Re: Structuring the Root

[Owain Vaughan <owain at AXA.CO.UK>]

> Hi,
> 
> I found myself nodding in agreement through most of your
> posting, but then ran up against one sentence that made me
> go "huh?":
> 
> [ Owain Vaughan wrote: ]
> 
> .  .  .
> > Businesses shouldn't be allowed to use inappropriate TLDs, hence the desire
> > to link them more closely to their country, state, province of
> > incorporation.
> 
> "Shouldn't be allowed"? Why do we keep trying to tell
> people how to use the tools?

There has to be some kind of structure, otherwise there is anarchy.
We know now ho difficult it is to find the service or data we want, because
it is swamped by so much other (similar) data.

You wouldn't want General Motors (for example) registering under

GENERAL-MOTORS.EDU

and the University of Southern California registering under

USC.COM

would you? With some kind of appropriate differentiation system it
makes it easier to find what we are looking for and prevents similarly-
named organisations from clashing over names.

> The thought popped into my
> head that this is like setting up a trademark system, then
> telling the food industry "and all cereal trademarks must
> end in '.cereal'. Sorry, that must be registered as
> 'raisenbran.cereal.food'".
 
If it helps to clarify things, that can only be a Good Thing.

> I have to return to a point I made earlier, that this
> entire debate reminds me of the period in history when the
> computing centre types argued among themselves how they
> were going to structure the contents of their campus-wide
> information systems while refusing requests from the
> community for new features, since the CC didn't see the
> value. So we installed gopher, wais and WWW servers. CC
> types run them now, too.

I'm not telling people what names to choose, just providing a framework
into which they can be inserted.

> The Internet routes around failure. If we fail to provide
> functionality, I don't think it will stick.

The functionality I am trying to prove is in addition to what we have
now, not instead of it.

> "But the gummint and the lawyers are involved now!", I hear
> pyou cry. Yeah, so? We defeated IBM didn't we? Surely you
> don't think the U.S. government is as powerful as IBM, do
> you?  ;-)
 
This is not about individual Governments or individual companies, this is
a global issue. By following my proposals there is no need for lawyers
(or Governments) to get involved in such unpleasentries.


> 				- peterd

Owain