Re: [wg-c] Re: Suggestions

["Ross Wm. Rader" <ross@tucows.com>]

> I think we have rough consensus (more or less) on 2 items:
> 
> - Of the 6-10 new TLDs, at least one must be chartered, to give us experience
>    with how a chartered TLD behaves.
> - Of the 6-10 new TLDs, at least one must be open, to verify the theories of
>    "a new land rush" that a lot of our members hold.

I don't know how you are defining consensus here (I've got a decent
guess), but I can't support this at all. SLD registration should be open
and accessible to all who have a legitimate interest in doing so - this
includes corporations, individuals, non-profits and yes even
cyber-squatters holding generic names for ransom.

> 
> I'd like to draw your attention to a limit type that's not been discussed 
> so far, but will be tried in Norway (.no) soon:
> That any attempt to register a domain in a specific TLD has to be sent on 
> behalf of an identifiable legal subject (in Norway, a company identified by 
> a company ID; other possibilities are credit card numbers or other 
> interesting numbers that are relatively easy to come by), 

Which would preclude a minor from owning a name...

and that the 
> number of domains available to each identity is limited (in Norway, a limit 
> of 15 is suggested).
> 

Which would turn thousands of companies into "criminals" including mine -
out of the hundreds of names we have registered, we have more than 15
sitting on top of revenue-generating properties - none of which I would
feel comfortable giving up the name on either...

> The purposes behind this is to at least limit the size of the initial 
> "rush", and to make large-scale cybersquatting a *little* more difficult.
> 

Cybersquatting is a by-product of the larger dot-com landrush that Wall
Street is seeing. As long as search technology is substandard and dot-com
valuations are through the roof, marketers will place a premium on easy to
remember SLD's like yahoo, news or four11. Domain name resale is purely a 
logical extension of this.


Thanks,

Ross Wm. Rader
Director, Assigned Names Division
TUCOWS.com Inc.
ross@tucows.com
t. (416) 239-9095 x 335
f. (416) 239-8409

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