I'm cross posting this reply to policy-discuss - because the discussion
belongs there. New tld's affect OpenSRS participants but the discuss
place is not for it. I just read a message from an opensrs rep which
pointed this out. So sorry about my prior posting and I will continue
the discussion in the policy-list@opensrs.org list.
On Sat, 3 Jun 2000 RussSt50@cs.com wrote:
> All of this free advertising about TLD's and dot.GOD have me very curious...
> why would anyone want a dot.GOD domain name (cheap or otherwise).
First of all Russ please excuse my delay in response. I'm a bit loaded
down with queries. I've been trying to get back to everyone.
Why would someone want a dot.GOD domain? The reply is that there exists a
real need for the identification of resources. People on the internet
need an identity and dot.GOD is an excellent domain name for that purpose.
The "free advertising" you mentioned was due to the fact that the
dictionary term "GOD" has had in excess of 3,000 years of hard core
marketing. That makes it a very attractive domain to hold.
> Without the ability to locate the website thru a search engine, it would
> cost millions in advertising for users to find the site.
That's not really an issue. Search engines will index domains in the
expanded tld - or floating root infrastructure when user demand dictates.
I assume much of the confusion here is that individuals assume the root
zone is controled by a central authority. That is not the case. There
are several root zone authorities (about 7 now) and we are visible in 2 of
them - TINC and the ORSC.
It is also the intention of dot.GOD to make a formal application to ICANN
- when and if they ever get around to expanding their view of the
internet. However, please don't assume that by making application to
ICANN that we accept their authority - we don't.
At this time a majority of the ISP's on the planet use the USG/ICANN
roots. 99.7% to be exact. Knowing the reasons why this is so - is in
itself critical to understanding why ICANN is of little importance.
The existing United States Government root server infrastructure has been
viewed to date by a majority of the net because of convenience. However
as users become aware that an expanded tld infrastructure exists, and that
infrastructure is ready to be used as resource, then - at that time, ICANN
and the USG servers become inconvenient.
In fact it becomes a marketing "thingy" - as marketing "thingy's" go. I
had a call from a NYC ISP who want to carry the dot.GOD zone file. They
think it would be fun - and I agree - what a great marketing promo:
"DOES YOUR ISP SEE GOD? OURS DOES"
And I expect you'll be seeing more and more of this sort of thing as
people become namespace aware. The tld infrstructure exists today - we
have .web .zoo .corp .ltd .etc etc. Unfortunately the people running
these tld's have a very limited view of the landscape. I call the
condition they suffer from "myopic internetum dnsum". They have spent so
much time pursueing ICANN they have forgotten the only important people
her are the users. We do not serve ICANN, we serve our users - and if
ICANN can't service our users - then ICANN is in trouble.
dot.GOD has been an eyeopener to them. We are now over 7,000 domains
registered to 1,100 users. Our user base is larger then all of ICANN
(with the exception of the @Large membership). And that is significant.
Joe Baptista
dot.GOD Hostmaster
+1 (805) 753-8697
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