The industry needs time to mature. Sure, I have
reserved some top-level domains for speculative reasons, but I will have to pay each
year to keep them. If they are worth it, I will. If not, I will let them
go back into the public domain.It's that simple. There is a property owner
near me that owns a few thousand acres of prime real estate because his great grandfather
was able to ride a few horses around the perimeter of that land and stake a claim
on the real estate through a homestead. That's not fair to my family and me
but that's how it is. He got there first.
There is nothing wrong with
a healthy aftermarket in domain names. This occurs in any free market.
The market will decide value over time and true value will eventually prevail.
It still needs time to mature.
Adding new top level domains will add confusion
to an already complex Internet. Average users don't know that even now, there
are over 230 top-level country domains.
There are many creative ways to
address getting a good domain name. Look at what is being done with the "WS"
domain for Samoa. It is being marketed as ".WS" for "World Site" (see the link
below). This is creative and might help Samoa (By the way, [1.] Most of the
good, easy domains are not available. [2.] I am not affiliated with WorldSite.ws).
Finally,
ICANN should consider how myopic the creation of the proposed new TLDs are.
They all represent English language words. I have seen estimates that indicate
that within the next 10 years only 1 in 5 Internet users will speak English.