Antony,
On Mon, 15 Feb 1999, Antony Van Couvering wrote:
> Milton's point is the good one and the obvious one. Chartered TLDs only
> make sense if the charter can be enforced. They can only be enforced
> under the following circumstances:
> 1. The chartering authority is recognized by all potential registrants
> as valid (e.g., Nominet is, without significant dispute, the authority
> for .UK)
> 2. The charter is clear enough and narrow enough to make any sense
> (e.g., .astronaut is for people who have been to outer space)
> It won't work for a broad commercial space (e.g. .COM), which is,
> unfortunately for chartered TLDs, where the vast majority of companies
> want to be, and which, unfortunately for chartered TLDs, already exists.
> The third corollary rule is, therefore:
> 3. Consumer-driven e-commerce will only work in chartered TLDs if there
> are no unchartered TLDs. In other words, who the hell wants to be
> ford.automakers when you can be ford.com, especially when .automakers is
> one of thousands of chartered TLDs?
Doesn't the technical side of it render all of this discussion moot?
You have to have a human sitting there and decide, in both situations...
el
