Hello, On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 3:37 AM, Liz Williams wrote:
George It is usual for you to provide validation and research that supports your points. You have mentioned "negative externalities" -- apart from the need to protect legitimate trademarks through existing mechanisms and introducing improvements where we can, what other negative externalities are there?
I've made extensive comments in the new gTLD comment archives already, so don't wish to duplicate all of those again for all who've read them. You might want to refer to the words of Tim Berners-Lee who I quoted from at: http://forum.icann.org/lists/2gtld-guide/msg00020.html "And because the DNS tree is so fundamental to the Internet applications which build on top of it, any uncertainty about the future creates immediately instability and harm." "Our first instincts, then should be not to change the system with anything but incremental and carefully thought-out changes. The addition of new top-levels domains is a very disturbing influence. It carries great cost. It should only be undertaken when there is a very clear benefit to the new domain." "The chief effect of the introduction of the .biz and .info domains appears to have been a cash influx for the domain name registries." "Introducing new TLDs has two effects. The first effect is a little like printing more money. The value of one's original registration drops. At the same time, the cost of protecting one's brand goes up (from the cost of three domains to four, five, ...). The value of each domain name such as example.com also drops because of brand dilution and public confusion. Even though most people largely ignore the last segment of the name, when it is actually used to distinguish between different owners, this increases the mental effort required to remember which company has which top level domain. This makes the whole name space less usable." "The second effect is that instability is brought on. There is a flurry of activity to reserve domain names, a rush one cannot afford to miss in order to protect one's brand. There is a rash of attempts to steal well-known or valuable domains. The whole process involves a lot of administration, a lot of cost per month, a lot of business for those involved in the domain name business itself, and a negative value to the community." "When the benefits of the new domain itself are small or negative (as we discuss below), then one looks for incentive. The large amount of money that has changed hands for domain names might lead a person to suspect that this was the motivation." "The root of the domain name system is a single public resource, by design. Its control must be for and, indirectly, by the people as a whole. To give away a large chunk of this to a private group would be simply a betrayal of the public trust put in ICANN."
You mention "not demonstrated any widespread support outside of a tiny minority who wish to direct profit from their launch". How does that account for people wanting a TLD that is a not for profit, public benefit, non commercial TLD? More broadly, what is wrong with making a profit?
The folks who claim they are "not for profit" often still receive healthy salaries, pay consultants large ongoing amounts of money, etc. Dot-org is a perfect example of this, with PIR maximizing revenues at the expense of registrants with massive annual price increases so that they can direct the cash to their own causes. I'm certainly not against making profits, but am against it when it is parasitic (causing the negative externalities imposed upon everyone else) or is anti-competitive/monopolistic (e.g. VeriSign with a no-bid contract for dot-com, all the gTLDs with presumptive renewal, etc.).
Could you be more precise about long-term and lasting damage to the public?
See the comments above by Tim Berners-Lee for starters, or all my past comments in the new gTLD comments archive. The elimination of price caps, for example, which could propagate back into *existing* gTLDs and lead to tiered pricing is another obvious example. Sincerely, George Kirikos 416-588-0269 http://www.leap.com/