Re: [wg-c] Retraction of previous proposal

["Martin B. Schwimmer" <martys@interport.net>]

I believe the sentence "increase and enhance the ability to use DNs"
suggests a model where people participate in the Internet, and the sentence
"prevent unintentional conflict between commercial and non-ciommercial
usages" indicates an awareness that there are non-commercial usages of the
internet.

Whether "consumers" are more than likely to be "providers" is irrelevant to
the issue as to whether there should be brand integrity on the Internet.

And as to your remarks regarding the irrelevancy of DNs due to the use of
search engines, would you then agree to a single new TLD consisting
entirely of numerical addresses?  If not, why not?





At 03:03 PM 7/30/99 -0700, you wrote:
>
>On 30 July 1999, "Martin B. Schwimmer" <martys@interport.net> wrote:
>
>>3.  The positive value of new TLDs, if they use suffixes which distinguish
>>them from other TLDs (in a way in which .firm does not distinguish itself
>>from .com), and the registrars adopt best practices such as prepayment and
>>verifiable contact data, and the TLD is subject to expedited dispute
>>resolution, then those new gTLDs will expand the name space in a way which
>>will increase and enhance the ability to use DNs, and increase the ability
>>of consumers to rely on brands and trading names in e-commerce, and widen
>>the name space to prevent unintentional conflict between commercial and
>>non-commercial usages.
>
>You see, this bothers me.  All the people out there (insert sweeping
>hand gestures) aren't numbered, passive Revenue Generating Units.
>They don't "consume" the net.  They *participate* in the Internet. The
>days when commercial interests could point their finger at the
>"consumer base" and be accurate about it are gone.
>
>Those you label consumers are now as likely to be providers.  Those of
>you who sit back and think of the worldwide Internet population as
>a bunch of passive consumers are getting it wrong.  Very wrong.  And
>it shows in how you're approaching the namespace issue. 
>
>The namespace isn't *yours*.  It's everyone's.  It belongs to the 
>entire world, from the 3-year-old in New Jersey who's banging the
>mouse on the coffee table to all the people in the world who don't
>even know what the Internet is yet.  And every single one of those
>6 billion people have just as much right to use the namespace as
>commercial interests.  And a whole lot of them don't give a tinker's
>damn about whether or not blimpies.fu resolves to a sandwich chain,
>a dirigible manufacturer, a support group, or some guy nicknamed
>"Blimpie" in South Wales.
>
>And furthermore, don't assume that the average consumer types in
>URLs, either.  I'd wager that most people actually rely on search
>engines to find the sites they want, and then they bookmark them.
>After that, they use the bookmark file to find the site again.
>To them, it doesn't matter what the TLD is.  It doesn't matter what
>the SLD is.  It doesn't matter how complicated the URL is.  Because
>they'll never type it.  Ever.  If they tell someone about it, they'll
>cut and paste it.  So the whole argument about whether a SLD is
>"memorable" is pretty much irrelevant.
>
>-- 
>Mark C. Langston	     			Let your voice be heard:
>mark@bitshift.org				     http://www.idno.org
>Systems Admin					    http://www.icann.org
>San Jose, CA					     http://www.dnso.org
>
>

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