Dear Sir/Madam
I am aware of recent debate on the future of the
domain name system and the discussion between verisign and Icann. I am trying to
publish a book on the digital economy which would contain a number of
essays on the future internet economy. One of these essays is the TLD
reformation which argues the case for releasing every 3 letter combination but
excluding all other combinations. The idea needs refinement and I would
appreciate support, interest or debate on this matter. I have pasted the essay
beneath and wonder if you could point me in any direction where I might post the
essay and see my concept debated?
regards
Donald Fraser
The TLD (Top Level Domain) Reformation or The 18,252 Proposal
There was nothing
ground-breaking in the news a few years ago of an .XXX
proposal but it reflected the need to push purely adult content out of
the business orientated .COM “extension” or TLD (Top Level Domain). In 1997 “The
John Marshall Law Review” (1) of Chicago published an article on this Red Light
District Proposal. It advocated creating .OBS for obscene. However the 18,252
proposal takes it further in the form of a plan for radical reform that
incorporates the basic and inherently obvious suggestion that different TLDs
should obey different rules of content. This dramatically improves controls over
filtering so as not to expose those whom do not want to be exposed (or should
not be exposed in the case of children) to pornographic content. The TLD (Top
Level Domain) Reformation seeks to release EVERY 3 letter combination as a
working TLD and prohibit all others. Hence with 26 letters in the Roman alphabet
this creates 26x26x26 TLDs plus a further 26x26 TLDs accounting for the
additional hyphenation character (-) allowed in place of the space. It totals
18,252 Top Level Domains or TLDs.
It introduces the rule "dot 3 of anything but
dot 3 in all cases". It allows for hyphenation of the TLD according to the same
rules of hyphenation in the domain name (no consecutive hyphens and no hyphens
to begin or end with (i.e. from .a-a to .z-z). This permits the hyphen, or dash,
to enter as the 27th letter of the alphabet. This must be done since the
traditional space, between each letter as we print, or between each word for
logical definition of meaning, has always been a feature of the romance
languages. However, for computer operation this “space” must be a defined
character and the hyphen has been chosen and is gradually being accepted by the
public in the domain naming system. The more the design provides Internet users
with a useful equation (where the hyphen can exist on both sides of the URL or
Uniform Resource Locator), the more the domain name system delivers a notional
Internet language where a logical set of grammatical rules exists. Lessening
exceptions is a move to a more successful system. Microsoft's DOS operating
system operated with 3 letter file extensions, and as such this illustrates an
easy rule on memory technique, the three points in a triangle create a spatial
awareness by defining an area that two points by themselves do not create. As
memory of a slogan is vital for marketing professionals, so to is the ability to
remember both the domain name and the TLD of the domain name. While 18,252 TLDs
is plenty to remember, clear grammatical rules of formation would reduce memory
errors.
How would this enormous figure of 18,252 TLDs
be divided up? The basic commercial principle would apply, in that the majority
of TLDs would be auctioned to private industry and be allowed to develop as
global registrars. However important allowances would have to be made in this
process, for a variety of reasons to do with content control and maximisation of
profit to the auctioning bodies. To begin with 180 TLDs (or one for each
country) of the least valuable TLDs would need to be selected on a process of
elimination based on the expectation of what 3 letter combination TLDs will
fetch on the open market. Once chosen, these least valuable TLDs would become
allocated by random lottery to every nation currently using 2 letters. . The
lottery draw for the new 3 letter country specific TLDs could be handled with
the PR skills of the world cup soccer draws, with the ensuing maximum publicity
to ensure acceptance of this bitter medicine. For instance co.uk would now
become .aaa or that what was ever chosen by the draw out of a pre-selected 180.
