Hello, Piet wrote:

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Comments/Suggestions welcome! Contrary to what I've suggested to you long ago, I'd now recommend that you put ESA under the .INT domain; chances are zero that there will ever be a .EU domain for Europe, unless someone can convince the Powers That Be that there is a very clear need for such a "pseudo top level domain", quite analogous to the current 3-letter TLD's; or maybe the analogy could be carried even further by creating a domain .EUR; but then, who is going to manage it?

The last two mails actually clarified the issue for me in the respect that there is a more serious problem (i.e how to register multinational organisations) and the as a part the current problem what happens to esa.ch. The esa.ch seems to be solved by the mail from Walter (if ESA doesn't want to use it and doesn't feel that it should be reservered than nobody in Switzerland has to explain a small company that you do not get it, even so you were the first) The other thing which still has to renaimed is the issue of multinational organisations. I asked once on that list about the advice (it was mentioned in the 14. Ripe meeting as the case of the day) indicating that I found the advice stupid (I still do, but not because of the ESA case now :-) and asked for clarification, reasons. I got no serious answer back, so I thought to skip that issue (and stay with .org; that's what we use now). But the advice now to change ESA to .int (even if it would be a good idea to do so) might cause some trouble and I have my serious doubts that they will do that. So it would be quite a good idea to keep that point in mind if an international organization want's to register for the first time, but changing already existing organisation will cause a lot of overhead for them (I just got new business cards :-). Maybe a better solution can be found too, but I can not recommend one off hand. Michael P.S.: .int for ESA was reject in the 14 Ripe meeting with: "workable, but ESA is not a world wide organization" :-) according to the minutes ________________________________________________________________________________ Michael Fendt ESO (European Southern Observatory) Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2 85748 Garching Germany Tel: +49 89 32006 441 Fax: +49 89 32023 62 email: mfendt@eso.org