[menog] .asia landrush

[jim.mercer at viszo.com]

> From: Baher Esmat <baher.esmat at icann.org>
> 
> Bill, I personally couldn't agree more with you. The monetizing of domain names has gone much farther than what people had envisaged 20 years ago! It is perhaps something that engineers can't absorb :) and it is going to grow more and more with the opening of new gTLD applications!

if ICANN had the balls to stand up to the lobbyists, and only create new TLD's where they were absolutely necessary, it wouldn't be such a playground for the speculators, and alot of the growth would die off.

normally, i'm in favour of having a body like ICANN in control of the chief mechanisms that make the internet go, but i am starting to think that shifting it to the UN or (ick!) the ITU might mean that there will be less senseless commercial exploitation.

i mean, who really benefits from the introduction of .mobi?

did it create a whole new set of applications that would not have been there had they not created .mobi?

what is the real benefit of .asia?  will it miraculously create a new economic zone where all of the internet entities in the asia demographic will cooperate to dominate those in the .info namespace?

really, it is strictly a game to be played by those who a) "own" the registry and b) those who will exploit it to trick people into thinking they are losing something if they don't get their own .asia domain.

also, why are all the new TLD's based on english, which albeit the dominant language of business, when english is no where near the dominant language of the actual users of the internet?

things like IDN are more practical. although, its introduction will create a whole new atmosphere of exploitation, not only from the speculation front, but from the phishing fronts as well.

i'd be happy to see a moritorium on the creation of new TLD's until IDN has been properly and widely integrated.

but, what do i know? i've only been dabbling on the internet since the mid-80's.

--
Jim Mercer