Re: [wg-c] Faisability question about so called "brand" gTLDs

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Tue, Aug 10, 1999 at 10:00:32AM -0400, A.M. Rutkowski wrote:
[...]
> 
> The overhead associated attempting to enforce any
> kind of external explicit semantic rules is significant
> and likely to be frustrating at best.  It is also
> unneeded.  These can be treated as the brands they are,
> and the individual maintainers can simply make
> implementation decisions in the marketplace.
> 
> Thus, you may well have a LAW domain operated by an
> entrepreneur at low cost and rapid speed and imposes
> no requirements.  At the same time, you might have
> the domain LAWYER operated by a spinoff of the American
> Bar Ass'n that charges a significant amount and
> takes several weeks to ascertain that the registrant
> meets some objective criteria.

Ie, the ABA is enforcing the very "external explicit semantic rules"
you mention above as being "frustrating at best". 

> It's not only not clear why both cannot exist; and
> to do otherwise would probably result in endless
> litigation where the more liberal implementation
> would prevail in the end anyway.

I am not aware of "endless litigation" surrounding .edu and .int.

In any case, nothing in the discussion of charters has prevented
there being different TLDs with different charters, but all aimed at 
the same market segment.

The principle value to having an ICANN-approved charter, as opposed
to an advertised policy of a business, is stability, completeness,
independence, and objectivity of semantics.  This is precisely the
same advantage that a standard approved by an international standards
organization like the IETF or WWWC provides in the technical arena. 
Indeed, one of the legal models for ICANN is that of a standards
body... 

We might have, for example:

.law -- chartered TLD, registration controlled by an international
committee of law organizations 

.us-law -- chartered TLD, registrationcontrolled by the US ABA 

.lawyer -- gTLD, open to anyone

.esq -- chartered TLD, slightly international flavor, and a very
unrestrictive membership policy that makes it "almost a gTLD"

A lawyer could register in any or all of these, or ignore them and 
simply register in .com.

There is a slight misconception as to the purpose of charters, I 
realize from Elisabeth's previous post -- chartered TLDs are intended 
to simply provide more choice in the name space, and not 
intended to be functional replacements for trademarks -- there is no 
implied warranty of "preventing consumer confusion", though that 
would be a nice side-effect, if it should happen.

There is also an interesting preconception implied in Tony's phrase
"the more liberal implementation would prevail in the end".

Saying that one TLD will "prevail" over another is, at a fundamental
level, nonsense.  .com has not "prevailed" over .int, for example. 
The two TLDs represent different islands in cyberspace, with
different populations.  .int will continue to serve its population
into the forseeable future. 

Neither has .com "prevailed" over .fr or .uk or .to or .nu or .edu or
.mil or .gov or .us.  The popularity of .com has not invalidated or
destroyed, or been victorious over or "won out" over, any of these
TLDs.  They all continue to be their own islands, and once people
settle there, they tend to stay. 

Finally, it is interesting to note that in the instant case of
.lawyer vs .law, it would be perfectly possible for these two TLDs to
be run by the *same* registry.  Or they might each be run by
different registries, with each of those registries running a dozen
different TLDs.  To a registry the incremental cost of running a new
TLD is close to zero -- a registry with ten low-popularity TLDs can
have the same total number of registrations as a registry with one
popular TLD.  From a registry perspective, the TLD is simply a
parameter. 

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Do good, and you'll be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain