Forwarded with Grant's permission.


Josh
--
* any views are my own

-----Original Message-----
From: Grant Bayley [mailto:gbayley§ausmac.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, 24 April 2002 5:35 PM
To: Rowe, Joshua
Cc: Link List (link§www.anu.edu.au)
Subject: Re: [LINK] auDA to consider new names for .au


On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Rowe, Joshua wrote:

> auDA to consider new names for .au 
> http://www.auda.org.au/about/news/2002042402.html

[snip]

> auDA is considering whether there is sufficient public support for the 
> creation of some new 2LDs. For example, should auDA follow the example 
> of ICANN and create a new "biz.au" or "name.au"? Another option might 
> be to create new 2LDs for specific sectors of the community, like 
> "law.au" for lawyers.

I'll bite on this particular point.

Anyone else think that ".biz" reeks of "1999 dot com excesses"?

For this reason alone I'd assert that it's worth ignoring.

> auDA is particularly interested in receiving proposals for the 
> existing info.au 2LD, which is currently inactive.
>
> "Now that the .info gTLD has commenced operation, we think there is 
> real potential for info.au to become a very popular domain among 
> Australian Internet users," said auDA CEO, Chris Disspain.

This is mostly personal opinion, but the existing "new" TLDs have gotten a
bad name for themselves, and mostly because of the process that was followed
to bring them into operation.  Firstly, the fact that preference was given
to those wanted to "reserve" / stake a claim to an existing name meant that
it was abused heavily by anyone that could convincingly lie about the
trademarks/service marks etc that they held.  Secondly, the fact that
spammers picked up the baton and ran with it for .biz/.info/.name meant that
by the time the domains eventually became available, there was such
confusion and latent anger about having received 500 unsolicited email
offers to "reserve" domains in the new TLDs, nobody cared about them.

More personal opinion.  Who really wants a domain ending in .name?
"john.smith.name"  That's got about as much appeal as a warm, mouldy rag.
Ditto on ".per" as a 2LD/TLD.  At the very least, an opening up of .id.au
without the 3LD requirement for an Australian animal ought to cater for the
demand for personal domain names.

As Chris has hinted at above, the only TLD/2LD's that strike me as having
any appeal are those that can be immediately used by organisations that are
part of a body of professionals or perhaps a club (.law, .club (?)),
organisations that perform some historical, information aggregation or
archiving function (.museum, .archive (?)), or provide a clear and obvious
source of information on a particular topic (.info).

Grant



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