Well, I for one am not ready to retreat from a more global view,
with a retreat to essentially balkanizing the Internet Name Space.
I see nothing wrong with having a .IBM or a .AOL, or .MSN, or a .NMA for that
matter. All these companies operate in International Cyberspace in terms of
name recognition, and WIPO, in due course, is going to have to yield to market
demands, regardless of how long it takes.
To accept WIPO rule and control of global commerce language (and I do believe
that DNS is a language which uses names to communicate concepts) is just not
going to work, as WIPO is working to harness global control of naming systems
in general. Give then an inch and they will take a mile.
So, I see no point in retrograde suggestions such as your proposal that we all
just lie down in our WIPO moulds, let them tighten the screws and turn up the
heat, and soon we will all be just fine.
No thank you for your kind offer of supposed comfort;-)...\Stef
At 1:42 PM -0600 12/3/02, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
Thus spake "Einar Stefferud" <Steflist(_at_)thor(_dot_)nma(_dot_)com>
In case you have not noticed, one possible solution is to eliminate all
TLDs other than .COM, which is the only one that you say so may people
believe exists.
At which point someone will notice that all addresses have a
redundant .COM (because all the other TLDs have been removed, and
so the browsers and mail systems will offer to append (or just assume)
the redundant .COM suffix for you, and voile!...
No, keep the ccTLDs and let each country do with them as they wish. Most
countries have a hierarchical namespace within their ccTLD, though a few are
flat.
Either way, I'll take 250+ flat namespaces (ccTLDs) over one flat namespace
(the root).
COM is a failed experiment and needs to be closed and/or eliminated.
All all solved for the minor cost of forcing all non .COM domain name
owners to find and register a new non-colliding domain name under
.COM!
While international trademark law is a joke at best, each country does have
a framework in place which can be used to resolve conflicts within their own
ccTLD. This is a lot easier than trying to manage a single global namespace
using the WTO's trademark "rules".
S