Re: [wg-c] S/K principles

[Patrick Greenwell <patrick@stealthgeeks.net>]

On Mon, 10 Apr 2000, Philip Sheppard wrote:

> Charter and open
> This is not a black and white choice. Even dot com has some defining
> characteristics. It is not dot edu, not dot mil and not dot tv. 

That it is none of these TLDs is meaningless, as .com/.net/.org have
become a catch-all for any entity. 

> Strong competition will be provided by names that add value to the name
> space. A dot com2 will provide poor competition to dot com. The
> point of the principles is that even a new open gTLD should, as some
> commented last week, have a defining characteristic. We tried to capture
> this in the original principles by
> "3. Differentiation – the selection of a gTLD string should not confuse net
> users and so gTLDs should be clearly differentiated by the string and/or by
> the marketing and functionality associated with the string."
> 
> This is not, as some have suggested, a call for only charter gTLDs. It
> intentionally leaves it to a registry to be as chartered or as open as they
> please, so long as they are different to all that has gone before them.

Please describe how a prospective registry could both maintain a
completely open TLD(s) akin to the .com/.net/.org NSI administers, and at
the same time be required to be different from every other registry. 

I submit that such a requirement would have at least three gravely adverse
effects on both registries and consumers:

a) It would, contrary to your stated intent, force registries to run
   chartered TLDs in order to maintain disparity from all other
   registries.

b) It would create fiefdoms where single registries would be responsible
   for all registrations pertaining to a specific charter. 

c) Potential new registries would be forced to choose among decreasingly
   attractive TLDs as monopoly(in their given purpose) chartered TLDs 
   came into being.

Robust competition is created when entities offering the same or
largely similar goods/services enter a market, not by allowing a single
entity to control all goods/services in a specific market as this clause
would do w/r/t domain names. It's bad for the registries and it is bad for
consumers.


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                               Patrick Greenwell                          
                       Earth is a single point of failure.
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