On 08/09/2012 05:56 PM, Roberto Gaetano wrote:
My comment to parminder (" I see no reason why private tlds should be allowed, and what public interest is served by allowing them") is that, while I am sympathetic to the cause of new TLDs serving the public interest, I see no problem in allowing new TLDs that are not serving a public interest, as long as they do not harm the public interest.
What you say has a strong resemblance to a formulation that I've been advocating for several years: First Law of the Internet http://www.cavebear.com/cbblog-archives/000059.html + Every person shall be free to use the Internet in any way that is privately beneficial without being publicly detrimental. - The burden of demonstrating public detriment shall be on those who wish to prevent the private use. - Such a demonstration shall require clear and convincing evidence of public detriment. - The public detriment must be of such degree and extent as to justify the suppression of the private activity. Under this formulation one who wanted to deny a TLD would have to carry the burden of demonstrating, using clear and convincing evidence - concrete evidence, not hypothetical conjecture - that that TLD would harm the public interest to a degree and extent sufficient to justify denying to its proponent the freedom to deploy that TLD. To be sure, the formulation above is somewhat vague. But I strongly believe that if we were to adopt such formulation that experience applying this to concrete situations would help us build-out the details and turn the blurry distinctions into sharp lines. --karl--