While 18,252 TLDs to divide up and allocate may seem a lot, it is a complete,
expansive and yet comprehensible move when the overall aim is understood. That
is to create safe zones for children and clean zones for adults. It also simply
allows enormous wealth generation by the auctioning of the majority of these
TLD's to private registrars. No doubt some of the income raised from this
dynamic expansion of the domain naming system would have to be used for
compensation payments for an investment loss arising out of the abolition of 2
letter TLDs. However these compensation payments would not be for any country
specific TLDs but for loss of income or asset value for a non-country and
non-sex TLD such as .TV
However as the main intention of the project
is to introduce content control rather than to just expand choice without
discretion, 3 types of zones are needed outside that of normal business and
country specific. Within the 18,252 proposal is a fundamental recognition of the
existing pressure of .XXX or .OBS which has existed for sometime. It is only the
surprise at the initial speed with which this technology has developed that
governments have allowed business content to mix with extreme adult content
underneath the .COM banner. Respectable companies stand alongside shocking,
explicit pictures and have out of expediency accepted this as normal. However
educators and even the majority of the public sense that something is wrong in
the swamp of materials accessible to children. Existing filtering systems have
been developed to answer the problem, but cannot work properly because of the
nature of not only language that constantly evolves but also the curiosity of
those that they need to protect. How can any parent deny their child's need, if
they can financially afford it, to let them seek technical accomplishment? At
present the only safe parental content control is to forbid the use of a
computer when they are not actually in the room, monitoring each result of their
search delivered upon the screen.
Without TLD reform we are needlessly running
the risk of exposing our children to content well beyond their legal age
permits. The principle of filtering further up the chain of command as the
separate .OBS or .XXX proposals suggest, immediately overcomes this farce by a
very simple step: allocating specific TLDs for adult only content. Unlike at
present, such a system would end the need for the "net nanny" software because
the parent would allow access to only the category of TLDs they specify. Any
inappropriate content being loaded into the wrong category would result in a
fine and immediate investigation of the TLD registrar. This would be filtering
for children that would be 100% effective as “they who control after the dot,
control the lot”. The concerned parent would only have to maintain an up-to-date
list of FOUR categories under this elemental proposal.
1.
Children
only (Under 18 years of age only).
2.
Under
18
3.
Adult (or general business)
4.
Adult
only (Over 18 only).
Despite 18,252 functioning TLDs, the updating
process can be easily incorporated into the browsing software so the TLDs would
occasionally be transferred between categories according to political decisions.
Furthermore, Internet users would by use of the general TLD category be able to
surf in peace without the intrusion of the pornographic industry, switching only
to the TLD's within the adult only category only at, and for, the moments they
choose to. As adult only implies, while children may be allowed to surf the
adult TLDs (e.g. .COM) for business information, they are not legally allowed to
view any materials located on the Adult only TLDs under any circumstances. This
might even lead to a return to more conservative advertising standards in the
real world business community, where partial nudity and eroticism has been by
even the once conventional companies at the expense of subtlety and good taste.
Ideally exposed breasts would not be allowed in the regular .COM business
category and all respective TLDs in the adult category. Certainly the exposure
of even breasts without any form of covering has been traditionally regarded as
obscene and that perhaps should be borne in mind when considering what type and
quality of social and economic product the famous .COM is meant to
deliver.
The registrar controller of the important
.COM top level domain, and amongst others .NET or .ORG, would throw the
pornography content providers out of this popular business domain and into .OBS
or whatever. If the updating process was easily incorporated into the browsing
software, the TLDs could occasionally be transferred between categories
according to demand. Levels of decency in an educated society, will determine
politicians eventually to clean up the .COM top level domain to be within the
General category (but not to the standards of the children category itself) to
restore amongst other things confidence in the e-economy, 18,252 is just an
economic model to allow them to do so.
By allocating just 10% of the TLDs to adult
only content (e.g. .OBS for obscene) this would mean a more than sufficient
1,825 TLDs servicing a red light district. 50% of the chosen “red-light” or
Adult Only TLDs could be divided equally between American and British English
and the other 50% shared between the romance languages. Sensitivity would need
shown to give other roman alphabet letter users such as
Germany and
France a quota for the selection of 3 letter TLDs
nominated as obscene in their own language. The traditional strength of the
German economy might make them best to organise this, along with the French.
