Vittorio, I kinda agree. I agree that we need not necessarily judge the success of a domain, but what we are doing is trying to protect the stability of the web. Taking .cat as an example, I agree that this serves its unique purpose and they should be afforded their own TLD. However, does it have to be a globally-resolvable TLD sanctioned by ICANN? Well, could be but doesn't need to be. Newnet ( new.net) has proven that it can successfully offer TLDs that are globally resolvable, but not sanctioned by ICANN. If .cat were to go through the same or similar process, it would still be .cat and it would still work and it would still be a success. Similarly, I could run my own DNS server from my bedroom and anyone I choose could have access to my TLD and I could call it whatever I want.

This is actually the heart of my argument, to which I'm glad to have brought up. If a TLD is to be ICANN-sanctioned, then we need to put more thought into this matter, otherwise our policies could be our downfall. I've always liked what new.net has implemented, but I can't say their management policies are any better than ICANNs by any stretch. Similarly, there is absolutely nothing standing in the way of an ISP offering .nyc as a TLD, running their own DNS, and allowing their customers to use it, and setting their own policies. However, if they did, every time there was an outage then their section of the web wouldn't work, but it only wouldn't work for their DNS rather than the entire Internet. I think this is where we should tread carefully because if it were perceived that ICANN were inept (ummm, from outside the organization) then we would at that point lose the battle.

What battle? Fulfilling the by-laws of the organization.

Anyone can run a DNS, but when ICANN says so-and-so is a TLD, I take it to mean that it will be globally resolvable using the root-servers. Feel free to edit this statement.

Finally, I don't think anyone, including me is saying that the likes of .jobs, .aero, .museum, .coop, et al are failures or useless or anything of the type, any more than .cx would be a failure or useless. I kind of like the ideas behind those TLDs, but I do question the scope of our concern. I wholeheartedly disagree that ICANN should just open the registry and say 'fight it out' just to add revenues and more choices and disregard standardization, not to mention confusion for trademark holders. Rather, the issue at hand is how it affects the population of Internet users, ie does it serve a purpose or just confuse the namespace? Additionally, What is the purpose of ICANN?

aloha,
Randy Glass
A@L

On 7/6/07, Vittorio Bertola <vb@bertola.eu> wrote:

John L ha scritto:
>> It is my opinion that we need to dedicate some more thought on this matter
>> BEFORE, rather than AFTER introducing new TLDs.
>
> I'm with you.  Of the new gTLDs, the only ones that have succeeded so far
> are .BIZ and .INFO, because they're clones of .COM.  Maybe you could call
> .NAME a success with about 200,000 names.  I think .MOBI is likely to
> succeed because it's going to be put in front of a whole lot of mobile
> phone users.  Other than that, they're all gathering dust.  On the other

It depends on how you measure success. .CAT only has 20'000 names, yet
it is a success. No doubt - just ask anyone in Barcelona. I think that
we should stop measuring the success of TLDs in terms of sheer number of
registrations, as there's much more attached to that. If you like, I'd
propose - in qualitative terms - the product of the number of
registrations by how much registrants feel attached to or identify with
the domain: that'd already be better. Given that you can have at least
several thousands of TLDs, if you only have a few thousands of
registrants but that TLD really makes a difference to them in emotional
or symbolic terms, why not?

In any case, I have started to write down what I would like to see as
principles and values to guide the introduction of new TLDs. If we all
do the same, we might come up with a common statement. I already
solicited a statement from the Committee several times, because the
issue will certainly come up in Board discussion in the next weeks; so I
would suggest that someone takes the lead on this, and we start up yet
another consultation and working group.
--
vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
-------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/   <--------

--
-------------------------
AmericaAtLarge.org
RJPacific.com
DDMF.org