Re: [wg-c] Choosing the intial testbed

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2000, Kent Crispin wrote:
> >    Why not permit every ISP with a million or more customers to have a
> > TLD of their choice?  This could be a simple rule.   I'm sure there
> > would be complaints, but would it cause any harm?  It wouldn't hurt me.
> 
> Wow.  "It wouldn't hurt me."  That's deep.  I'm really encouraged that 
> you are a consumer advocate.
> 
> There are countries where *no* ISP has a million customers... 

   I think the "what's the harm" issue isn't trivial.  My point isn't to
see some policy of "you need a million," which would eliminate Essential
Information as a potential registry, but to say, why wouldn't an ISP
with a million customers be permited to have its own TLD?  I can't see
any technical reason why not.  I used a million to make the point that
if the argument is about the technical capability of the registry,
certaintly there is some point where one can assume they can pull it
off.

    Indeed, if a company is asking to use its own legitimate, and even
famous, trademark as a TLD, it would seem to present even fewer
problems, because one else could use it anyway.  Who but AT&T could use
.ATT, and who but AOL could use .AOL?

    I could support this, but also support lots of other rationales for
getting authorization to manage a TLD.  Right now I'm mostly working on
.union, .isnotfair, .ecology, .customer, .sucks, .ngo and some other
non-commercial proposals.   I wouldn't expect AT&T or AOL to benefit
directly from these proposals, but I don't think they would have a
reason to oppose them either.  

    Maybe one of the more difficult problems will be to address the
issue of who will control various cool names that would be used for a
"chartered" TLD, or a TLD that would seek to caputure some of the
economic rent from the use of a cool name.

    Jamie

=============================================
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology    
P.O. Box 19367        | http://www.cptech.org 
Washington, DC 20036  | love@cptech.org       
Voice 202/387-8030    | Fax 202/234-5176     
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