Repeatedly invoking the interests of the user community, the latest paper from the ICANN Registries Constituency is an attack on the principle of competition. The document, available as an attachment to this URL -- http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/council/msg04928.html -- seeks to mandate TLD differention in the IDN sphere so that "brand fragmentation" will not occur. These registries seek to avoid IDN equivalents of .com and .net so that the entire world will lose the benefit of .com and .net alternatives. They seek to entrench their monopolies to the nth degree by foisting a policy upon us that would mandate differention. I don't know, about you, but I have no problems with the concept of someone launching .commercial and its equivalent forms in a multitude of scripts -- it sure won't confuse me or any other average user -- we will all understand that the days of VeriSign's market dominance are coming to a fitting end. When the Registry Constituency states: "RyC believes that a key means of avoiding this problem [fragmenting the Internet and isolating users] is to allow all manifestations of a given top level domain to be managed by a single entity", they want nothing less than to stifle competition ensuring North American market dominance for the next century. Here's hoping that the ALAC observers at today and tomorrow's GNSO LA session will choose to fight for a competitive TLD environment. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com