hi all, On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 4:08 AM, John L <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
* The economic impact study promised in 2006 [needs to be] released and evaluated.
This was the principal reason advanced by the NTIA, but it rests on a faulty premise. The NTIA assumes that the primary purpose of introducing new gTLDs is to compete with .COM and the other incumbents. They believe -- as do I -- that new gTLDs will not alter the market power exercised by the incumbents in the TLDs they operate. Based on this assumption, they then make the leap that ICANN may not need to introduce new gTLDs at all.
I read it as a little more sophisticated than that; they have the not unreasonable concern that new TLDs may exist mostly to shake down existing registrants who'd want defensive registrations in new domains.
quite reasonable concern IMHO.
As I have always seen it, new gTLDs will serve new communities, and in some cases serve those communities with their own languages, not served by the current suite of gTLDs and ccTLDs.
I know that those are the standard examples, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. The idea that there are tiny language groups hanging around saying "oh, if only we had a TLD then we would do all sorts of Internet stuff" is rather implausible. They need software that works in their language, perhaps they need people to put their literature online, or to make libraries of existing material, or to host community mail systems and web sites, but what they do not need is a $100,000 vanity TLD to suck up their time and attention.
This is my sense as well. <snip> -- Cheers, McTim http://stateoftheinternetin.ug