Re: ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra () baylink com>]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 04:09:30PM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> Two years ago I posed the question here about the need for TLDs
> (http://www.mcabee.org/lists/nanog/May-06/msg00110.html). I
> summerizsed that companies IP (Intellectual Property) guidelines
> would never allow domain.org to exist if they owned domain.com
> (ibm.org vrs ibm.com). I felt that TLDs really represented a monetary
> harvesting scheme as every new TLD forced companies to "pay for
> yet another domain name" (slowly milking businesses). At that time
> several knowledgeable folks commented that TLDs were necessary in the
> beginning due to the need to distribute queries. Now it seems, ICANN
> has decided to add a new paradigm :-) How will a TLD like .ibm be
> handled now, and how is this different than what I proposed in 2006?

Could someone point me to a reference (other than a very poorly written
BBC article) that suggests that .ibm is even a valid possiblity in
light of whatever ICANN actually *is* proposing?

And no, companies *aren't* "forced to pay for another domain name" just
because a new TLD appears -- they aren't doing it *now*, by and large,
and thank ghod: a) it doesn't constitute a violation of Ford Motor's
trademark that the Ford Foundation has ford.org or a Mustang club has
ford.net and b) it's horrible DNS hygiene to do that in the first
place; it re-flattens the TLD namespace.  I certainly advise my clients
not to do things that foolish.  I'm sure Randy encourages me in this.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                   Baylink                      jra () baylink com
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