Re: [wg-c] more on non-shaired gTLDs

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 04:51:56PM -0800, Rick H Wesson wrote:
> 
> Kent,
> > 
> > Nope.  "Control" is not a necessary factor.  Chartered or not, enforced 
> > or not, controlled or not, .museum isn't going to have as many 
> > registrations as .shop, .info, .web, or even .nom.
> 
> 
> I could see sex.museum and fuck.museum and my.museum being quite usefull.

Perhaps so.  However, that really doesn't address the point.  It is
undeniably true that there are lots of essentially open TLDs that are
nowhere near as popular as .com.  Names are different -- if all names 
were equal, then .org would be as big as .com.

In any case, the "control" issue is somewhat peripheral.  In the long
run it seems clear that most small, sparsely settled TLDs would have
charters -- I'm just indicating that universal charters are not a
cast-iron requirement.

> infact if there are lots of places that have sparse use they will be
> picked up by folks looking for a return or folks looking for cool new
> names that are not available in anyother gTLD.

Perhaps, but I'm not sure you catch what I'm getting at.  These are 
TLDs with names or charters that by definition tend to segregate the 
registrants.  For example, I have a business named songbird.  I really 
don't think I would be inclined to register "songbird.irish"
just because I couldn't get "songbird.com" -- unless I was Irish, in 
which case it might be very interesting to me.  Nor do I think domain 
speculators would be inclined to hoard such names on speculation, 
especially if they had to pay in advance, and there were thousands of 
them.

On the other hand, if .naa ever gets created, I may very well be 
interested in songbird.naa, because it would be a TLD that I supported 
and worked to get created, and that would have personal significance to 
me. 

>   a) I wouldn't consider any dictionary word generic
>   b) just about all dictionary words will end up registered as SLDs in
>      any new gTLDs created.
>
> assuming that a new gTLD wil be underutilized IMHO just doesn't jive with 
> what the names market is currently experencing. 
> 
> There are 214,000 definitions in  Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. There are
> more than 214,000 domain registrations in com/net/org gTLD each week.

I think you are using gTLD in the sense used in the gTLD MoU, and as
Javier meant to when he wrote the charter for this WG.  However, because
Javier slipped and inserted the rhetorical question "should they have
charters", Jon has assumed that "gTLDs" means "all TLDs that are not
ccTLDs".  Consequently, my understanding is that the term as used in the
so-called "consensus" document does include chartered TLDs as part of 
the initial 6-10.

Kent

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