Re: [wg-c] A Position Paper on some new gTLDs

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sun, Oct 10, 1999 at 10:42:37PM -0700, Christopher Ambler wrote:
> You do this, and I expect to see one for each and every
> ethnic and geographic group simultaneously. To single
> out a particular group, to the exclusion of others, is a
> particularly injudicious remedy.

Eric's paper urges ICANN/DNSO to quickly develop standards for the 
approval of "sponsored" TLDs, and then provides a concrete proposal 
as a test case.

Existence of a defined group is not sufficient in itself to justify a
separate TLD -- there must be other objective standards that can be
applied.  In concrete terms, I agree with you that, just as IANA did
not want to get into the business of defining what a country is,
ICANN does not want to get in the business of defining what an ethnic
group is. 

However, there are other criteria that can be evaluated: size of the
community served; geographical scope; meaningful policy distinctions
that would lead to use of the TLD; public benefit; stability,
permanence, and financial backing of the of the sponsoring agency;
etc.  In the terms I used in my position paper: independent of any 
issues of human rights, intellectual property rights, competition, 
etc, I think a case can be made for Eric's proposed .naa TLD.

There are some sticky legal issues that need to be considerd, I'm 
sure.  However, I'm tired of endless arguments about anti-trust 
issues, and it would be refreshing and informative to have a serious 
discussion about Eric's proposal.

I am also interested in developing criteria for TLD semantics.  For 
example, a useful criteria is that the TLD serves to partition the 
user community.  That is, a case could be made that entities that 
registered in .naa would tend to do so exclusively -- they wouldn't 
tend to register in .naa, .net, .net, .org, and 30 ccTLDs.

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