Greg,
> > sure no reason why any and every conceivable name needs to be
> > allowed in the DNS.
>
> I imagine some free speech folks might object to this ...
>
...
> The value of
> the names comes from the value that people who want to access
> resources attached to those names ascribe to them.
>
...
> they are meaningful in the sense that they (potentially) represent
> something that people want to access.
>
You provide a nice set of objections -- but not to my point, which
addresses the fact that it has been their (a)scribability that has
created the demand -- and the fact that managing this *property* of
domain-myths (as we may call them) is well within the purview of
net administration.
Taking your view more broadly, the critical issue is to distinguish
sign from symbol. Free-speechers and name-traders defend their
rights to *symbolize everything on earth, so that a sneeze
becomes performance art, and a pair of parabolae become a
unique identifier of hamburgers. But the fact remains (and one
would suppose that a *disinterested symbolist would grasp the
value of preserving and sustaining and encouraging the fact), that
every 'thing,' first of all, 'stands for' itself: it is a sign. (Will you
excuse me if I deal here only with percipients, not essences?)
Without signs, there can be no symbols, any more than there can
be a timber products industry without timber. Its very fine for
industry to insist on its right to make paper, but if there is to be a
global administration to 'coordinate' industry activity, do you think it
is intra-industrial rights (e.g. who cuts which tree), or the rights of
trees to grow in the first place (i.e. in the public domain), which
need to be coordinated ('protected') *in the face of* such activity?
"Under WIPO rules the potential number of terms (including
common words with other meanings) that firms
could prevent from being [registered] in any gTLD is potentially
unlimited." -- A M Froomkin.
> Here's an example. Is this sequence significant?
>
> 6b657272796f406e732e73796d70617469636f2e6361
>
What4ever turns you on, Greg me bhoy.
But which is more likely 'sustainable practice' in namespace -- the
reliance on old-growth resources of meaningfulness, or the strength
and determination to *make a name meaningful by the service one
provides at the site it identifies? Quality, reliability, consistency
are not just trademarks, you know. And no focus group suggested
to Philips Petroleum Corp that a flying red horse was a natural
embodiment of those attributes.
kerry
