I would like to back this up a level for just a moment, if I could. I
recently mentioned that I have both the songbird.com and songbird.net
domains. Bill pointed out that I was out of compliance with the
definition of the definition fot the .net TLD, since songbird (as a
web presence/design/consulting entity) doesn't provide the kind of
network services described in rfc1591:
NET - This domain is intended to hold only the computers of network
providers, that is the NIC and NOC computers, the
administrative computers, and the network node computers. The
customers of the network provider would have domain names of
their own (not in the NET TLD).
However, it is abundantly clear that I am not alone in my
transgression of rfc1591. As I recall, one of the IAHC drafts
recommended that the definitions for .net and .org just be dropped,
because they were widely ignored. The lesson to be learned from this
is that charters without clear definition and *legal* teeth will be
ignored.
Further, the IAHC reports define gTLDs as TLDs with essentially free
registration -- the *definition* of a gTLD is that it doesn't impose
any but the most general requirements for registration --people chose
a particular gTLD because of what it means to them, not because of a
structured meaning imposed by the charter.
With this definition of a gTLD (the definition I believe the gTLD MoU
was based on) there only needs to be one charter for all the gTLDs --
a charter that defines this open registration policy.
TLDs with structured charters have been referred to as "specialized
TLDs" (sTLDs). It is my belief that a charter for a TLD is pointless
unless it has some enforcement mechanism defined. The charter for a
sTLD becomes a feature of the registration agreement that every
domain holder in that TLD signs, and the defined enforcement
mechanism is what allows the registrar/registry to enforce the
policies defined in the charter.
-- Kent Crispin, PAB Chair "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
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