These carefully selected TLDs (for instance .CON being allocated to the Adult
Only category because of its use in the French language) need to be chosen
before the 180 least valuable country specific allocations. The Children only
category TLDs would also be a suuggested 10% and chosen by the same
international process of selection. Only after these 3 phases of selection (i.
Adult Only ii. Children only iii. 180 least valuable for country specific random
allocation) would the remaining many thousand general TLDs be auctioned off for
profit, split evenly between children(education) and
adult(business).
The 18,252 TLD Reformation proposal is a one
off reform that rejects the current piece-meal approach to the gradual
introduction of variations, which merely serves to confuse and worse than that,
frighten investors with a never ending game of second guessing future
developments. Once it had been done, the golden rule of the new system would
have to be in the length of time it could sustain itself without deviation (i.e.
how long before .BREAD or .TRADEMARK cannot be prevented?) Political agreement
and the very logic of how the number 18,252 is derived (26x26x26+26x26) could
maintain the system with a fixed limit of 18,252 for many decades or even half a
century (i.e. 50 years) or maybe even longer if we hope for it. Moving
pornography out of the TLDs such as .COM into .OBS (a simple, free transfer) and
phasing out all non 3 letter TLDs (such as .es or co.uk) should be painless
enough if done en masse. There should be little desire for webmasters to
deliberately classify themselves in an incorrect category and if a particular
TLD registration agent failed to act to implement policy, with so many TLDs
being available in each category the ultimate sanction would be to close down
the offending TLD entirely.
Compensation payments for those effect by the
phasing out of 2 letter TLDs would be small compared to what the exercise would
generate in revenue from the auctioning off of everyone of the TLDs except the
the approximate 180 reserved for country specifc free allocation on the basis of
least anticipated value and maybe a couple of ONLY categories to ease the
transition. Most importantly, Internet users would only have to maintain an
up-to-date list of the 4 categories in order to experience 100% effective
content management.
It should be noted that the original proposal
called for 3 categories, did not distinguish between children and children only
(since this is not a traditional line). However any familiarity with broad
surfing patterns developed through the popular hobby of entering competitions on
the Internet, supports the plan for a clear indication when it is reserved for
children. Nothing is more irritating than having spent 20 minutes entering some
quiz contest in form filling etc only to find out at the last minute that all
the effort has been wasted since the poorly displayed rules disqualify
competition entries from adults. No doubt child educators can dominate the
debate on safety, but while the children (under 18) TLD category would be
legitimately surfed for quality educational material (many adults literacey does
not extend beyond the 16 year age of compulsory education), no self-respecting
adult wants to stumble accidentally through a children only area where he or she
is not wanted. Most regular Internet competition entrants will be able to
describe the feelings of doubt and worry where following an unspecified link
leads to a web-page where time is wasted spent guessing from sometimes design
alone if it is being targetted at children. Short of putting a statutory warning
sign on such sites, the children only TLDs would provide the comforting
knowledge that whether undertaking research or other goal orientated research,
time would not be wasted in a website wanting to limit use to children and their
educators.
While contemplating a total of 18,252
possible TLDs as a very large number, it should be remembered that Microsoft
pioneered the standardisation of the “dot 3 letters in all cases” combinations
for DOS operating system (the precursor to Microsoft's GUI version Windows). 3
letter combinations are not difficult to remember and over time overall
knowledge patterns would emerge to enable Internet users to adopt particular
favourites and improve educated guesswork based on market forces forming
alliances under intuitive grouping of content under specifc types TLD domain
names. This happens of course within the fixed content expectation of the 4
categories. If success breeds success, this could be the radical reform the
global Internet economy needs.
REFERENCES (1) April Mara Major “Internet Red
Light Districts: A Domain Name Proposal For Regulatory Zoning Of Obscene
Content”. The John Marshall Journal of Computer and Information Law. (1997,
Fall, Volume XVI, No. 1 page 21-36): Chicago.