On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 04:09:30PM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
Two years ago I posed the question here about the need for TLDs (http://www.mcabee.org/lists/nanog/May-06/msg00110.html). I summerizsed that companies IP (Intellectual Property) guidelines would never allow domain.org to exist if they owned domain.com (ibm.org vrs ibm.com). I felt that TLDs really represented a monetary harvesting scheme as every new TLD forced companies to "pay for yet another domain name" (slowly milking businesses). At that time several knowledgeable folks commented that TLDs were necessary in the beginning due to the need to distribute queries. Now it seems, ICANN has decided to add a new paradigm :-) How will a TLD like .ibm be handled now, and how is this different than what I proposed in 2006?
Could someone point me to a reference (other than a very poorly written BBC article) that suggests that .ibm is even a valid possiblity in light of whatever ICANN actually *is* proposing? And no, companies *aren't* "forced to pay for another domain name" just because a new TLD appears -- they aren't doing it *now*, by and large, and thank ghod: a) it doesn't constitute a violation of Ford Motor's trademark that the Ford Foundation has ford.org or a Mustang club has ford.net and b) it's horrible DNS hygiene to do that in the first place; it re-flattens the TLD namespace. I certainly advise my clients not to do things that foolish. I'm sure Randy encourages me in this. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Joseph Stalin)