and conditions.

3 - The predominance of .com is no mystery; it's simply the best now available.  Neither is it magic.  If a new TLD such as ".shop", becomes available, we'll see the same innovative open-market usage applied to it as has been applied to .com.  I suggest that only ".shop" be approved now, and future TLDs such as ".web" and ".www" be held as possile follow-up releases.

4 - Protection of intellectual property rights is essential, and I heartily agree with quick and inexpensive arbitration of disputes, to eliminate the abuse of name registration that has gone before.

5 - I believe that a simple round-robin entry for any new TLD registrations, allowing one (1) name submission by each registrar, per each randomly-ordered circuit of all certified registrars, is a reasonable and fair way to accommodate the "land rush" which is certain to occur.  No advantage can be allowed for name lists which are compiled in advance, or to size or economic strength or seniority of a registrar, or to the technically superior speed of a registrar's equipment or system. A further leveling of the registrants' playing field, would be achieved by first gathering the name lists from all registrars, then randomly mixing each registrar's name list before entering the names one (1) at a time, per registrar, as outlined above.  This would eliminate the selling by registrars, of early list positions to the highest bidders.

The Web is alive and vital, and an opportunity of a lifetime for us all.  We are responsible to not allow selfish interests to manipulate it, nor bureaucrats or academians to talk it to death.  Thank you for hearing my thoughts. 

Respectfully,

Wayne Krut


     
     

 


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