On Fri, Jun 05, 1998 at 12:05:58PM -0700, Chris Cappuccio wrote:
I think the real fraud is in WorldNIC and other registrars (like Netnames in the UK) selling vanity names in country TLDs. IANA encourages this. WorldNIC has an offer for $17,545 USD that will register a domain in all 72 TLDs (or 5 domains in all 72 TLDs for $87,725 USD)...
It is obviously time (well, way past time, actually) for me to go make a big hairy thing of myself on the domain policy lists; my NTIA NOI comments, which in theory were part of the universe of info used by Magaziner et al to come to their conclusions, harped on this point heavily: you can't split the namespace horizontally (.com v. .firm v .store) because people will do what Mindspring <loud growl> is _encouragingg_ them to do: race to register their name in _every_ possibly TLD... which makes the whole thing useless. Annoying as Jim Fleming is, he is running with an idea I also published in those notes: .am, .fm and .tv. Vertical division of the namespace (by industry or licensure, for example) will work, and is an excellent idea. Otherwise, I'm considering proposing the abolishment of non-geographic domains entirely. And this is now entirely off-topic, and any replies will only be entertained in email. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Two words: Darth Doogie." -- Jason Colby, Tampa Bay, Florida on alt.fan.heinlein +1 813 790 7592 Managing Editor, Top Of The Key sports e-zine ------------ http://www.totk.com