Thus spake "Peter Dambier" <peter@peter-dambier.de>
James R. Cutler wrote:
I must have missed something here.
Are there not individual root domains for each ISO-registered country, not just the US? And, if there are individual root domains for each ISO-registered country, are they all controlled by the US?
Please explain this in simple words.
The country domains obviously were not the right place. That is why you find organisations, companies and whatever in ".com", ".net" and ".org"
No, .com, .net, and .org became popular because (a) the entity that .us was assigned to was both incompetent and hostile, and (b) Americans are, for the most part, blissfully unaware that anyone exists outside their borders. .com is merely a historical substitute for .us. If .us had been used correctly, we wouldn't have needed gTLDs at all.
I have a ".de" domain but I probably will lose it as soon as I move to france. I cannot get a ".eu" domain because of bureaucratic reasons. Anyhow I will lose it as soon as I move to Panama. So some 250 domains are of no use to me.
There are plenty of ccTLDs that will sell you a domain regardless of residency, nearly all of them for less than you pay your own country's registrar for a "correct" domain.
Sooner or later I will end up in ".com", ".net" or ".org". Right now I dont have the money to bye me a ".com", ".net" or ".org" domain.
You can afford EUR 116/yr for a .de domain but not USD 15/yr for a .com domain? (pricing from DENICdirect and my Dotster, respectively)
That is why I join with people like me building our own root and selling toplevel domains to people who cannot afford bying ICANN for monetarian or religious reasons :)
So petition ICANN to create a new TLD for poor people, since you believe that more gTLDs are the answer. Using an alternate root means only other poor people will be able to reach you (since they're the only ones who need that alternate root), which appears acceptable at first but will quickly become untenable. Not to mention it'll be quickly taken over by spammers, as .info and .biz have been. Adding gTLDs is a bad solution to the wrong problem. S Stephen Sprunk "Stupid people surround themselves with smart CCIE #3723 people. Smart people surround themselves with K5SSS smart people who disagree with them." --Aaron Sorkin