At 5/12/01 3:31 PM, William X. Walsh wrote:
>Only in the same way that ICANN is the single point of failure for the
>ccTLDs and gTLDs in the existing root structure.
Ummm, ICANN seems unlikely to go out of business, and if they were
somehow "discontinued", I feel quite confident that some other
organization would take over the administration of the root servers
voluntarily used by hundreds of millions of people. Are you suggesting
otherwise?
New.net, on the other hand -- and I say this based only on vague general
knowledge of Idealab and the fortunes of other Internet companies --
seems much more likely to go out of business without a successor. I doubt
someone else would take over a business model that had already failed in
the market and that was adopted by only a minority of the community, even
when that community was (so I hear, correct me if I'm wrong) offered
financial incentives.
>You obviously know nothing of the levels new.net has gone to and the
>technical details of how their service works.
>
>I'd do some research before making such uninformed proclamations.
Gosh. That's one of the more insulting things you've ever said, and I
think you him an apology.
I personally find it hard to believe that anyone who's done any research
at all could defend new.net's offering to consumers:
There are approximately 400 million Internet users
[http://www.c-i-a.com/200103iu.htm]. According to new.net's own
statistics, only 21 million of them can resolve new.net domains.
Perhaps new.net should change their disclaimer to read "94% of the people
on the Internet can't view these domains", rather than emphasizing the 21
million who can.
At the very least, I'd suggest they change it to "21 million people (out
of 400 million) can see these domains". Otherwise, their "21 million"
statement is misleading; it makes 21 million seem like a big number (it's
not). They're relying on the consumer's ignorance of the number of people
who CANNOT resolve the domains. I consider any marketing scheme that
merely takes advantage of consumer ignorance to be disreputable at best.
I agree that new.net is adding new resolvability all the time. However,
by my calculations, in the time it's taken them to add 5 million more
since they started, approximately 40 million new users have joined the
Internet. Even if new.net adds 20 million a year (not likely -- I assume
they've already picked the low-hanging fruit), only 12% of the Internet
(120 million of 1 billion) will be able to resolve their domains by the
end of 2005.
I wonder how many people who have signed up with new.net (assuming there
are any) would have done so if they'd been told "at current adoption
rates, more than 85% of the people on the Internet won't be able to use
your domain name at all for at least five years".
If new.net's domains resolved for, say, 85% of the Internet, THEN I'd
consider it ethical to start selling them (with appropriate disclaimers).
But collecting money when they'll almost certainly resolve for less than
15% of the Internet for the foreseeable future? They should be ashamed.
More to the point, resellers of 100% working domain names (i.e., most of
the people reading this) should be crying "foul!" loudly from the
rooftops. New.net is attempting to convince our mutual customer base that
switching to new.net provides a viable, usable alternative to the service
we're offering. Nothing could be further from the truth -- new.net is
selling goods that are shoddy by comparison -- and I'll damn well tell
the world why.
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
