Hank Nussbacher also wrote...
favor of the NSI solution, which means limitless gTLDs - each competing
The NSI paper does not say that there should be limitless gTLDs. Jim Dixon wrote ...
The NSI solution may be even worse than the PAB/POC/CORE one, because it creates hundreds of new gTLDs, all with the same problems as .com, and (as far as I recall) makes no provision for any oversight of the resultant mess.
NSI doesn't say they should be hundreds of new gTLDs. It says: "There is no need to limit the number of TLDs or to pre-select the TLDs themselves. In fact, market forces, not committees, should determine the most desirable brands. TLD branding and ownership, not bureaucracies, will foster increased choice by Internet consumers and increased investment by TLD providers." The main problem the world has with .com is that it is over-used. Except for country TLDs it is the only choice. Thus you have lots of people fighting each other for name and scrambling to reserve their name, any permutation of their name and as many other cool names they can think of. Over-registration and name-grabbing and the fact that you can rarely get the name you want are the main problems. If there were hundreds or thousands or millions of TLDs, guess what? Nobody cares so much about .com anymore. Very few companies will pay a million $50 registrations just to get their name with all the possible TLDs. And those that might probably don't have to because of the existing international trademark laws. By opening up the TLD level to the Internet itself (not just one bureaucratic control group) these problems go away or diminish to the point of non-importance. This is much better for the world than over-regulation, price control and competition control. I should think Europeans should understand that statement a lot better that those in the US. ;) [Note that I'm from the US and have lived in the UK and now Germany for almost 10 years.]
What is in everyone's interest is slow, careful changes to the DNS.
Absolutely. NSI's paper points this out as well. Back to work... Ray http://www.STOP-gTLD-MoU.org/ -------- Logged at Mon Sep 22 15:26:39 MET DST 1997 ---------