Hello,
9 TLDs other than national codes are sufficient as long as they aren't abused- most commonly at the moment by the US community and individuals worldwide who can register practically anything. There are plenty for everyone GTLDs would need approval from a worldwide domain name service subject to mandatory requirements, and encouraged regulation of national domain name requests.
If I use a fictional company, mycomp, as an example showing how this would work in a future case:
1 company trades as MYCOMP in the UK (mycomp.co.uk) and another one in the US (mycomp.co.us). the two are not related in any way.
There is an additional MYCOMP which is a registered limited company, and it registers mycomp.ltd.uk (one of the few LTD domain names it is entitled to register). The 2 UK ones resolved their conflict easily, but the US firm obviously should be using .us rather than .com if it isn't internationally recognised. There's a lottery if all 3 go global, for the mycomp.com domain, but this is better than the current system where the USA company would probably register this in preference to mycomp.co.us. The .com domain is only open to the mycomp companies, or other companies / individuals who can demonstrate a legitimate business use for the name.
I would suggest the following GTLDs in the first instance. Anything registered under a non-national TLD MUST meet all requirements for all domains (including subdomains):
.EUC (REGISTERED companies in the EU countries)
.APC (REGISTERED companies in the Asia-Pacific countries)
.REG (internationally recognized religions)
.ORG (as current)
.NET (as current)
.CHA (recognised international charities)
.REG (recognised regulatory bodies, like the IEEE, ISO etc)
.EDU (REGISTERED educational establishments- not just USA universities which seem to monopolise this domain)
.COM (companies which have a worldwide presence, trademarks or copyrights (subject to approval from the legal owner), or other legitimate business applications).
Applications to .COM will be preferentially allocated to those demonstrating a clear legal ownership of the name- for instance mycomp.ltd.uk would gain preferential treatment over internet-real-estate.com in the purchase of the domain if both requests are submitted at the same time. If legal ownership can be demonstrated, then a non-affiliated owner may not profit on selling the domain name to the "legitimate" owner. This would cut down on domain "hostage-taking", where people deliberately register famous names in order to ask for fast quantities of money for instance.
Enforce a second domain for countries, and optional for GTLDs- such as
.SCH (school)
.GOV (government)
.CO (company, not necessarily registered)
.REC (recreational)
.REG (religion)
.AC (academia)
.MED (medical)
.PER (personal)
.FAM (family)
.ORG
.PLC,.GMBH, .INC, .LTD and similar equivalents where a company name must be registered
.AGR (agricultural)
.IND (industrial)
This way, islam.reg, understanding-islam.org, british-moslems.reg.uk, understanding-islam.ac.org, centre-for-islamic-studies.reg.edu, worldwide-islamic-community-relations.reg.org, the-ayatollah.per.reg would be all legitimate but not thugee.reg, make-me-rich.reg.cha etc which don't sit well with the selected top domain and/or the secondary domain. make-me-rich.reg.uk would not be strictly legitimate but it would be up to national domain name registrars as to whether it would approve the name.
lets-all-commit-mass-murder.com is feasibly legitimate, but would not meet approval either by virtue of it not being a registered company, or in the unlikely event that an international company does use that trading name, the application could be turned down as it doesn't imply any business interest. Similarly, if I tried to register vacuum-cleaners-suck.com the application could be turned down if I could not demonstrate it was part of a business solution.
If I tried to register microsoft.reg.com it would fail on 3 counts- the Microsoft name is copyrighted and I have no proof of authority to request it in the COM GTLD; microsoft.reg would fail the critera for .reg, and reg.com are not compatible with each other unless both .reg and .com requirements can be satisifed. microsoft.ind.uk could be registered but then I would be subject to legal action under UK law.
Regards
Tim Staddon
I.S. Support Specialist II
PAREXEL International
Tel: +44 (0) 1895 864127
email: tim.staddon@parexel.com