Mr. Mathews:
It is quite unfortunate that you view New.net as "competition" to whatever
group of persons or companies that you might represent. New.net is in the
business of enabling Internet users to use more descriptive and useful
domain names that currently are not available through the ICANN-administered
process, and most persons on this discussion list are in the business of
marketing domain names to end users -- which we think makes us more partners
than competitors. We have a product that we would like more resellers to
sell.
You may not like our product, which is your perogative, but let's not make
more out of this than it really is. We are selling a product that we think
consumers want, which they are readily buying, despite our product's current
limitations. Our product really is no different than the multilingual
domain names offered by Verisign (which I assume many members of this list
sold to their customers), except that our names are actually resolvable
today by tens of millions of Internet users and Verisign's multilingual
names were not resolvable by anyone until two weeks ago and now by less than
one million users worldwide. Verisign's products aside, our domain names
have utility to users today despite imperfect reach and performance. Is
this any different than the introduction of any new technology? Is this any
different than frustrations experienced by users of new Internet products
everyday? It is a little disingenuous to apply a much higher standard to
our initiatives than is routinely applied to other new technology
businesses.
As for your latter points, New.net is not trying to "take over" the domain
name space without public input. On the contrary, as a market based
company, we are 100% directly accountable to the public. If we do not act
as good corporate citizens, then businesses will shun us. If we make stupid
decisions that enrage the public, then the public will not support us. If
we do not act responisbly to protect the stability of the Internet, then we
will engender more vocal opposition from the technical community. And so
on. Contrast this type of accountability with the accountability of a
non-democratically created political organization comprised primarily of
industry insiders who serve certain agendas and not others. New.net is not
advocating that it assume a role similar to ICANN, but rather that the free
market assume a greater role in deciding which TLDs get released and when.
You mentioned .kids, which is a great example of how a private company can
act quickly to provide a public benefit in the domain name space where a
public entity cannot. ICANN rejected .kids because of the lack of political
or community consensus surrounding how .kids should be used. These are
important issues that are very difficult for a quasi-governmental entity to
get its arms around and make a decision. As a private company, however, we
decided to make .kids domain names available today with a set of rules that
we think do a good job of balancing the competing public policy issues. We
partnered with .Kids Domains, one of the .kids applicants rejected by ICANN,
to be the official registry for .kids domain names. Time will tell whether
we struck the right balance in creating the specific rules for .kids.
Buyers either will embrace what we are doing or they will not. Others may
come along in the future and do a better job than us with .kids, but we are
attempting to do it today. We do not and could not claim exclusive
ownership of .kids or any other top level domain.
We will consider your other suggestions as well, as we have with your prior
comments. As always, we appreciate the input and debate on these issues.
We welcome inquiries from others, and hope to convince more of you join our
efforts.
Best regards,
David Hernand
CEO
New.net
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Robert L Mathews
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 11:43 AM
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Re[5]: New TLDs working already?
Sorry for drawing out this thread, but I didn't realize this had become a
"kiss the competition's ass" list. Why am I always the last to know?
Well, here goes: Yes, big congratulations to new.net for attempting to
steal the domain space with no public input or oversight, and for
destabilizing the DNS system and reducing consumer trust in the
reliability of domains! Why, their domains now work -- if you believe
their somewhat elaborate accounting numbers, which involve things like
multiplying by 2.1 for every new ISP account they sign up so they can add
a 10 million account ISP and increase their displayed resolvability
number by 21 million -- for almost 10% of the Internet! Gasp! Their
wonderful product now has only a 90% failure rate!
Oh, and it's even better in the US, of course. In fact, Hernand's future
prediction, expressed on this very list two days ago, is that they're
improving it so that in five months' time, they'll only fail for 57% of
US consumers! What an accomplishment.
</sarcasm>
In most other industries, someone selling something that works 10% of the
time, with stated hopes to improve it to work 43% of the time in the US,
would be the subject of a class-action lawsuit for selling defective
goods. Maybe new.net's domains should have a legal disclaimer like the
Psychic Hotline, saying they're "for entertainment purposes only".
I originally composed a long reply to Hernand's disingenuous,
self-serving and insulting-to-the-community spin piece posted here, but
decided to let it drop as I had no wish to draw any more attention to
what will inevitably and deservedly be a failed venture. But since others
are continuing it, I do have to ask why anyone else would encourage this.
For all you people who complain that ICANN doesn't offer enough public
input, why on EARTH would you support new.net's attempt to take over part
of the domain space without any public input whatsoever?
Anyway, if new.net is trying to (1) be a contributing member of the
community, (2) be honest with consumers, and (3) prove they believe in
their product, I have some challenges for them:
1. Justify why you should have rights to exclusively profit from the
English word "kids", for example, instead of anyone else, when you know
there has been no community consensus about how a .kids TLD should be
administered or by who;
2. Put your resolvability number on your site as a percentage, rather
than an absolute number. Let's see how many people sign up when consumers
actually have a fair idea of how often they work and how often they don't;
3. Since you're asking consumers to rely on your domain names, I'm sure
you'll be doing the same. You can switch your primary company name to
"www.new.shop" and discontinue www.new.net. Heck, if people can't resolve
it, they can just type "www.new.shop.new.net", right? Catchy. Or are you
going to be sticking to plain old www.new.net because you need a real
domain name -- you know, one that works properly?
>A couple more big wholesalers would give them the momentum that would
>make it hard for other ISPs to justify not loading the configs.
I doubt it. What would actually cause most ISPs to switch without new.net
payola would be new.net end-users demanding that their domains resolve.
We'll have to see if new.net can sucker enough naive consumers to make
that happen.
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
