Re: Thinking outside the box

From: "Neil Schwartzman" <[email protected]>
>In all seriousness, I do wish that domains could be sorted into =
>'commercial' and 'non-commercial' (which would include personal use) and =
>while one could argue .name and .org could/should have been limited to =
>those uses =85 that herd of cows left the gate a long long time ago and =
>there is no practical means by which we can differentiate.
>
>Of course, ICANN *is* reviewing WHOIS, so maybe Rod Rasmussen can but =
>this on his 'to do' list.=

May as well rail against the weather -- then again perhaps the climate
change concern has made even that acceptable!

This is probably a tangent but the inherent problem is that any
limitation on domain registrations is a limit on income from those
registrations.

In my experience almost every targetted TLD has expanded their mission
to include basically everyone.

I remember attending the 25th (I think it was 25th, recently)
anniversary of .ORG and remarked that we were celebrating 25 years of
charter violations.  That was met with sour looks. If these remarks of
mine get out I even know exactly who will buttonhole me at the next
ICANN meeting for these remarks :-)

The exceptions to this are mostly the walking wounded. That is, those
which are mostly failures (should I soften that word? "weaker") in the
marketplace probably due to lack of a vigorous will to extend their
mission ad infinitum (e.g., i.e., .AERO, .MUSEUM, .COOP), or ccTLDS
(country codes) which haven't found a compelling market yet and might
not ever have one (.BH or .LC, etc.)

Don't take this as a particular position on this subject on my part, I
tend to view this as a reality.

But it is worthwhile reflecting upon in light of the 1000+ new gTLDs
in progress, many of which claim some focused purpose. And
internationalized TLDs including ccTLDs.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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