Oddly enough this stream is perhaps a very good demonstration why
multiple overlapping second level domains are not all that effective in addressing
the domain name access problem.

Is the fact that Fred's Fish registered ONLY "fred.com.au" and left
"fred.shop.au", "fred.firm.au", for others to use Good or Bad?

Generic trademark considerations would say that this would be bad - the
trademark holder has to demonstrate some level of visible action to
preserve the integrity of the mark otherwise there is a ligitimate
case that could be made regarding dilution of the exclusiveness of the mark.
So if its FREDtm's fish shop Fred may well have to register the
name in all apparently relevant parent domains to ensure that
Fred is seen to be taking reasonable steps to protect the integrity of his mark.

Consumer considerations (where much of the trademark structure originates)
also indicates that such a move is bad in so far as it is not immediately obvious
that fred.shop.au and fred.firm.au are two completely different "freds".

So the outcome is that you necessarily find that holders of well known
marks tend to occupy ALL parts of the name space where consumers
expect to see the mark.

So does more SLDs provide an effective mechanism for addressing the name
access problem?

Not very well at all.

What you are left with is that more SLDs could possibly be motivated by:

- a mechanism to introduce competition in the supply of names which is not 
  otherwise possible within the existing SLD

- a mechanism to provide a name structure to a segment which is not well serviced
  within the existing domain name space and which is logically well distinct from 
  existing SLDs

Unless the solution is directly addressing one of the other of these issues I
would suggest that it is not really solving a problem in as much as it is creating
more problems!


g



At 04:55 PM 12/5/97 +1000, David Keegel wrote:
>] >   Fred.com.au is already taken but FREDs fish still wants to use the name
>] >   fred.xxx.au
>] >   I think this is often a poor solution as both fred.com.au and
>] fred.xxx.au now
>] >   get their identity confused in the eyes of the end consumer.
>] 
>] Yes! Just look at bigpond.com and bigpond.com.au. :-)
>
>Oh!  I thought bigpond.net was their main address. :-)
>At least there is no sign of bigpond.net.au, so there are probably
>only three domains for Big Pond.  (Not counting big-pond.com, which
>looks like an Alaskan SportFishing company.)
>__________________________________________________________________________
>David Keegel <djk&#167;cyber.com.au>  http://www.cyber.com.au/  +61 3 9642-5997
>Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management
>
>
>