Someone asked me privately...
> One thing to keep in mind is that when thinking about appropriate
>domain names for a big business, say AT&T, it makes very little sense to
>force someone to connect to somemachine.att.nj.us, especially when that
>machine could be anywhere in the US or even outside the country. For a
>company that large, it would be better to hide geographic info behind a
>.com, than to force the geographic location of the company's US
>headquarters to influence the domain names of the rest of the company. I'm
>sure the folks at IBM would feel the same way. So would all the companies
>that are incorporated in Delaware for tax reasons, but have their HQs in
>other states.
>
> For a smaller company, or one with less offices, it might make
>sense for their domain name to be geographical, for example cisco.sf.ca.us
>or nytimes.ny.us.
>
> When it comes down to it, I'm agreeing with you, but for a slightly
>different reason. It seems a little impractical for the internet to be the
>great equalizer between Joe's Garage and Ford Motor Company, especially
>when there may be twenty different Joe's Garages but there is only one FMC.
i do not believe any more that a company's (or organization's or person's)
domain name ought to map differently based on their geographic domain. if
we allow that binding, every midsized company who wants to look like a big
one will find some way to bend the rules.
my current thinking is to match costs and values. folks seem to value having
their name directly under .COM, and lo and behold it costs the 'net more to
have those names there than if they were all delegated to smaller registries.
ergo, the folks who want to live in .COM should probably pay more -- a lot more
-- than the folks who don't. extending this model upward, it should be poss-
ible to register directly in the root, for US$1M a year or so.
the idea here is, let the company categorize themselves. no rules to bend.
but: if they want to live in a place that's expensive for the 'net to maintain,
they should pay for the overhead they are generating. as for all those
deleware corporations, i'd expect each company to choose the local registry
that makes the most sense -- to them, not to me or to the NIC or the IANA.
if they are incorporated in deleware but have their main offices in virginia
and want to register their domain under alaska, that's noone's business but
their own. the alaskan registry would be within its rights to charge more for
out of state registrations.
