Greatly simplified, it seems to me that the arguments for gTLDs are:- To increase
the number of available names.
- To reduce or eliminate name speculations.
The
arguments against:
- Increased consumer name confusion; having to remember
a TLD in addition to a business name.
- Increased trademark violations as new
names are assigned.
While the arguments FOR are commendable, I'm still against
more gTLDs, for the following additional reason:
It seems to me that if people
wanting a domain name would just be creative about thinking up a name rather than
complaining about their lack of availability, there would be plenty of possible names.
Two examples:
When I first started a computer software business over 20 years ago,
I picked the name "Prime Software". Of course, it didn't take long for me to
find there was a name conflict with an existing company. I thought long and
hard about a new name that would be relatively easy to remember, but unique, so I
picked a company name that was a contraction of two common words. Last year
I registered the .com, .net, and .org versions of that contraction. Today,
I notice that all other reasonable variants on the two words are still available
as .org, .net, and .com domain names.
Ok, so maybe I was lucky. So, for an
experiment for this message, I randomly picked an industry with thousands of individual
businesses: the dry cleaning business. I decided to look for a .com domain
name for such a business. Sure, "dryclean.com" was taken, as were several variants.
But "kleen4u.com" and a number of variants are still available. I submit to
you all that it's easier for a consumer to remember "kleen4u" and tack on ".com",
than it is to remember "dryclean.biz" as distinct from the many other gTLDs that
this proposal will create.
Maybe this is stating it a little strongly, but a free
society should reward those who are creative (about names as well as products), and
not reward those who are lazy (about thinking up names) or whiners (about not getting
the name they want). Unfortunately, there are too many people that think that
the Internet is some new magic potion for instant fame and riches, and that somehow
if they don't get the "right" domain name, they will miss out. Success in business
comes from hard work and product innovation, and not from being first in the current
marketing craze sweeping the country.
There are plenty of domain names to go around.