But there was a larger error in assuming that all NARLO members would be aware of the utility of a TLD for a large global city like New York.
Hi. I'm from New York, so I don't have to be as polite as my Canadian friends. City TLDs were a bad idea in 1996, and they're an even worse idea now. Their only transformational effect would be to transform money out of the pockets of the suckers who registered in one into the pocket of the domain's sponsor. (Well, if the past decade is any guide, they will also transform the sponsor's investment into nothing.) Many of us have been around the domain world for rather a long time. For example, I registered my first domain (in the city domain cambridge.ma.us) about 20 years ago, and my .COM in 1993. We are not suffering from a lack of understanding; we probably understand the way domains work as well as anyone. This is the wrong place to look for naifs who are foolish enough to imagine that that new TLDs are anything other than a speculative money grab. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly