-----Original Message----- From: John Charles Broomfield <jbroom at manta.outremer.com> <snip>
There are some interesting recomendations there where the doc says that exploitation of ".gp" & ".mq" by private operators should be stopped
".pf" & ".wf" should be allowed to continue (note: there are no domains delegated in ".pf" or in ".wf". .pf being under control of Inria, and .wf under control of the post-office). <snip> What I ask is that if everyone here in Guadeloupe & Martinique is happy with how things are being done, nobody is getting rich out of this, all
whereas providers
are in agreement (even though in other areas these same providers are at each outhers throats because they are competitors), then why change the status-quo? As a side note, I'd like to add that as yet, nobody from the government in France mainland has even tried to get in touch (phone, email, letter, fax) with me or any of the admin contacts for either ".gp" or ".mq" to ask/say/announce/inform/get informed about what is going on with these two TLDs, so I think it would be a bit bizarre to say the least if they suddenly "vanished".
John, Thanks for the long description of your side of the story. It appears that someone in the French government decided that .GP and .MQ were being exploited by private operators. They must have done this without much input from you or other people with SLDs under .GP and/or .MQ. Is it possible that they read your statements that said that you do not want anyone looking over your shoulder with those TLDs and they decided this was not what they wanted ? Is there any chance that a group of "trustees" could be assembled from the <SLD>.GP owners and the <SLD>.MQ owners to help provide a broader base of views ? One problem that seems to plague several of the ccTLDs is that there is one person speaking for them and it is hard to get a sense of what the SLD population feels. Maybe it would be good to have several people that are known to take an interest in .GP and .MQ so that France and the rest of the world do not see these as private TLDs run by a local ISP. Governments may get nervous when they find one vocal person running the show. Even though you might be willing to throw in the towel to France, I think that the French Government should give these TLDs a chance. If governments start to steam-roll TLDs whenever they feel like it, then we could lose large populations of people who have chosen to gather, like a tribe, in cyberspace under a common banner. One of the concerns that I have is that you do not seem to be interested in encouraging more members of the .MQ and .GP tribes to voice their positions. I think that would help to make sure RSCs get a sense for what the situation is. How many people depend on .MQ and .GP ? Can some of them step forward to save these TLDs ? Jim Fleming Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com End-2-End: VPC(Java)---C+ at ---<IPv8>---C+ at ---(Java)VPC http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt http://www.ddj.com/index/author/idx10133.htm -------- Logged at Tue Sep 15 16:44:44 MET DST 1998 ---------