On Wednesday, April 24, 1996 7:36 PM, Jeremy Porter[SMTP:jerry@fc.net] wrote: @As much as it pains me to continue this thread, so far no @one has stated or challenged the obvious solution. @ I assume that you mean....as stated in your closing comments... "My only real thought in this, is that the only long term solution will be some sort of group elected by the population of the Internet." I could not agree more... @>>If I had my way, we would just have country code TLD's and .INT, and @>>.INT would be restricted as it is now do international treaty orgs. @>>However, the market speaks loudly and those of us who do not listen @>>to it will find ourselves sidelined. @> @>The market also "speaks" for address portability and cars which @>make million miles on a gallon. @ @But the market doesn't speak in these issue, it maybe @whines, but there isn't anyone that has put up the cash on the @table to do either of these, while they are both technically @possible, they are not economically practical. @ Why are people going to put up cash when other companies and groups have been handed not only a "sweet-heart deal" but also implicit government endorsements and carte-blanche to make and change the rules at will...? @>I quite agree that we should go with customer demand, but -- as long @>as the road does not go into a nice solid brick wall. @> @>If we won't actively fight dot-envy we're going to get into @>serious name collision problems. And, no, many many TLDs @>do not change the nature of the problem and just move it @>one level higher. (Want to bet that as soon as new TLDs will @>be allowed ATT's lawyers would clamour for "ATT" top-level @>domain?) @ @The question is, is this really a bad thing? I would @say that it isn't. @ In my opinion, the TLDs should be more like "roots" than the current second-level domain names. A trusteeship should be set up to handle the creation of one or more TLD registries for a TLD name. The registries should handle the registrations below the TLD, not the trusteeship. Implicit in the creation of a TLD is the assumption that some quantity of people or companies will want to register below the name. I am not sure that many people would advocate using the creation of TLDs to encourage companies to remove the .COM, .NET, .EDU, etc. parts of their names. In some cases, this would not work very well... check out... http://www.whitehouse.gov http://www.whitehouse.net @ @It the IANA, charges $10,000 - $100,000 annually to anyone that @wanted a TLD, I think we would be fairly well off, at $10,000 @a registry would need 200 - 2000 sub domains at $50/year for @it to pay its fees. @ Have you looked at the .COM statistics lately...? @I say that if you charge on the order of $100,000/year, @only people that are commercial registries will be holding @TLDs. I think that TLD trusteeships should be non-commercial and TLD registries by definition be commercial and not-for-profit mechanisms should be used where desired. @You allow all of the ISO country codes to @continue as is. Network Solutions can have first bid @on COM, NET, ORG, EDU, etc., and charge whatever it wants. @ Interesting...based on what reason...? @These TLD registry fees go to funding root name servers, @BIND, ISC, etc. @ It sounds like you might be advocating a third level here... 1. Trusteeships - really call the shots 2. Registries - process paper work 3. Server Operators - make it happen @>Flattening domain name tree by adding more TLDs is the Wrong Thing. @>It is totally bogus. @> @>>My original proposal was to create enough (tens of thousands) of TLD's such @>>that this sort of small minded protectionist idiocy would be impractical. @> @>It is much better to make dot-envy less sexy by *mandating* minimal @>tree depth under existing domains. Old allocations may be grandfathered, @>and people should be made aware that keeping first-level domain @>names *is* antisocial. @ @Peer pressure isn't going to cut it, there are more of "them", @than there are of "us". @ The Internet must recognize that the world has changed substantially. I predict that nothing will really change. Instead, the real world will quickly construct new solutions around the Legacy Internet and will move forward and never look back. I think that some of the people that have brought the net this far will be left standing there with their mouth's hanging open. Some of course will cash in big time. @If someone wants to register in 10,000 TLDs, at $50 each, @let them. If .COM is a sewer, let it. People that want @to be registered in a TLD that doesn't suffer from @excessive name collision, can. @ Yes...the market forces will fixe this sort of thing... @>How about ceasing .COM allocations altogether? There's .US and .INT. @> @>>The IANA did not see things my way on this point, and so I suspect that the @>>larger companies headed by people with the smaller craniums will all decide @>>to register in every TLD. @> @>Being antisocial does not mean being stupid. There's a tangible @>benefit of having names everywhere (in a sense, it is a "replacement" @>for shorter names, as you won't need to remember which TLD was @>used). Again, this is the case when market forces are directly @>counterproductive. @ @There should be a tangible cost. @ @The .COM sewer is a direct result of regulatory distortion. @ It is the result of very poor planning, mismanagement and some very clever positioning by people and companies that clearly see no need (or benefit to them) to have other players in the game... @Useful TLD space, is a finite resource, and everyone hear seems to agree @on that. We currently have the regulator (IANA), giving a @free monopoly to one organization on "useful" commercial @TLD space. @ ...and as time runs on this monopoly grows to become an institution and other TLD registries are not allowed to get started and they continue to fall behind, the barrier to entry gets higher, economic opportunities are lost, and the people responsible for this slow decision making process become liable for this damage... @There are some serious issues with this proposal I will admit, @perhaps the worst is, who decides how registry fees are to allocated, @etc. @ they should be allocated to the people that do the work... @Of course I also believe that the Internet could do well with @with modern western "theory" of government, i.e by the people, @of the people, for the people. But instead of we are @stuck with the relatively harmless IANA dictatorship. @ harmless...??? I have a feeling that there are some potential TLD candidates that would disagree with your usage of the term harmless... If a TLD can attract 1,000 registrations per month at $50 each then each month that goes by could mean $50,000 less revenue to a hopeful TLD and some portion of that revenue to the chosen few... When you couple that with the time value of money and the multiples that the stock market puts on Internet stocks, you could end up with some multi-million dollar claims... these claims can be made against people that can not seem to make a decision, can not make anything move forward, and operate like a deer caught in the headlights of a car... @I expect I will get several emails about TLD speculation, @but I PROMISE to ignore them, because they are baseless @speculation founded on lack of understanding of the free @market system. @ @I would propose a even more radical solution to the @"TLD" problem, but it has some serious implications, @as I have said before there is no technical reason for @the de-facto implementors of name space policy, the root @name servers, to listen to IANA. But I personally @don't feel up to the challenge of designing a workable @"democratic" governance system for the Internet. My only @real thought in this, is that the only long term solution @will be some sort of group elected by the population of @the Internet. @ @-- @Jeremy Porter, Freeside Communications, Inc. jerry@fc.net ...once again...your summary is... "My only real thought in this, is that the only long term solution will be some sort of group elected by the population of the Internet." I hope that you other thoughts were not "virtual" thoughts... I happen to agree that some form of government or elections are needed. I have suggested a trusteeship approach where groups of 8 people volunteer and resources are placed in trust with the group. Not many people seem to want to change the status quo...they just keep standing around as the headlights get brighter... -- Jim Fleming UNETY Systems, Inc. Naperville, IL 60563 e-mail: JimFleming@unety.net