[wg-c] Geographically allocated names

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

One way to give the creation of new TLDs a more international flavor
is to use the world regions to allow registries from each region to
define and operate a certain number of names.

For example, North America would be given 20 gTLDs that would be based
on English.

Europe would be given 20 gTLDs based on French, German, Spanish, and
perhaps even one or two that were specifically British-English in
flavor. At any rate, the Europeans themselves would get to work it
out.

Asia is a complex, polycultural area (of course, all regions are, but
even more so here), so we might want to reserve 40 gTLDs for their
selection. I know that some people in Singapore are working on a
standard to allow use of Chinese characters in domain names. Similar
developments may eventually occur in Korea and Japan, which both have
different alphabets.

Africa should get 20 gTLDs. Probably a separate section should be also
created for the Middle East.

Latin America/Caribbean should also get 20 gTLDs.

The point, which is really brought home by looking at the list of TLDs
provided by name.space, is that names are cultural artifacts. A gTLD
such as ".jam" or ".zone" would be cool in NYC and California but
useless or possibly even offensive in Egypt. There is no way that a
set of gTLDs selected by one central committee for the whole world can
reflect the diversity of the Internet or resonate with users all over
the world.

Working Group C should propose a procedure and a timetable for
allowing the world's regions to establish their own gTLDs. I suspect
that in North America and Europe, where the issues have been hashed
over, things would move quickly and in the rest of the world they
would move more slowly, so I do not think this proposal would
significantly delay the process of introducing new tlds.