Re: [registrars] White paper on new gTLDs from Philip Sheppard et al

["Marcus Faure" <faure@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bruce,

while I do not have a better approach, I do not think your suggestion will
adress the issue. 
First, establishing the TLD in a second level testbed will create a huge 
problem for the registry. It is already pretty difficult to draw people's 
attention to the new TLDs, e.g. .museum email adresses are frequently rejected
in web forms as being invalid. Having them in a second level will even 
increase the registrant and user confusion.
Second, to measure the registry success in numbers will make you negotiate
with each registry where that threshold is. E.g., .mobi might make
it to big numbers whereas .cat would not. But for the catalan community
.cat might easily be more worthful than .mobi. 
Third, a certain community may choose to "sponsor" the stld, even if the 
income from registrations does not cover the running costs. This will not
be a destabilizing factor for the internet.

Yours,
Marcus


> Hello Tim,
> 
> > 
> > I am also concerned with viability. Registry failure is going 
> > to happen sooner or later. But there is no point in inviting 
> > it by only requiring certain financial and technical 
> > requirements for a new TLD. That does not do much for 
> > promoting a stable and secure Internet. I think there also 
> > needs to be verifiable market research that indicates 
> > viability, and clear and well defined marketing plans from 
> > any applicant.
> > 
> 
> One approach to a viability test could be to require that a proposed new
> TLD, first establish a second level TLD and show that it is viable in
> terms of number of registrations and business model (ie earns sufficient
> revenue to cover full operating costs - to avoid just offering a large
> number of free registrations initially).
> 
> I have been thinking about a model where a new TLD can set up initially
> as a second level domain
> (e.g sport.com, aol.com etc) to demonstrate to the community the
> concept, method of allocating names etc.   Some basic objective
> thresholds (e.g > million active registrations, > $ million in financial
> resources, open to all registrars etc) could be established for a review
> in 12 months, 24 months etc before creating the TLD.
> When the new TLD is approved (e.g sport), the existing registrants of
> sport.com would automatically be grandfathered in.  This ensures that
> there is an incentive to register first within the second level domain
> on the basis that the tld may become available.   The TLD operator could
> set up automatic forwarding from e.g soccer.sport.com to soccer.sport.
> 
> 
> A new TLD operator would also need to show that the operator's method of
> allocating names protected the intellectual property rights of others,
> and that the names registered were not purely for the purposes of brand
> protection.
> 
> Right now I would have thought that aol.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com,
> gmail.com, etc would have a reasonable case for their own tld based on
> number of registrations and usage etc.
> 
> Regards,
> Bruce Tonkin
> 
> 
> 
> 
>