[ga] Re: Urgent: questions for ICANN Board Candidates
It seems both Jefsey and Kent misunderstood that I
was referring to the commercial impact and not as to whether it
was possible via technical measures or policy.
Whilst it may well be possible to implement
.gb via existing policy, it would still be seen as just another non ".uk" tld
aimed at the uk market. Now that .uk has reached nearly 3 million
registrations, it is firmly ingrained in the minds of the UK domestic market
(thanks to collective weight of advertising by companies who use a .uk domain) -
in much the same way that .com is within the US.
The notion that if there were a redelegation of .uk
that offered free mirroring upon request also fails to take into account that
.uk is heavily used by small businesses targetting their domestic market.
The "if it aint broke don't fix it" mentality prevails heavily in that
sector. As such, if the government did anything that caused confusion or
additional administration for no material gain to the users themselves, then it
would meet with very vocal opposition.
The UK government is committed to increasing the
speed of online take-up and usage to help boost the flagging economy and so for
them to do anything that would impede that process (which a redelegation would
certainly do) is simply not going to happen.
It is worth remembering that Nominet is a non
profit organization which is steered by its members, meaning their policies
reflect what the ISP's want - so the ISP's would most likely be the ones to lose
control if .uk was redelegated which again is not something that would make
sense for the UK government (or ICANN for that matter).
Regards
Paul Cotton
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